Looking at how buying things can “help” other countries per say is not exactly the saving grace that Americans make it out to be. In the video titled #GlobalPov Can We Shop to End Poverty?, it talked about how donating to charities is not as effective as changing the policies in place. I like how it took a different perspective by looking at the people who “save” others and ask them – is this honorable or is this arrogant? The people who have the power and the money are the only ones making a “difference.” It seems too, that when talking of poverty, the shift somehow leads back to racism. In my research paper that I wrote, I talked about how racial disparities appear in school. It comes from using the same racial ideologies that do more harm than good. In the article titled Failure and Success by Ibram. X. Kendi, it talked about the uplift-suasion ideology that was a form of this kind of suppression. “We’d remember what history teaches us: that when racist policy knocks Black people down, the judge orders them to uplift themselves, only to be cut down again by racist terror and policy,” (Kendi, pg. 2, 2020). Essentially, black children were being taught to always act “good” in front of the white people or else it would further fuel their racism. In my paper, I talked about how initial bias towards black students affected the overall view in the level of deviance they would push onto these students. If a child was refuting an argument made by the teacher, the teacher would take that as them talking back and therefore expel them for the smallest acts. I think advocacy is often overlooked as one of the most powerful tools to help others. In the article titled When Philanthropy Meets Advocacy, it talked much about the importance of knowing who to team up with. “Although many factors contributed to the turnaround— not least of which was the autism community’s grassroots work to build support for the bill—Autism Speaks’ concerted effort to identify, target, and ultimately work with the opposition played a pivotal role.” It is important to know the stance from every potential ‘opposing’ company or role. Doing extensive research about who would support your advocacy for change on a certain policy could make a bigger statement than you think.
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- Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. Random House Large Print, 2020.
- “March 11, 2013: ‘Can We Shop to End Poverty?” with Ananya Roy.” “Can We Shop To End Poverty?” with Ananya Roy | UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, https://ced.berkeley.edu/events-media/news/can-we-shop-to-end-poverty-with-ananya-roy.
- Patrick Guerriero & Susan Wolf Ditkoff, et al. “When Philanthropy Meets Advocacy (SSIR).” Stanford Social Innovation Review: Informing and Inspiring Leaders of Social Change, https://ssir.org/articles/entry/when_philanthropy_meets_advocacy.
Community Service: Destructive or Empowering? 