I appreciate the attempt at screaming into the abyss bit this comes across as ‘oh I get thar you feel those ethnics don’t deserve anything but think about all these people that may be in your ingroup this might affect!’
I don’t think whitewashing DEI is to sell it.
Colonialism is essentially theft with a pretty red ribbon on top to make it look good so we can all unequivocally say fuck colonialism.
But my point is beyond that. It’s that the progress that’s been achieved through those ideas you’re celebrating was predicated on theft from and suffering of people in developing countries. In a sense those in developing countries have an ownership stake in Western industrialization and China is the first previously developing nation that’s coming to take back what is, in part, theirs. The West needs to come to terms with the fact that they won’t be the last to do so.
‘Investment’ is a nice way to put it. A more apt description would be that the developing world invested in the West’s industrialization (or the West stole it, whatever floats your boat) and the Western world chose to give essentially nothing back to its investors, directly contradicting the new capitalist world it had created.
Which is why many in the developing world feel that China’s rise to prominence is the West’s chickens coming home to roost.
A Kenyan official once said: ‘When China visits we get a hospital. When Britain visits we get a lecture’
This might be too complicated for the average consumer at CVS, which tends to skew towards an older demographic.