Columnist Shares New Words He Learned in Africa
02/12/2010
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New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is a rare liberal who has enough integrity to venture into the weeds of diversity's dark side. His recent book, Half the Sky, is an honest appraisal of the brutal inequality women face living in the third world.

I quoted him last summer about Liberia's rape culture which has been transported to this country via immigration: Liberians Residing in Arizona Fret over "Backlash" in Gang Rape of Child.

Kristof's additions to his vocabulary are a reminder that not all diversity is equal, particularly in Africa.

The Grotesque Vocabulary in Congo, New York Times, February 11, 2010

I've learned some new words.

One is "autocannibalism," coined in French but equally appropriate in English. It describes what happens when a militia here in eastern Congo's endless war cuts flesh from living victims and forces them to eat it.

Another is "re-rape." The need for that term arose because doctors were seeing women and girls raped, re-raped and re-raped again, here in the world capital of murder, rape, mutilation.

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