Blood Diamonds

I just finished watching "Blood Diamond", the Leonardo DeCaprio movie about the brutal, bloody, illegal diamond mining/smuggling operations in Africa. Just call me another head-buried-in-the-sand American, I guess. I've known about the "blood diamond" trade for several years and made the decision a couple of years ago to never wear a diamond again--there is absolutely no allure for me in anything that comes from an industry so tainted with the blood of innocents. But after watching the movie, "a whole 'nother" set of questions has arisen for me.

As anyone who reads me regularly already knows, we're working our way through Shane Claiborne's "The Irresistible Revolution" in my small group. Shane vociferously addresses the third world country sweatshop issue...and how we as comfy American Christians don't address the tragedies happening to our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world. We seem to have drawn a boundary line around our country and anyone outside that line is "them" and therefore somehow less worthy/deserving of what those of "us" inside the safe boundaries take for granted.

The same goes for the diamond industry--people are LOSING THEIR LIVES. DYING. DYING. Why? Because America (and other wealthy countries) must have its bling. This isn't about a man laying down his life for his friends. It's about strangers (including small children) being brutalized--beaten, raped, and murdered. For what? For a "sparkly little thang" to stick on my finger or around my neck or in my ear? Puh-LEEZE. It's hard enough for me to fathom that someone who knows me intimately would choose to lay down his or her life for me...a stranger dying so I can own a pretty little bauble? I don't think so.

The final song of the movie hit me pretty hard--the lyrics say it all so clearly. So, of course, I'm going to share.

"Shine on 'Em"

They dug me out the soil in the Mines of the Motherland
Now I'm misplaced, one hand to another hand
Illegal smugglin', people strugglin'
Wish they could just throw me back in the mud again
Yeah, guess that's how we got here
Slave Trade then the Diamond Trade
Every child's afraid
When his Mother and Father get sprayed
Forced in the Army, young killer Brigade
Gets a new name and then he give his nose glue
Til' his mind can't take what he's gon' through
Lookin' in that dirt for that ice so blue
Then The Royal Family, the ice goes to
And this thing has to change, feelin' half-ashamed
As I rap with my Platinum chain
When you shop for a gift for me
You think about the misery?
The same way we made Apartheid History
We can do the same thing to the conflict ice
But everybody wanna shine, right?

Everybody wants Heaven but nobody wants dead
Everybody wants Diamonds without the Bloodshed
Everybody wants Heaven but nobody wants dead
Everybody wants Diamonds without the Bloodshed
They wanna Shine on 'em

My VVS glimmers on my chest
200-thou-encrusted watch on my wrist
I wonder how people starve to death
When God bless the land that lacks the harvest
The stone's equality, but they homes are poverty
And the whole world ignores the robbery
Bought my girl pretty rocks when she's mad at me
Tear-drop shaped, uh, perfect Clarity
It shocks, so many are killed annually
'Cause of greed, lust, and pure Vanity
Stop talkin' and do somethin' about it
Every Holiday Season, Jewelry stores crowded
Kids snatched from their homes, Mutilated alive
Husbands separated from wives, keep a Jesus piece to be fly
But back in the day there was a time when they called us shine

Everybody wants Heaven but nobody wants dead
Everybody wants Diamonds without the Bloodshed
Everybody wants Heaven but nobody wants dead
Everybody wants Diamonds without the Bloodshed
They wanna shine on 'em