In that article, Bobo is blaming Haiti for its troubles. He invokes bootstraps, he claims that Voudoun is fucking up their culture, he even claims they don't know how to raise their children right. It's about as racist as one can get away with in the New York Times. For now, anyway. Linking to that approvingly? What the hell? No. Just, no. It's not even a case of a broken clock being right twice a day. Bobo is regularly full of fail, but that was the shit icing on the failcake.
You know why Haiti's fucked up? Centuries of slavery, followed by punitive economic practices by rich countries, such as France demanding that Haiti pay them reparations for lost slave labor. Then refusal to trade with them. Then invasions and other machinations. In just the last few decades, the U.S. propped up the Duvaliers and ousted Aristide.
Before anybody starts declaiming "dispassionately" and "logically" and "reasonably" about how the Haitians don't stand up to help themselves, how about other countries get their boots off the Haitians' necks?
And, I'm sorry, but to lambaste a country that poor — a country deliberately made that poor — for not building the way San Francisco Bay Area does? That takes some truly oblivious privilege, not to see the giant elephant of history and politics in the room.
Just throwing aid at immediate problems is ineffective in the long run.
They're still digging people out of the rubble. I think it's a little premature to kvetch about how one's dollars are going to be spent. And I'm certainly not going to call up Doctors Without Borders for an audit of how they spent my donation.
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Date: 2010-01-16 01:56 am (UTC)You know why Haiti's fucked up? Centuries of slavery, followed by punitive economic practices by rich countries, such as France demanding that Haiti pay them reparations for lost slave labor. Then refusal to trade with them. Then invasions and other machinations. In just the last few decades, the U.S. propped up the Duvaliers and ousted Aristide.
Before anybody starts declaiming "dispassionately" and "logically" and "reasonably" about how the Haitians don't stand up to help themselves, how about other countries get their boots off the Haitians' necks?
And, I'm sorry, but to lambaste a country that poor — a country deliberately made that poor — for not building the way San Francisco Bay Area does? That takes some truly oblivious privilege, not to see the giant elephant of history and politics in the room.
Just throwing aid at immediate problems is ineffective in the long run.
They're still digging people out of the rubble. I think it's a little premature to kvetch about how one's dollars are going to be spent. And I'm certainly not going to call up Doctors Without Borders for an audit of how they spent my donation.