IN THE quiet coal-mining town of Logan, W.Va., there's a gravel road that leads to a little white, ramshackle shed; to Megan Williams, it was a makeshift torture chamber. For a week -- an entire week -- 20-year-old Williams was sexually assaulted, scalded with hot water, beaten and forced to eat rat feces. She was held captive there by six adults, men and women, two of whom were mother and daughter, all of whom were white. Williams is black.
Throughout the unconscionable experience, Williams was taunted with racial slurs and told she was going to be hanged, according to her statement to the police. It is hard to fathom such cruelty. It is even harder for the black population in Logan to go to sleep at night, wondering if they will be the next victims. More than anything, they are wondering why the rest of America doesn't seem to really care all that much. This crime happened a little over a month ago, and media such as CNN carried a few stories about it, but somehow most of America has yet to have a real discussion about what happened. To most, the name "Megan Williams" bears no significance. What about the name "Natalee Holloway?" Any news-literate person can immediately summon the image of the all-American young woman with flowing golden hair who vanished in Aruba in 2005. The speculation of rape alone was enough to keep the American public glued to the television, eagerly awaiting any sort of update about what had happened to the young woman.
That indeed was a tragedy. But where is the shock to the conscious, the public outrage, about Megan Williams? Her story leaves nothing to the imagination. We know exactly what happened to her; we can see the marks on her ankle where the knife cut through it. The horrifying capacity for human evil is laid bare, and yet no one seems to be talking.
According to City-Data.com, 91.9 percent of Logan residents are white and 4.8 percent are black. Imagine the sense of persecution and the fear for their daughters black Logan residents must feel. Imagine the downright rage gripping black Logan residents, knowing that a group of white men and women consciously, deliberately terrorized a 20-year-old black young woman for an entire week. This was not an act of passion. For an entire week, six white people woke up each morning and thought it was OK to force-feed rat feces to a girl.
Nevertheless, the white world has the audacity to tell black people how good race relations are "on the whole." They insist that these hate crimes don't happen all that often, and besides, there's nothing we can really do to prevent random acts of terror.
On the whole? As if we should resign a few black men and women to hate crimes a few times a year? The "few bad apples" argument fails to allow the white majority to adequately understand the terror that haunts the abandoned country towns and urban streets of today where hate crimes continue to be committed. The Ku Klux Klan was smart enough to know they didn't have to worry about persecuting a whole town of black people -- all they had to do was make an example of one. One of the clearest examples of racism alive today in this country is the white majority's inability to sympathize, to feel, for the atrocities committed against their fellow black Americans. The media's reluctant, spotty coverage aids and abets this callousness toward hate crimes. For some, surely subconscious, reason, there is an emotional divide in how white people relate to one another compared to how they relate to black people. The pain and suffering of blacks does not garner the same visceral sympathy.
Consider this event the burning cross in the front yard of our nation. This is modern America. You should give a damn.
Marta Cook is a Cavalier Daily Associate Editor. She can be reached at mcook@cavalierdaily.com.
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