For the love of poor black people

I got chatting with a young Englishman yesterday who as most English people go was polite and well mannered and I wont hold that against him. We got chatting about racism or rather about the silly things people say to me. At the end of the conversation he said to me  'I believe the poor in India are very happy which is unlike this country.'  This is someone who comes from an affluent family and claims he has material comforts which don't make you happy. Fair enough material things don't make you happy but does not having hot water and good make you happy?

I personally think this makes a mockery of the poor and is a lazy stereotype. It is also a complacent position. To be fair to him I have heard Indians say the same. If poverty is so good then why don't we all give everything up and live in poverty to be exploited? Not knowing when where and what you will eat again makes you happy now, or being sold into slavery?  

This is intellectual laziness but also insensitive white liberal racism. This is by far the most difficult prejudice to fight because the person who holds such views generally isn't a misanthrope but just misguided. There is a sense of goodness in this person and I wouldn't want that turning into cynicism, however that they are insensitive to the plight of people i would like them to change that. 

If white poor people are ungrateful to the affluent classes in England they are the same in India the difference is poor 3rd world citizens are privileged for their exoticism, thereby alienating white working class people. Is it any surprise the EDL is anti non white people? White working class people are demonised in the UK the same can't be said for their non white counterparts. A case in point is an internet meme about how immigrants built everything in Britain which is why we must be nice to them. Before us exotic types came in poor white people were exploited but have now fallen out of fashion. If liberals really cared they would change things for the poor rather than love them with cloying sentimentality.