As waves wash over the lifeless body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, onlookers see only a small boy who was in need of rescue. It just so happens Aylan is a victim of Assad’s Syrian Civil War and a refugee who was seeking sanctuary in a foreign land. The tragic death of Aylan, his brother, and mother remind us that the people living in distant places are human beings, not just foreigners. Indeed, images of Aylan lying face down on a Turkish beach have sparked public outcry and political reactions across the globe.
Tragedies that resonate throughout the International Community, because they evoke such strong emotions, have a tendency to force political leaders to react. The sad truth is that few politicians are actual leaders. It is only when community leaders act and gain popular support for their ideas that politicians take on a leadership role. There is a lot of blame to go around when it comes to the plight of refugees fleeing to Europe, yet few willing to fix the problem. Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris is, however, an exception.
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India is the largest the democracy in the world. Unfortunately, India suffers from massive poverty and strong socioeconomic inequality thanks largely to its traditional caste system. When looking at such a complex and confounding number of interactions between all the various subcultures within India, democracy seems incapable of balancing the diverse interests of the Indian Peoples. Despite India’s ongoing struggle to overcome deeply entrenched political, economic, and social problems, India is able to remain stable and democratic when the democratic government addresses the few common interests that all Indians share.
Facing up to 150 million or more workers protesting “pro-business” economic reforms, the Modi-led BJP government faces what is probably one of the largest democratic upheavals in the world. If handled poorly, such an outcry could easily lead to greater civil unrest and national instability. Not only would this hurt the global economy and the International Community, it would be a major regional threat to stability in China as well as Pakistan. Given concerns that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has grown accustom to suppressing dissent, which is a tendency all too familiar in Asia, it is important to recognize that to ignore or stifle the concerns of workers will only driven greater outrage. The Peoples of the developed world are fortunate to live in an age when diversity is more than just tolerated or even acceptable. We live in a time when diversity is widely encouraged. Over-confident in the self-evident merits of diversity, however, the developed world too often takes for granted the notion that all people automatically accept the argument for diversity in all situations. Despite the merits of diversity, even tolerance is far from a universally accepted concept. Unfortunately, the apathy stemming from this mentality undermines the global struggle against the most degrading and heinous forms of discrimination. Superficial views on diversity encourage a push for superficial diversity as well as a reliance on the merits of diversity to justify support for sociopolitical agendas that seek to mischaracterize the nature of a particular issue. In other words, there are clear benefits to diversity, but efforts to force diversity onto others leads to social backlash that undermines constructive efforts to encourage meaningful diversity. Hiring unqualified minorities to demonstrate diversify, for example, can lead to discrimination against qualified non-minorities, which discredits the merits of diversity. This leads people to view diversity as a destructive effort to be politically correct. In turn, they come to mock and resent diversity instead of supporting it. |
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April 2020
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