Fair Trade

So I've grown tired of answering the question "do you have any fair trade coffee?" and I think I figured out why. Bear with me, this might get long.

Fair trade is a trademark of Transfair, an NPO that certifies various industries as meeting certain standards. They are known largely for coffee, but if it's a product made in the third world, it's possible to get it Fair Trade certified. So the concept here is to make sure the exchange is equitable, and to some degree they succeed. The problem shows up when people start identifying "Fair Trade" as the only equitable exchange. It's a shorthand for a culture that is too fucking lazy to think about the actual state of the world. Basically, when people get into the idea of fair trade coffee, they think it's that little sticker or workers being beaten and raped after working a 22-hour shift that they don't even get paid for. It's good that they care about third-world workers, but they're doing so in a very American way-which translates to not really caring at all. They're glad to buy a product with a sticker on it that says they don't have to feel guilty about it, but to actually understand why they should feel guilty in the first place-that would actually involve learning something. And that's too much for most Americans.