Committing to Care

As this semester in India has progressed, a growing sense of frustration has grown in me. I have started to realize fully the hypocrisy of those of us in the world who consider ourselves sensitized toward the injustices of the world. We claim to want equality, yet commit actions every day that prevent it. The following is a portion of an essay I wrote as my final project. Please read, reflect, comment and critique.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.” Too often, we content ourselves with doing or giving charity. We tell ourselves that we are good people because we dedicate two hours of our week to working with inner-city kids or because we give a portion of our salaries so small that we barely notice its absence to some organization working to eradicate AIDS in Africa. That is not enough. We convince ourselves that giving up a bit of time or money that we hardly even miss contributes to the eradication of inequality, allowing us to fool ourselves into believing that having a pyramid-like wealth structure is just so long as the people on the top of the pyramid are charitable to those on the bottom of it, but that simply is not true. The fact that the pyramid exists at all is indicative of the injustice and inequality that still exist in our world.

We cannot continue to fool ourselves into believing that half-hearted attempts at charity are doing anything to eradicate inequality. It is not okay that a child born in a slum in India might never get the chance to go to school while another child born across the world or even just in another neighborhood in that same Indian city will lead an excessively comfortable lifestyle without ever having to work for it. That is not equality. It is not okay that while cows in America are getting fed tons of grain each day so that Americans can eat more than twice the protein they need, millions of children around the world do not get enough calories in a day to maintain their body weight. That is not equality. It is not okay that I can buy a shirt for two dollars in America when a child is getting paid just cents a day to make that shirt. That is not equality. It is not okay that, while I drive my car from home to school every day, farmers in India are losing their livelihoods due to the increasing irregularity of the monsoon season. That is not equality. It is not okay for me to drive to the store to buy that shirt, then go eat meat that contributes to the starvation of millions of children across the world then spend a few hours a week volunteering and call myself a good person. That is not equality. It is not okay to make poverty more bearable if that means being content with the continuation of poverty itself. That is not equality. That is not justice.

If I truly believe in equality, in freedom, in justice, I will not be content until these values are a reality, not just for myself and people in my country, but for people everywhere. In order for there to be true equality around the world, in order for the children we’ve seen in villages to be free from the hard labor that keeps them from school, in order for every child to have equal opportunities to be what they want to be when they grow up regardless of where they were born, I can’t be content with committing small acts of charity; I must commit to sacrificing my own comforts and conveniences. In order for people across the world working in fields and factories to make a fair wage, I can’t be content with buying one or two fair trade shirts. I must commit to paying for a shirt what it is worth. I cannot expect to ever pay two dollars for a shirt. In fact, I must demand through my purchasing power that people involved at every line of production of a t-shirt be paid fairly and that t-shirts not be sold for two dollars at all. In order for there not be hunger in the world, I can’t be content with sending money to organizations that work to eradicate world hunger. I must commit to not wasting the world’s food by eating meat. In order for the villagers of Putsil village in the Indian state of Orissa to be able to count on the rainy season coming at the same time each year again, I can’t be content with recycling my plastic bottles. I must commit to not buying plastic bottles in the first place. In order for farmers in the villages of Koppal to be able to make enough money off of their food crops to live, I can’t be content with just saying that small farmers deserve more compensation. I must demand of my policymakers that they not unfairly subsidize large-scale farmers in the United States. Knowing all of the inputs – both labor and capital – that go into making food, I cannot expect it to cost so little.

Are these changes and actions easy? Are they convenient? Of course they're not. Change is not easy, and if those of us with the privilege to effect change are not willing to do so because it is ‘too hard’ or ‘too inconvenient’, then we must content ourselves with life in a world full of injustice and inequality. More than that, we must resign ourselves to the truth that by accepting injustice, we are creating it; by being content with living comfortably we are forcing others to live in poverty. We must realize that by choosing not to change our own lifestyles we are also deciding for millions of others around the world that their lifestyles cannot improve. I am not willing to accept the gross injustice of that truth as my reality. Change is possible if we care enough to make it happen, and today, I am making a commitment to care.