Racism and Haiti

The Haitian catastrophe has proven to me that American society is different from anything I ever imagined. Maybe I was blindered as a kid, but I can't imagine a disaster like this, with people suffering, starving, dying of thirst, victims trapped in debris, where any American would say, let's not help them.

It's one thing if it happens halfway around the world, say the tsunami in Indonesia, it might take twenty hours to get a plane there, never mind load it up, there are other major countries closer that can coordinate the response to the emergency. We might let Japan or China lead the effort, it doesn't mean we don't care. But this was 700 miles from Miami, and we have major American leaders saying that our government should just let the Haitians die.

The first shot over the bow came from evangelistic nutcase Pat Robertson, who asserted that the Haitians had a pact with the devil that had brought this disaster on them. He started his statement by suggesting that the earthquake, which has destroyed their capital city and killed perhaps a hundred thousand people -- maybe two hundred thousand, the fact that the estimate is that imprecise tells you something about the chaos there -- might end up being a good thing for them in the long run. Haiti may be one impoverished little third world hell-hole, but there is nothing good about killing a whole city full of people and knocking all their buildings down, silver linings are irrelevant in that situation. Maybe it will be better off in a hundred years, but, people, there are better ways to get there. We could have, say, not overthrown their government, and maybe invested in their commerce, if we wanted to see them thrive. You don't kill off the population to help them.

Even the Washington Post has a Page One story this morning about how this earthquake is an opportunity for Haiti to overcome its shortcomings. No! We could have helped them at any time, this is not an "opportunity," it is a horrible disaster.

A lot of Americans apparently did not want to see Haiti thrive, and there is one clear reason for that, and this is where it is hard to handle. If Haiti is anything, it is a country of black people. Nearly the entire population was descended from African slaves who rebelled against their brutal masters, they are black and their traditions come from Africa, hardly Westernized. Haiti is a country of poor black people, and the United States' response to their horrific disaster is an expression of our country's opinion of poor black folks. I don't see any other way to look at it. I am not mentioning Hurricane Katrina, but let's say there is more than one data point in this series.

And of course there are those who will point to our black President's statements as if he is only concerned because most Haitians are black, they will make this a political thing. Again, no: any human being should want to help those people, it is cynical to evaluate anybody's skin color in this kind of situation.

Pat Robertson says the earthquake is a consequence of the Haitians' pact with the devil. Rush Limbaugh has said we should not send anybody to help Haiti, we already have done our part, "it's called the US income tax." He said the disaster in Haiti is "made to order for" President Obama, he's one that has suggested that Obama's response to the rescue effort was motivated by racial and political desires.

And while they're saying this, children are crying out under collapsed buildings, families are dying for lack of water, people are fighting to the death over scraps of food, there are real people with real needs.

You probably saw the Media Matters report that showed that while MSNBC devoted entire prime-time shows to the tragedy in Haiti, Fox News barely mentioned it. Conservatives see the Haitian catastrophe as a political event, a chance to consolidate their white base, to capitalize on the latent racism in our country, and they see that if human beings in Haiti get too much publicity public opinion might turn against heartless conservatives as Americans sympathize with survivors.

I don't like to accuse people of being racists when they don't like something a black person has done, just like I doubt you will find many instances of my use of the word "homophobic" on this blog. You are allowed to dislike black individuals and gay individuals here, whatever, it doesn't necessarily mean you have a nasty agenda. But I do not see the sense in disliking someone because they're black, because they're gay, because their gender is not what you expected or hoped for. It seems reasonable to recognize that minority members are people, first and foremost, and then find out what kind of people they are. If they're decent folks then good, if they're not, if they have bad intentions then all right, respond to them on the basis of that. But when you look at a whole country of black people and say, let's let them die, I only see one way to look at that. I'm calling it racism.

I'll admit I don't understand racism. There are some nuts out there who consciously believe that their race is better than others, that evolution somehow tied virtue to pigmentation in a certain way. I can see the ordinary person having stereotypes about an outgroup, and I can see having negative stereotypes about members of an impoverished, disadvantaged outgroup, maybe people without a lot of education, people who have to hustle to live, but at some level it seems to me there is compassion, there is recognition that those outgroup members are people just like ourselves. We aren't talking about someone with an ideology we disapprove of here, or a business with corrupt practices, we are talking about human beings who are thirsty, who have broken bones and are in pain. It doesn't matter what religion they are, what language they speak, what they look like, somebody needs to help them, and as the Greatest Country on Earth it should be us.

A few years ago it would have been unthinkable to say, let those people die. I understand that Rush Limbaugh has the highest ratings in the radio world, more people listen to him than anybody, and maybe a million people a day watch Pat Robertson on TV. And these guys are saying the Haitians deserved what happened there, that our government should not help them. As Americans we need to put an end to this hardness, maybe you or I wouldn't want to vacation in Haiti but we can empathize with those poor suffering people as individuals, there should be no question about helping them.