Salmon Ribbons, Distributed: The Difference Between Fixing the World, and Pretending to Fix the World

I wanted to write a follow-up to my last post, elaborating on why I take issue with people taking issue with WE Charity being corrupt, when they signed up for corruption as soon as they bought into the hype. And from the title of this post, you can correctly guess that I’m referring to the excellent documentary on fake charities Pink Ribbons, Inc.

While I recommend watching the documentary for yourself, I’ll quickly sum up the story. In the 1970s a woman by the name of Charlotte Haley began a campaign to encourage the National Cancer Institute to increase its budget for cancer prevention. Specifically, she was looking at environmental causes of breast cancer, during an era when industry was completely derelict in protecting the health and safety of their employees. To do this she promoted a non-gendered salmon-coloured ribbon campaign to promote healthy improvements in our diet and environment.

In 1992 she was approached by a cosmetics company who wanted to take her ribbon idea to the big leagues. Haley looked at the track record of the company and refused, at which point the company realized that it could steal her idea so long as they recoloured the ribbons – and now we’ve got the endless Breast Cancer Awareness campaigns, dressing up men in pink shirts, giving women an opportunity to talk about their tits, raising millions of dollars which get lost in the system, and promoted by companies who are mainly interested in selling their products.

Welcome to modernity.

Charlotte Haley – like the founders of Greenpeace, who got kicked out – like the founders of Occupy Wallstreet, who got kicked out – is one of those rare people with the vision to see a better world, who puts in the energy to try and actualize it. I have nothing but praise for her. But she’s not one of the movers and shakers that everybody signs up to follow – the corporate Pink Ribbon people are who I’m here to criticize.

In the documentary they point out that one of the companies promoting Pink Ribbons – “Buy our product and we’ll donate a penny to breast cancer research!” – was actively making a product which contained known carcinogens. Which is interesting and all, but at the end of the day – so what? If you think this is hypocritical, then you haven’t been paying attention.

Charlotte Haley was interested in doing the hard work to improve the world, identifying known carcinogens, and reducing or eliminating them. But Pink Ribbons isn’t about preventing breast cancer, it’s about raising money for breast cancer research. If you’re raising money, it shouldn’t matter where the money comes from – so long as there’s no quid pro quo attached to it. Dow Chemicals might create toxic products – but if they contribute to cancer research, where’s the problem? At the end of the day you got what you asked for. The idea that they should stop creating toxic products is an entirely different argument.

The problem with modern charities, like Pink Ribbons, like WE Charity, is that they were never organized endeavours with an objective aim in the first place; they were nothing but narcissism engines for everyone involved. The core of narcissism is the divide between what you do and what you say you are. Because what you do is act like a pathologically self-involved Good White, running around in a pink t-shirt, and cheering for politicians and celebrities, what you say you are becomes the whole of your identity.

Thus we have the ‘issue’ with Dow Chemical donating to WE Charity.

Sure – Dow Chemical is an evil company, I’ll take your word for it. So is Nike, so is Apple, so are all of them. Organization is hard, and we’ve improved a lot over the past few thousand years, but we’re far from perfect. Sure would be nice if there were more Charlotte Haleys to call out particular violations, and propose particular solutions that can be applied across the board, to all companies and governments, big and small. But that’s not what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about (supposedly) building wells in Africa so that fewer children suffer parasitic infections. Shoot, Pablo Escobar could donate to that charity and I’d call that a good thing! Now – if he were donating to “Drug Free America!” charity I might have some questions about it – but as evil as Dow Chemical is, I’ve never heard anyone allege that they have a “Maintain Poverty in Africa” division at their underground corporate HQ.

So why is their participation with WE Charity such an issue?

Because it was never about charity in the first place.

Pink Ribbons, WE Charity – they’re all about the self-image of everybody involved. Pay an indulgence at the supermarket checkout counter, then buy something from a company which uses slave labour. I’m helping! The standards are never applied universally. Rather, companies are sorted by their social status, based upon whichever demographic group the marketing algorithm has slotted them into. For breast cancer, you’ll get yoghurt, avocado, and smoothies, but not bacon, beer, or potato chips. For ‘save the third world’ you’ll get Apple, and Starbucks, and Uggs, but never one of those evil oil companies.

Admit it, it was never about the charity. It’s about the corporate logo that you want to have on your business card. You only want donations from companies and politicians that enhance your personal brand. Trying to fix the world? Man, that would be hard work. But virtue signalling about fixing the world? Now that’s a growth industry.