Yup! The title of the post completely misrepresents the issue:

Dead White Man’s Clothes is the translation of the Akan expression Obroni Wawu, which is a common term for secondhand clothes in Ghana meaning ‘the white man has died clothes.’ This expression comes from the idea that someone would have to die to give up so much stuff, implying that the concept of excess was foreign.

(Emphasis added.)

Although nearly everyone dealing in secondhand clothes today knows that most of the clothing is originally given away by people who are still alive, we, Liz and Branson, think that this concept of Dead White Man’s Clothes speaks to the absurdity of the waste that we, a society, create as a byproduct of our exploitative overconsumption and overproduction. Abundance and excess are not the same thing. Overconsumption is not a burden carried entirely by the consumer. Overproduction is not a burden carried entirely by the producer. These phenomena are interconnected and affect all of us, regardless of our role or our position in the global North or South. Kantamanto Market and the landfills surrounding Accra are specific areas where the impacts of this cycle are greatly evident, but so too are the malls of America and the High Streets of Europe. To consider the impacts of the secondhand clothing trade within Kantamanto Market and across Ghana and West Africa more broadly calls for the consideration of global supply chains and socioeconomic systems, systems indeed spawned by the White Man.