Opinion | White privilege is embedded in US global leadership. How should the world respond?
- The rules-based order that Western foreign policy insists on raises a fundamental question – who sets the standards, norms and rules?
- In a study of US foreign policy, mostly white experts across the political spectrum were agreed on US global leadership. But who elected whites, or Americans, as global leaders?
Race stares us in the face. Confronting and dealing with it is highly emotional and disturbing, so much so that, in polite company, it’s seldom spoken about. But we can’t avoid it because racism is everywhere.
Nair’s book, subtitled Equity for a Post-Western World, is a battle cry for a freer and more just world where skin colour should not be a barrier. The book is a cringing read, because every page challenges many of our assumptions about the world.
The pandemic has shown the world is not equal, not when the poor and weak do not have access to vaccines.
Nor is the world truly democratic, because if each of the world’s 7.8 billion citizens had a vote, the rich and powerful – who are mostly white – would have been outvoted long ago and the global order would look very different.