From Below to Above

Ryota Ogura

Sec A02

In response to "Nothing Is More Important than Thinking Didactically"  by Grace Lee Boggs

   I think it is interesting how Asian American is influenced by the Black Power movement, and I think those “power from below” are very energetic.  

   I consider that the part of the cause of the discrimination come from non-colored people’s fear that their relative position or status in the society may be lowered by colored people gaining equality. Today in the US, although there still may be some problems, equality under the law is achieved and discrimination is not as obvious as before. However, Boggs mentioned that there are wealthy global north and exploited global south on the earth. Inequality still exist on global level, and I would imagine that if the living levels of global north and south become equal at this moment, global north, to which we belong, would suffer from deficiency of resources and loss of trade surplus. This would lower our quality of lives, and I personally don’t prefer living such an inconvenient life.

   

   I felt that inequality rise from people’s greed to maintain their technologies and properties. By accepting our society and technologies, we now may silently and unconsciously participate to a creation and amplification of the global inequality.  Myself being Asian, I tend to look history events from “below” side of the minorities, but now, I am of privilege class that live in the global north.  As Boggs state “…what built the movement in the past is unlikely to build it in the present or future”, I felt that, in global level, we are in the similar position where whites are used to be at back in the day.

Question: In the future, what event, if any, may trigger the movement for equality by global south countries?