when it comes to africa for example i was taught that they’re poor cause their land isn’t harvestable or some bullshit like that, and then i find out as an adult it’s actually cause western countries fucked the shit out of them and huh that makes a lot more sense
i kinda put together that a lot of african poverty is because of literal occupation, but i thought it was only in the past. I only recently learned that some west african countries are still paying “debts” to france for “damages” incurred during the french empire. its super bad
if i was given a dollar for every time i hear “we mexicans are poor because we want to” i could buy a ps4
I was always told places in Central and South America were poor because of corruption and drugs. Never was it explained to me where those drugs were going and how the whole thing got started though.
I was never taught WHY anyone was poor. It seemed like most education just focused around the fact that there just WERE poor people and it was something you always had to accept… Hmm wonder why that is…___
I was taught “Asian people are good at assembling computers because they’re used to using chopsticks”
I remember learning about how it was due to that Africa almost only produces raw resources as opposed to refining and that meant that they essentially are cut out of where the profits are. This because their economies were set up that way by their colonial overlords.
I had some ok teachers I guess.
You had some good teachers by the sounds of it. Even if it doesn’t tell the whole story it seems like at least an honest attempt to understand it.
The explanation I got was something along the lines of “it’s because their cultures don’t value hard work as much as American culture does”
tbf it’s an easy lie that the land isn’t arable when the top third of the continent is the sahara desert
Me as a child in the shit country I live:
- “Dad, why are we poor and not like the cool countries in Europe”
- “Eeerhm… eeeh… dark skinned people don’t work and vote peronists”
Then I learned history and shit.
In high school and college I was basically taught that colonialism did most of it. However, it wasn’t until I took a class on globalization in college that I learned about the World Bank, the IMF, and all that absolutely fucking insidious shit. I had already considered myself a leftist at that point but I knew that if I hadn’t, that class would’ve radicalized me not even half way through the course, because that’s where I finally really began to understand neo-imperialism/neo-colonialism.
Every Christmas that fucking Feed the World song comes on, talking about Africa, the lyrics are “Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow”. It makes me so fucking mad
So many of the lyrics in that song are fucked up: “Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears”, “And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom”, “Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you”. The very premise of the song is wrong anyway, there are hundreds of millions of Christians living in Africa OF COURSE THEY KNOW IT’S CHRISTMAS.
That thank god line is soooooooo fucked.
I either got “that’s just the way it is” or outright racism. No concept of rescource extraction or colonialism, of how different parts of the world had different levels of relative development at different times, almost entirely due to material forces like raw materials and availability of trade.
That’s why for all the well deserved clowning it gets, I think there’s some value in Guns Germs and Steel in terms of being a very lib friendly introduction to the idea that geopolitics (and history overall but let’s not scare them too much) stems from material conditions rather than some weird spooks about different nations having personalities and shit.
