Why should we care about what’s happening to the Uyghurs?
Chamath Palihapitiya’s question is worth taking seriously.
In late January, billionaire podcaster Chamath Palihapitiya stirred up controversy when he declared that “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs,” the mostly Muslim ethnic group in northeast China that has been targeted since 2017 with mass imprisonment, reeducation, forced labor, rape, torture, and sterilization. “Of all the things that I care about, it is below my line,” Palihapitiya admitted. Americans should solve the injustices in our own country, he said, before worrying about abuses on the other side of the world.
The backlash was swift, prompting Palihapitiya to admit that human rights abuses matter wherever they occur. But his underlying question is worth taking seriously. There are so many problems in the world. Why should we care about what’s happening to the Uyghurs?
The kind of willful ignorance that Palihapitiya endorses makes some sense from a utilitarian perspective. Most of us don’t have unlimited resources to marshal against injustice, and we typically have the greatest ability to help those who live closest to us. It can feel futile to expend mental and emotional energy on a problem that is large-scale and distant from our everyday lives. After all, caring about someone’s suffering isn’t the same as relieving it.
