Caring more for the plight of people around you than people in far away countries isn't discrimination, it's rational self-interest. I want to see healthy, thriving communities in Baltimore because I live there. Those people are part of my community. They walk alongside me and interact with my family.
The irony is that people in India and China understand this simple dynamic perfectly well. You don't need to explain to the average Indian or Chinese person why they should care more for the plight of their neighbors than that of, say, even poorer people in Africa.
Re:Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
by nate_meurer on Monday November 03, 2014 @10:39AM
(#8551291)
I don't think that's what Rayiner is saying. Rather, I think he's saying that making comparisons between america's poor and the poor of less developed countries is useless to this discussion. We should be able to evaluate the suckiness of being poor in America regardless of the how much it sucks to be poor in China.
Replace "India or China" with "Black or Hispanic" to see how sad this comment is. It still surprises me to see that we live in a world where racism is condemned but discriminating people for the place they were born in is socially accepted.
Now, to answer your question, we should care about people in India or China because they're people. Human beings. The place they were born in, just like the color of their skin, should be an irrelevant factor. Something assigned to you randomly just before birth.
Nationalism sucks.