Living in own ideology — Branko Milanovic

Something similar is happening now in the United States with the ideological impact of the Black Lives Matter movement. Many people thought that racial inequality was indeed an issue in the United States. But it was seen as an ancillary issue, in need of a solution, but not in itself detracting from the view of America as a land of equal opportunity and progress for all. Under the impact of the movement, racial injustice, and many other forms of injustices, are now seen, by many people who never thought so before, as systemic problems. They cannot be made aright by, as Cornel West dismissively and well said, “putting Black faces in high places”. They require a thorough rethinking of the essential features of capitalist societies. Moreover, BLM movement, by bringing into the focus the entire colonial history and Black oppression, has directed our attention to the things which were thought long gone and “solved”: King Leopold’s rule of the Congo, British use of and complicity in slave trade, American and Brazilian slaveries that extended late into the second half of the 19th century. It is very likely that similar issues will be raised soon in other countries: France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia. As we have just seen, the statues of Christopher Columbus are tumbling down.

This is a huge ideological change. We were, until a few weeks ago, witnessing the same events as now—racial discrimination and police brutality are not exactly new—but the ideological lenses through which we were seeing them were entirely different....

Global Inequality
Living in own ideology
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-economic Inequality, senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace