Dear Western Society, You’re Not as Progressive as You Think You Are

The glaring inconsistencies in your wokeism through the eyes of an immigrant

Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash

I am writing this letter, not as an indictment but as an invitation to look inward before pointing fingers at those around you. Here’s the thing: don’t let the advanced tech, access to clean water, slick transport systems and rumours of universal basic income fool you. Don’t let your post-modernism, subjective morality and “inclusiveness” deceive you. Don’t get me wrong, whilst you’ve advanced in many ways, in other ways you’re just like your ancestors, you’ve just put a different spin on it. It’s your hubris that makes some of you believe you have a monopoly on morality.

Here’s a question for you: Have you ever considered the human cost of your Apple devices, coffee and chocolate? Have you ever stopped to consider that the iPhone from which you lecture everyone on social media about their hate and bigotry and injustice is tainted by the labour of children in the Congo who mined the cobalt components in it? Or that child slaves in Ghana and the Ivory Coast might produce the cocoa for your daily mocha? In many ways you may be just as complicit in several barbarisms as your colonial ancestors, you just choose not to see it because you just “have to have a smartphone” since it’s a “necessity” for life — just like your ancestors had to have tea, opium, silk and gold at the cost of millions of African and Asian lives in the past.

You criticize billionaires and the greed of capitalism but most of you probably can’t remember the last time you gave to a cause other than yourself. So basically “I don’t care but you should coz you have money.” You continue to support the same billionaires by buying their products. You march against violence and human rights violations around the world but can’t agree on simplest things in your own societies, including the most basic of biological realities. Your leaders are the arbiters of world peace but have been directly responsible for the death of more innocent people than the insurgents, terrorists and communists they claim to be fighting. You fight poverty in your own countries by subsidizing the cost of goods and passing on that cost to poorer nations who have no choice but to agree to your terms…