Children are children.

The image to the left shows a Ugandan child standing in front of a soldier, surrounded by some of the other thousands of displaced children who fled from their terror stricken homes. When reading this image you see swollen bellies, children without shoes, and a small child being guided, not by a loving parent, but an armed soldier. Violence, poverty, injustice... it's all represented in this image. But through doing some political and cultural analysis, and taking a deeper look at reactions and subconscious thought, a different relationship is uncovered. Differences in societies are represented, and there is a disconnection between the viewer and the child in the picture. My own initial reaction when I saw this picture was the standard sympathetic urge, uncomfortable twinge, and a combination of remorse, and gratitude for my own upbringing. But when I really thought about it I started to see the deep separation between bodies. Although I felt emotions, I also felt an instant disconnect between me, and the humans in this photo. Like so many other images I've seen on television and in magazines, African poverty is often represented in this way. You see the image, feel remorse, and then its back to your reality. The "normal" reality. These politics of representation show the rift between culture, and the hegemony of our Western idea of African people. Although we are all people, this way of looking at another country has put a real wall up between people's connection to other people, and truly doing something about a problem like this. This constant depiction of an entire continent of people allows a general "acceptance" that this is just their lives. If an image like this was taken somewhere in the United States, peoples vocal reactions of disapproval would skyrocket, but because its just another one of "those" images, more distance is created between cultures instead of a consensus that these sufferings are not okay for any human being, and something must be done.