CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – I vacationed in Ireland three years ago. And it’s a completely natural thought to wonder what it would be like to live there. I quickly concluded that there’s a big difference between vacationing and living somewhere. Dubliners live in tiny, expensive apartments. Life would eventually settle into the day-to-day churning of earning a living instead of being a tourist.
But DaNeen L. Brown sees it differently. She’s a reporter for the Washington Post. And she wrote last week: “As a Black woman, I want freedom from oppression. So I’m finally plotting my exit.” She’s planning to move to Ghana, on the western coast of Africa. During her journalism career she’s covered many stories that she believes illustrate white brutality against blacks. And I feel sorry if her career choice so distorted her views about the United States that she wants to leave.
Obviously Ms. Brown is a skilled writer and reporter. She wouldn’t be employed by The Post if she weren’t. And I’m certain that someone of similar skill would not make as much money in her new home-country.
You might remember Ghana from a few years ago, when singer Stevie Wonder announced that he wanted to move there too. His music was so popular in the United States that he is a man of incredible wealth who is adored by his fellow citizens. He wants his children to escape racism here.
To point out the obvious, DeNeen Brown and Stevie Wonder are free to live anywhere they wish. Yet consider how much they must dislike living in the USA. They will move to a country were the average worker lives on $90 a month. Ghana’s GDP is 1-percent of the United States. (It raises a fair question of whether Ms. Brown wants to live as the privileged class. An American expatriate would be wealthy in Ghana.) If you think Ghana is a political paradise, they had a military coup. If you think Ghana is woke, homosexuality is outlawed there. If you think Ghana is enlightened, people are put on trial and exiled for witchcraft. 10-percent of the nation has no electicity; only one-third of all households have clean drinking water.
And yet to people who see everything through the lens of racial oppression, over there seems better than here. And if you’ve convinced yourself of that, you’re free to leave.
Chris Conley
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