I hate charity. Not the greek derived word for love, but the "charity" that means giving people money. Two nights ago, I was listening to the BBC and the announcer (in perfect British English, which I can only dream of speaking) said that a group of the world's richest people are pledging percentages of their salaries (up to 50% in some cases) to international aid/ charity. How sweet! I just got mad (according to the American meaning).
I have been here in Uganda for a year. It is a land where foreigners are looked at as walking ATMs (because many of them are) and people have been taught that they cannot rely on themselves.
I get it, I really do. When I was a kid, I knew that my family was poorer than any of our relatives and that is why our relatives gave us stuff. That is why I always expected stuff from them. Did I value the expensive new clothes and shoes that were given to me? No, I just expected them. Was I grateful? No. Did I appreciate that it was also a sacrifice for my relatives to do this for me? No-- not until I was older. I was jealous of everyone and thought that they all had better lives than I did. I know people, in my family, who still look on others, including me, this way. They think that they are irreversably, unequivocably poor and can't do anything about it. They aslo believe that everyone else is automatically better off and should give them stuff and take care of them.
If Carnegie and Rockefeller would have obeyed anti- monopoloy, fair wage, and environmental conservation ethics, we probably would not have recieved Carnegie libraries and the Rockefeller foundation would not exist. Maybe, however, we would have fewer pollution problems and more of our grandparents would have been able to fulfil their dreams. Maybe workers for these guys (and the small businesses that would not have been knocked out of the market) would have been able to build their own libraries and start their own charitable groups. Maybe we would have never needed their charity.
I just feel the same way about charity in Uganda and all over the world. It's like knocking out people's legs and then subsidizing the cost of prosthetics. This does not take into account the incredible loss of humanity that results from person(s) believing that they are fundamentally infereior to and dependent upon others.
I don't like charity because of what it does to people. It justifies the excesses of wealth and at the same time dehumanizes the poor. In fact, it has nothing to do with the real word-- it is not charity.
