White supremacy is not the only bad actor inflicting misery and poverty in parts of the world
The secretary-general of the UN spoke eloquently in his Nelson Mandela memorial lecture on July 18 about the global racial and wealth inequalities caused by colonialism and the legacy of white superiority, now exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Yes, inequality is also a social pandemic, pre-dating the coronavirus, but the import of the lecture lay not so much in what was said as what was not said.
While the focus of the speech was on the evils of inequality, one would expect the leader of the UN to recognise that this is not the sum total of evil in the world. If inequality is cruel and hurtful, so too is perfectly equal misery under vicious totalitarian regimes. Surely the secretary-general does not mean to imply that the wretched citizens of, say, Eritrea, are fine, as in that country there is little inequality and no white superiority?
Nor was a word uttered about the suffering of the Uighurs in China, or about the denial of human rights in Hong Kong. Is it perhaps safer to restrict the attack to white superiority and the legacy of colonialism? The secretary-general would do well to ask the citizens of totalitarian African regimes why they risk their lives fleeing to the unequal, erstwhile colonialist countries of Europe. Or ask the Uighurs if all is well in their prison camps, because their oppressors are not white supremacists.JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an e-mail with your comments. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Send your letter by e-mail to [email protected].
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