Advanced Essay #3{Turn a blind eye}

In this essay my main goal was to show negligence we show as a nation to international problems altogether , but solely as Americans do we have an obligation to strangers? The question I’ve been trying to solve throughout this whole unit, though there are many different answers to this question, I showed my point of view when answering this question.

         As we can see in the image above, we observe a picture of two mindless individuals playing golf in this notorious club, but as you take a closer look at the picture you can observe men along the top of the picture, attempting to ascend over the fence into a Spain province from Morocco. Do the golfers really not see them or do they pretend they don’t know what's going on and go on with their privileged lives like any other day? As Americans, what obligations do we have to outsiders? And with the United States being the most powerful country in the world, what obligations do we owe, as a nation, to others outside of America?
       Even our smallest decisions as a nation may affect others around the world, both negatively and positively. With the United States being the biggest consumers in the world, we continue to support numerous unjust systems, because without consumers there aren’t  many producers because if there was a lack of demand, there would be no supply. A clear example of this is sweatshops, which are factory workshops with unacceptable working conditions. An estimated 158 million kids from the ages of 5 to 14 are forced to work everyday. Workers work an average of 17 hours days, and surveys show most of their income is just to be able to support their families with enough food to last for the day. Sweatshops are located all over the world, mostly in Asia. Workers wages vary from country to country, in Bangladesh workers can make as low as $0.13 cents an hour, others in China can make anywhere from $0.44 cents an hour then there’s others in Central America like Honduras that can make up to $1.31 an hour. This is way below America's hourly minimum wage. Big companies decide to manufacture their products overseas due to it being extremely cheap, making their losses smaller and profits larger. These big corporations don’t care about these inhumane conditions amongst their company, they just prioritize their profits to ensure that they continue to increase.  
      We are in some way at fault, because we as consumers continue to buy the products, if there was minimal to no consumers, there would be no need to manufacture these products, but since there is such a high demand for these products, the crisis continues. At the same time, there’s so much we could do. And as much as we would like to resolve all the epidemics happening around the world it’s just simply close to impossible because of how dependent we’ve become on buying the smallest things to fit our needs. Like my mother said, “How do you want to go out and fix a broken home when yours isn’t even fixed?” It isn’t our obligation to help all these other countries that are in need, but to an extent it’s our responsibility to be more aware of the problems going on in the world. Although some may not care, it’s important for all of us to be at least informed on how 95% of our clothes are being made, that the clothes we wear on a daily basis are being made by underpaid innocent men, women and even children. Even our smallest actions have a bigger impact than what we can imagine.
    Thanks to social media, we are able to go out and search for answers ourselves to see more about what's happening around the world, because if the news outlets aren’t putting enough international stories out, then we should go searching for them. Why is it that these news outlets don’t put out international news unless it involves the United States? Is it the government controlling what we get to know or is it our own negligence?
     As a nation, I think we act turn a blind eye when it comes to knowing how all these products get made, we instead decide to carry on and contribute to this system. We push away the truth, because that’s all so easy for us to do since we aren’t directly affected. But what about those living in those conditions that can’t just push away the problems they are faced with day to day? We as a nation should all be more educated on where all our products come from and how they are produced, because no matter how much we turn our head the other way, the problem still lies there and will still be there until we stop turning our head and do something about the problem. This starts off small but it’s something, and something is always better than nothing.