You, too, can assuage your white guilt by purchasing diapers. The disposable lifestyle that is destroying the environment, that demands disposable products made at disposable prices with disposable labor, is masked by a sense of charity. Let’s break down the implications of this purchase: I, urban sophisticate, White Person, American, wrap my child in plastic and cotton diapers, so that her designer sweatshop clothes might not be soiled; I discard the diapers, so that I might avoid dealing with the reality of feces; I pay for this refuse to be placed in a truck and shipped somewhere far away, so that I might make a clean break with the dirty realities of human existence; and, after doing all of this, I can spare a nickel for a tetanus vaccine for some poor, helpless native, who could not even afford to avoid lockjaw without my largesse.
