Not many media outlets properly covered it and Facebook didn’t bother offering a changed filter but at least 147 people, mostly students, were killed in an assault by Al-Shabab militants on a university in north-eastern Kenya, earlier this year. In contrast, last week’s attacks in France, continues to flood many news gates. Certainly not comparing one tragedy against another, one cannot help but to notice a glaring difference in society’s mass care and concern. While many claim that a loss of human life, is equally tragic, the way in which society at large is encouraged to grieve about it is drastically different, considering race variables.

Similar to the attacks in Paris, the victims were all innocent bystanders. Attackers, armed with military style machine guns stormed into the university, killing two security guards before randomly, opening fire on students. Four of the gunman were eventually surrounded in a dormitory, and died when their suicide vests detonated. This terrorist attack marked the deadliest one to date, by Al-Shabab. Al-Shabab may not sound familiar because many media outlets are preoccupied with everything except Africa.

The militants are believed to have singled out Christians according to witnesses. The events that transpired were horrific. More than 500 students managed to escape, 79 of whom were injured. After all of the surviving students were evacuated, Kenyan officials said Eric Wekesa, a student at Garissa, told Reuters he locked himself in his room before eventually fleeing.”What I managed to hear from them is ‘We came to kill or finally be killed.'” It was horrible, there was shooting everywhere,” another student, Augustine Alanga told the BBC’s Newsday program that it was “pathetic” that the entire university was only guarded by two police officers.

UN Secretary, General Ban Ki-moon condemned what he called a “terrorist attack” and said the UN was ready to help Kenya “prevent and counter terrorism and violent extremism.” The United States said it was offering Nairobi assistance to take on al-Shabab and would continue to work with others in the region to take on the group, though 7 months later, help from the United States is near absent. The Kenyan government named Mohamed Kuno, a high-ranking Al-Shabab official, as the mastermind of the attack. President Uhuru Kenyatta said that, “This is a moment for everyone to be vigilant.” Mr Kuno was headmaster at an Islamic school in Garissa before he resigned in 2007. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta offered his condolences to families of the victims and ordered “urgent steps” to ensure police recruits could begin training immediately.” We have suffered unnecessarily due to shortage of security personnel,” he said.

What are your thoughts about this? Were you aware when this occurred? Do you feel that America media does a poor job in covering certain news when it pertains to black people?