How the Sudan Genocide Politicized a Nice Chinese Girl from Iowa

My anger over the violence in Darfur made me an activist and forever changed my political engagement.

By Kristin T.L. Huang

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or someone who broke out in a cold sweat and had heart palpitations when called upon in class, I would have never imagined myself in front of the bustling college cafeteria, yelling at passersby, “Do you want to help end genocide?”

Yet there I was in 2005, begging fellow students to care about the atrocities in Darfur, distributing petitions, making signs with black Sharpies, forsaking homework for protests in Washington, DC, and New York, and cold-calling senators’ offices. I wouldn’t have found myself there had it not been for the 2004 movie Hotel Rwanda, which I watched on a snowy Boston evening with friends from my fellowship.

There’s a scene in the movie when Paul Rusesabagina, the hotelier who sheltered and protected over a thousand of his fellow citizens during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, tells journalist Jack Daglish that he is glad Daglish has documented scenes of the slaughter to share with the world.

Daglish isn’t sure it will make a difference. Rusesabagina asks him, “How can they not intervene when they witness such atrocities?” And Daglish replies, “I think if people see this footage, they’ll say, ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners.”

This exchange consumed me with indignation and anger. “If something like this were to happen now,” I promised, “I would do something about it.”

Perhaps God took note. A week later, I read about the Darfur genocide in The New York Times. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t follow through on my commitment; I didn’t want to be one of those people that Daglish predicted would go on eating their dinners. I believed inaction was equivalent to complicity and began pouring my free time into my university’s Darfur Action Group.

The group’s priorities—which defined themselves in words like divestment, constituency, political will—took my Chinese American self far away from the world in which I had grown up. As a child, I was so desperate to fit in with a very white Iowa town that I had assumed the role of super-nice girl who gets along with everyone. I was so self-conscious and ashamed of being different, of being foreign that I thought being as un-opinionated as possible would help me blend in and be accepted. Political involvement—indeed, even having political opinions—had always seemed incompatible with that goal.

Now, I had found a cause that I believed mattered more than maintaining a veneer of politeness. Sudanese people were dying. Our group could pull levers at the individual, church, NGO, and corporate levels, but fundamentally, much of what we hoped to achieve required immersion in what I had long perceived as the “dirty” world of politics. From the outside, politics had seemed like a power-grabbing competition among smarmy people. Now, I discovered that there was another approach to politics, one where deep conviction was the leading driver. I learned that if I truly cared about something, if I wanted to change something, I couldn’t remain apolitical.

The work was slow and tiring. Even though idealism had brought me to the table, I soon had to stow it on a shelf. We needed support from anyone who would lend it, and that meant some strange bedfellows, from Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) to Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ). My pre-med (read: scientific, data-driven) brain had to grapple with the negotiations and compromises it took to get a bill through committee and passed in both houses of Congress. There was very little immediate gratification; it was nearly impossible to link our letter-writing campaigns with a company’s decision to divest from Sudan or a Congressperson’s yes vote, let alone whether any lives in Darfur were being spared.

What buoyed me through the daunting terrain of political activism was the enthusiastic embrace of these efforts by my college fellowship friends. They joined the Darfur Action Group alongside me; they taught me that there was a long history of church involvement in social justice work; they prayed with me; they encouraged me when I wanted to give up. My faith in Jesus, lover of the lowly, had informed my conviction, and my Christian community made me feel less alone and gave me the spiritual vocabulary to animate the work of our hands: to loosen the chains of injustice, untie the cords of the yoke, and set the oppressed free.\

From social justice activism to campaign politics

In 2007, I read Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama’s memoir, and was instantly electrified. Like me, and unlike any President to date, he was both a person of color and the child of an immigrant. Obama knew what it was like to be an outsider. He was thoughtful and nuanced and hopeful. More than that, he spoke about his faith with an authenticity that I hadn’t seen from other politicians.

My passion for Obama fueled me to knock on strangers’ doors in New Hampshire and Massachusetts before the Democratic primaries and general election. These visits yielded unprompted comments from white voters like, “Black, white, green—it doesn’t matter to me what someone’s skin color is.” I resisted the urge to retort that green was probably a reason to go to the hospital, and instead shared my excitement for this man who seemed to value listening to the other side, critical thinking, and compassion.

After Obama’s 2008 victory, I stepped back from activism to focus on my calling in the medical field. Eight years later, I was slapped awake by November 8, 2016. The 2016 election forced me to reevaluate what I believed about our nation and about the American church. I was disheartened that fellow Jesus lovers—particularly white evangelicals—could vote so overwhelmingly for a man who encouraged racism and misogyny, whose pride seemed tempered by nothing, and who had a very loose relationship with the truth.

I traveled back to Washington, DC, for a different march, and rallied repeatedly on the streets of Boston, now with two little kids and signs made with rainbow Sharpies. This time, I protested not just for the well-being of others, but also for the world my kids would inhabit. I protested alongside my children to encourage them to use their voices, to inspire them with rally cries (“This is what democracy looks like!”), to show them what peaceful demonstrations can achieve, and to give them hope in this country.

When change is slow, or progress is backwards

My efforts did not end the Darfur genocide; the Obama presidency was not a panacea; Trump’s ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018 despite widespread protests. Pouring oneself into activism can be draining, and I’ve learned that it’s wise to take breaks, to contribute in smaller but more sustainable ways, and most importantly, to surround myself with faithful friends who share the burden and make it lighter.

Repeated disappointments make it easy to become cynical about our ability to effect change, but that cynicism leads straight to apathy and inaction. Instead, I choose to use failure as the best antidote to a savior complex (a common temptation for those with an activist bent like me). Of course I want to see real progress in this world, but the biggest lesson from my time as a grassroots activist has been that whether or not our aims are achieved, it is the participation in the struggle that has the power to shape our hearts, make us more reliant on God, and humble us as we add our voices to a groundswell of others’.

In that way, activism is like prayer.

Just as we don’t stop praying when we don’t receive clear answers from God, we shouldn’t stop acting just because we don’t see sweeping change in the world. It’s about placing our hearts—and our hands and our feet—where God is.

When we get our hands dirty in activism and politics, we proclaim that the current state of affairs is not what God intended, we care enough about others to expend ourselves on their behalf, and we have hope that even bureaucracy can be shaped by God’s grace and used to extend his mercy and justice. When we cast our votes, when we organize petitions, and when we march in the streets, we follow the exhortation of Proverbs 31 to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,” asking God to bring his shalom to this broken world.

Photo by Mohamed Tohami on Unsplash

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Kristin Huang lives in Cambridge, MA, with her husband, Yi-An, three children, and pandemic puppy, Fluffy. She is a primary care physician who serves predominantly Chinese immigrant patients in Boston’s Chinatown. She is interested in the intersections of science, faith, social justice, and literary fiction. You can follow her on Instagram.