On April 14, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus rebuked the world for treating crises differently depending on race. “I need to be blunt and honest that the world is not treating the human race the same way,” he said. “Some are more equal than others. And when I say this, it pains me.”Tedros’s heartfelt plea embodied deep unease with inadequate responses to health and social crises beyond Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. The UN, for instance, is struggling to get aid into the conflict-hit Tigray region of Ethiopia – a crisis the WHO chief previously described as a “forgotten” one that is plainly “out of sight and out of mind”.That said, Tedros should not have claimed the “world” is perpetrating systemic racism and ignoring “ongoing emergencies in Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria”. It is the West that is in fact so unapologetically indifferent to the many urgent crises engulfing Black and brown people.
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