Confessions of a worried ex-pat

I’ve been peripherally following the rise of ‘woke-ism’, critical race theory, the BLM movement and cancel culture from my overseas perch, and because I haven’t had permanent residence in the United States since 2007 and don’t feel like I have an emotional stake in the game, I’m going to share my unsolicited thoughts and let the chips fall where they may. 

I sympathize with the fact that there is a lot of inequality in this world. I hate the income disparity I see; I hate the exploitative form of capitalistic consumerism that’s been rotting our societies from the inside; I hate the corruption and the greed and the disregard for people’s dignity and intrinsic value; I hate evil and injustice and all the rest of it. I also hate entitled attitudes and victim mentalities. 

First, to lend my overseas perch some credibility, let me tell you that I live in Lebanon. I deeply love this country, but I’m going to be honest about it. Although it’s arguably the most religiously and societally free country in the Middle East after Isr*el (though talking about Isr*el here could land me in trouble), it’s still a tremendously unequal, blatantly racist, endemically corrupt, fractured and unstable society. Just since October 2019 we’ve seen: 1) three governments resign (and we’re still waiting for our fourth  government to form); 2) the currency spiral into hyperinflation (we’re just behind Venezuela and Zimbabwe); 3) the pandemic cause a debilitating lockdown in a nation that has no social safety net; 4) half of the population fall below the poverty line; 5) the banking sector collapse as it was revealed that the head of the Central Bank had been running a Ponzi scheme with the nation’s finances for decades. Oh, and 6) a devastating and entirely avoidable explosion that wiped out whole districts of Beirut, leaving thousands of people homeless and severely injured (200 people died). And this isn’t even the half of it. 

Lebanon is busy dealing with real problems.

I would submit to you that I think America ran out of real problems a long time ago. For decades the United States has been the most powerful country on earth, it’s been the most prosperous, it’s had the most freedom, it’s been the dream destination for the most immigrants…. and somewhere along the line we just ran out of real problems. And since human nature abhors a drama vacuum, I guess we felt the need to create some.

When I see videos of ivy league university students screaming at their professors, disrespecting people in authority, indiscriminately airing their grievances and blaming people who are not to blame, something in me turns. First of all, if you’re a student at Yale, you’re pretty stinkin’ privileged. And if you’re able to scream at and say disrespectful things to a person in authority without experiencing any legal or political repercussions, then this is a GLARING example of your privilege. Try living in Hong Kong for the past couple of years. 

Also, let’s be accurate with our terminology. I hear the term ‘systemic racism’ being thrown around a lot, and while I don’t deny that people experience racist treatment, for this behavior to be deemed systemic I would argue that it has to be embedded in our system of governance and civic behavior. I’m no civil rights expert, but I believe that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed the discrimination of any individual based on race, color, sex, religion or ethnicity, and ensured equal access to public spaces and employment. It effectively took racism out of the system. It’s one thing to experience racist treatment in certain pockets of society; it’s another thing to assert that this experience is systemic. I hate that people of color in America still experience racist treatment today - it should not happen and I hate that it does happen - but the reality is that in America, we have legal and civic recourse to fight the injustice. If you are a minority in the United States and you feel like the system is built to oppress you, then I encourage you to read about what the Chinese are doing to its Uighur population. That is an example of a system that is actually out to get you. 

And don’t get me started on critical race theory. Demanding that white people admit they are racist oppressors simply because they’re white is not only nonsensical but laughably racist. Not to mention completely counterproductive and patronizing towards black people. I have yet to hear a plausible argument for how fighting racism with more racism will bring about positive societal change. If that’s even what you’re going for. It seems to me that the end game here is lawlessness and anarchy, not racial harmony. 

I think what’s missing in the current cultural climate is a sense of proportion and perspective. I posit that people of color living in the United States are not as oppressed as they think they are. For kicks, I’d invite them to visit Lebanon and see what actually systemic racism looks like. This is a country that has embedded in its social fabric a system called kafala, which in practice is very much akin to human trafficking and slavery.  

Kafala is basically an industry and standard practice that brings foreign domestic workers into Lebanon to work in the homes of Lebanese middle and upper classes as cleaners, cooks and nannies. Most of these workers are from east Africa and southeast Asia, and it’s an open secret that many of them suffer abuse at the hands of their employers. Not all, but some are forced to hand over their passports to their employers, they’re not allowed to leave the house without their employer’s permission, they don’t get paid what they were promised, their employers beat them, and some get turned out on the streets to be picked up by local police and sent to jail where they are basically left until some human rights group advocates for them (my church runs an ongoing project to collect money for phone cards so that these women can call their families from jail).

Last year, the Ministry of Labor and human rights activists tried getting a measure passed that would implement a standard employment contract system so that that these domestic workers could receive a degree of legal protection and be granted some basic rights while living in Lebanon. But the court ruled in favor of an appeal filed by the recruitment agencies that stood to lose a lot of money and power if this measure succeeded.

With the current monetary crisis that Lebanon is experiencing, domestic workers aren’t being paid in USD as they were promised and many of them are wanting to return home, but the kafala system does not allow this without the employer’s consent. What do we call it when a person is held against their will and forced to work for free?

Last year, a Lebanese man posted on Facebook that he was looking to sell his Nigerian house worker for $1000. He received backlash on social media and was arrested by police though it’s not clear if he was ever convicted. Regardless, what must a society’s systems and attitudes toward other races be like for a citizen to think this was acceptable behavior? 

Everyone’s pain is painful to them, and I don’t want to diminish an American’s experience of racism as long as that’s what it actually is. But again, we need to be accurate with our terminology, because if we just throw words around and start changing their definitions to better support our narrative, we’ll have no credibility left when we most need it. 

One more thing. I am deeply troubled at the direction America is headed with regards to free speech. If we think people shouldn’t be free to say what they want to say, even if it’s false or hurtful, we’ve clearly never lived in a society where speech and independent thought were suppressed (or read accurate accounts of history for that matter). I would go so far as to say that most Americans have no idea what un-freedom looks like (but ask a recent immigrant and I bet they could tell you). I once heard a psychologist say in an interview something to the effect of: People who don’t learn to control their own emotions compensate by trying to control everyone else. This is exactly what we are seeing play out as the super woke silence anyone who does not see the world as they do. But here’s an obvious question: If you go around ‘canceling’ people because you don’t like what they say, what in the world makes you think that down the line someone won’t ‘cancel’ you because they don’t like what you say? 

If we think being woke is going to make the world a better place, we should probably re-read Orwell’s 1984. Freedom, democracy and mutual respect aren’t the natural, default state of human nature. Control, totalitarianism and hatred of the ‘other’ are. That is where America is headed, and this ex-pat is worried. 

 “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” Dwight Eisenhower, 1953

Links for reference: 

On university students screaming at their professors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJbHkWTHiZ0

On Hong Kong:

https://www.dw.com/en/the-end-of-freedom-of-expression-in-hong-kong/a-53672202

On Uighurs in China:

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-repression-uighurs-xinjiang

On Kafala:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/27/lebanon-abolish-kafala-sponsorship-system

https://www.the961.com/lebanon-shura-council-kafala/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/24/lebanon-arrests-suspect-for-putting-nigerian-worker-up-for-sale