How Americans benefit from the backs of poor people and how we repay their backs (literally)

I know Americans don’t get enough news about the good they have done for Africa. Our president was just over here visiting and telling the world what good he’s done here, even if he’s messed up a whole other part of the world. Well, fortunately I have another piece of good news about the positive impact that Americans are making in the lives of Africans. Do you ever wonder where the clothes you give away to the Salvation Army or Goodwill end up? I’ve heard that these type of organizations sort through their clothing donations and re-sell the best stuff and send to developing countries the rest.

From all my travels around many developing countries, I am happy to report that I see many of these articles of clothing being proudly worn by their citizens. A couple of weeks ago in southern Sudan, I spotted an employee of the Lutheran World Federation, a young man in his 20s, wearing a pretty ladies’ sweater, the type that I would expect a 60- or 70-something woman to wear to the company Christmas party. He had complemented it with a necklace that a typical young Sudanese man his age would wear, but I thought the combination of the two items was especially charming. Back in town the other day, I saw another man, probably in his 30s, with a great pair of women’s pink leather moccasins on his feet (the type that was popular in the preppy 80s). As I passed him, he was stooping to adjust the rolled-up cuffs on his jeans, the better to display his shoes, I’m sure. On an earlier trip to Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwestern Kenya, I spotted someone wearing a t-shirt that had KPLU on it, a National Public Radio station in the Seattle area that I listen to when visiting there. And it’s not just in Africa that I see this used clothing put to great use. I still remember seeing a young woman in rural Haiti decked out proudly in a pink and white hospital candy striper dress. She had no clue of its original use as a uniform from a bygone era of American culture. From Africa to India to the Caribbean, I see t-shirts that read “1996 Syracuse Bowling Champions” or “Bob’s Drive-in – Tulsa – Home of the Crispy French Fries.”

Seriously, though, I’ve also heard that when all this used clothing is dumped in developing countries, it actually does them harm by competing with the local clothing-manufacturing market. So rather than actually doing good, we in the developed world keep living off the backs of poor people in the southern hemisphere, first by buying the new goods that they have manufactured for us with practically no pay, and then they take our cast-offs literally back onto their backs. How many “Made in Bangladesh” shirts do you have in your closet? How many people do you think are the second-hand wearers of those same shirts back in Bangladesh?