Beyond black and white
Those born in today’s West were born a few generations too late. The majesty of being one of the human race’s finest has been replaced by the shame of having descended from those who once believed that to be true. For centuries, a Westerner’s comfortable existence came at the expense of a native from a distant tropical island, a slave whose only consolation in life was the idea that what awaited him in death was better than his hell on earth, and many more helpless onlookers from entire third world countries that found themselves caught up in wars waged between a few select European nations.
History isn’t sympathetic. Today, Western universities are filled with Marxist, feminist and post-colonial intellectuals who paint an unambiguous picture of the evil white man. American history has been rewritten in the light of murderous settlers and slave-owning Founding Fathers, its flag drenched in the blood of the colonized. But however true that all may be, the West’s guilt has gone too far. For one thing, Westerners today shouldn’t be expected to pay for the crimes of their predecessors. But for other reasons, it’s dangerous to make the sweeping claim that all things Western are evil and all things non-Western, good.
Many gain undeserved admiration just for decrying the West. Iranian clerics can tell you about how effective that can be when it comes to exciting a crowd: that’s how they seized power in the 1979 Iranian revolution. And even after wrecking his country’s economy beyond historical comparison and cheating in last year’s elections, Zimbabwe’s infamous President Robert Mugabe can still muster a decent following by drawing upon memories of his early days as a freedom fighter against British rule. To their followers, these men are modern day Che Gueveras: heroes fighting a romantic struggle against the evil empires of the West. However incompetent, any world leader can become just as great in the eyes of his people by chastising the West. It’s a temptingly simple message to sell to a crowd. So if ever one desperately needs to boost his approval ratings, he can learn from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and simply blast America on national TV.
And then of course it would be absurd to say that Western nations today are malevolent, slave-owning empires. Though that doesn’t stop countries from accusing them of “neocolonialism.” But even worse is that they do so even when the West tries to help. The International Monetary Fund may be far from perfect, but even when it offers struggling African governments sound economic advice, they turn around and do the opposite (at times just to spite the West!) writes Oxford Professor Paul Collier in The Bottom Billion. These countries view common sense as nonsense as long it bears any association with the West. And when the United Nations’ International Criminal Court last week indicted Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir in hopes of bringing to justice the man responsible for the genocide in Darfur that has killed more than 200,000 people, the government dismissed it as a Western conspiracy to recolonize Sudan.
Yes, it’s tempting to see the world in black and white. But that would obviously be denying the truth. The West isn’t really an evil multinational corporation out to run your country, and many of these pseudo-revolutionaries today aren’t actually fighting for freedom anymore. The revolution is dead, and so are the empires they once opposed. The world has moved on since the days of Che Guevara. And so his famous black and white photo is increasingly irrelevant — which is exactly why it’s time for a more colorful worldview.
* * *
For comments and suggestions, please e-mail me at levistel@gmail.com.
