I recently watched a movie called “Origin” about the underlying themes and roots of racism and class order. A writer, Isabel Wilkerson embarked on an experiential journey to uncover the roots of systemic values that have perpetuated various forms of hierarchical diversion amongst populations. Such divisions have created patterns of extremism where “class” is an identity defined by a hierarchy or superior group over another. This system permeates across the planet and has for centuries in a myriad of forms.
Based on the true accounts and writings of Isabel, she specifically looked at several groups such as the Indians class system, whereby the lower class has a predetermined destiny of which cannot be removed or transmuted. They are forever below or above depending on what they’re born into. The treatment of the lower class is shameful and inhumane at times. The same system divided Jews from nazis. It was believed the Jews were the inferior race and a disease amongst the population. This was indoctrinated into political and governmental views as fact, and so far as permeated into laws to ensure its successors superior.
What was a game changer was what was reveled in this woman’s research and exposed through her writings and in the movie. Isabel uncovered the reality that such Naziism was modeled after the US’s systems and laws of slavery. These class orders birthed racism, but racism itself wasn’t the underpinning problem. The model of slavery being brought into law created a framework for Naziism to be established into the legal system.
However even today in the modern world and in the United States, we still allow such systems of not only discrimination but lack of safety and health to infiltrate our laborers both on foreign grounds and our own soil.
The Caste Systems of Workers
I trace these systems of human pecking order into other systems that make up our society. First world, second world, and third. The reality is that all of these conditions exist within US and global working conditions but go under the radar. The exploitation of workers is a living reality which doesn’t always require documentation, especially when the workers are not. Some very powerful and mega rich corporations operate under such conditions both in the US and outside. These companies can negate the manufacture of goods in unhealthy conditions for people and the planet, when laws in other countries have less stringent regulations on environmental compliance and treatment of workers.
Living in the most powerful nation in the world, most Americans don’t bow to the reality that almost everything we use comes from the third world or were made by the hands of someone living in the first world but in third world conditions or by laborers from third world countries.
The development and manufacture of the products we’ve grown accustomed to in such abundance is possible due to the unnatural systems of production. From the cycle of extraction, production, manufacture, transport , and disposal, we are removed and only participants in the use phase of the consumption cycle.
Work causes more than 2.1million deaths globally every year. Child labor used in clothing production, textiles, coco, and electronics is commonplace, delivering US brand named items that make up our daily lives. These children are sometimes beaten and don’t have access to fresh air and sunlight.
As expressed in the APHA policies, a sustainable food system must be grounded in safe working conditions, fair wages, and human rights protections for individuals employed in agriculture and food production.
Sustainability isn’t just about being good to the earth and natural resources but protecting the communities, lives and hands of people that are producing and a part of the creation process of goods.
Ethical & Social Systems In Production of Goods
The production of farmed goods in the US agricultural system is primarily composed of farm labor from immigrants. Immigrants from third world nations don’t know the legal standards and these are often bypassed for the benefit of cheap labor. Exposure to toxic dioxins and herbicides, (some of which aren’t even legal in Europe), creates a toxic work environment to workers even on American soil. In the book “Barons’, author Austin Frerick exposes the harsh reality of some of these “systems’. Illegal or undocumented workers allow owners of corporate agriculture products to bypass health and safety standards, due to the illegal status of their workers, thereby saving them money and time.
There is something called the “piece rate system”, whereby a worker is paid by their yield vs the hour. This is used in quota production systems often upheld by big profit driven agricultural companies. These workers have higher rates of illness, accidents, and injury due to the pressure and long hours they must fulfill. They’re often Latin Americans. This is from APHA.org
As we investigate what’s behind a product, clearly there is more than meets the eye. Marketing has dismissed the transparency in labeling from exposing the covert operations of some of these companies. Let us explore what goes on behind the scenes of the products that stock our closets and our refrigerators. A blind eye is the job of good marketing to make us think we’re purchasing a trusted brand and ethical product but greenwashing and flashy packaging is good at its job.
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