If we’ve learned anything from Bob Menendez’s alleged willingness to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the Egyptian government, it’s that when gross corruption occurs in the United States, it’s perceived as a case of “bad apples” rather than systemic failure. In the Global South, however, corruption is viewed not just as systemic failures, but as genetic ones.
This racist narrative argues that those who aren’t from the West aren’t capable of governing ethically and democratically. Take, for example, former president Donald Trump’s continuous verbal attacks on Puerto Rico, which according to him is “one of the most corrupt places on earth.” Amid calls from people in Puerto Rico in 2019 for the governor to resign due to, among many things, corruption and mishandling of hurricane relief funding, Trump blamed Puerto Rican leaders for being “grossly incompetent, spend the money foolishly or corruptly, & only take from USA.”
