I think I need to have my head examined: I agreed with Bill O’Reilly today. Before we get to how there needs to be a little background.
While I am amazed and astonished by the donations that have rushed in to help the victims of Haiti’s recent earthquake – as of Friday, January 15, reports about the “text a donation” to the Red Cross campaign put the figure some where between $7M USD and $8M USD which doesn’t include the $2M USD that has poured into Wyclef Jean’s questionable charity or the donations by individual celebrities – I am also moved to ask a fundamental question about this sudden compassion for Haiti and its people: Where where was it on Monday before the earthquake?
On Monday, before Port-au-Prince collapsed in its entirety, Haiti was dismally poor with a population suffering the effects of decades of not just mismanagement but outright corruption. According to a 2005 USAID report, the average life expectancy in Haiti was 53 years-old. Literacy rates hovered between 48% and 52% and the average per-capita income was about $400 a year where income distribution left more than three quarters of the population living below the poverty line. Even though the report doesn’t say anything about it, food insecurity – which is a wonky way of saying not having any clue where your next meal is coming from or when – was probably frighteningly high.
Haiti was and is by all estimation the poorest country in the western hemisphere.
Stunning to think about isn’t it? Just imagine for a minute: for the U.S. in 2005 comparable figures would have meant 224,772,395 people living below the poverty line. And given that the poverty line is a bull shit number anyway – it’s calculated on the cost of feeding a family of four in 1966 for a year – that is an even more frightening statistic regardless of which country you apply it to.
And these stats are for Haiti after the country received $865M USD in aid from the U.S., Canada, Taiwan, the EU, and a World Bank/IMF credit in 2003. In 2004, more than $1B USD was pledged for two years for relief and development efforts in Haiti. Or, to quote Mr. O’Reilly:
TV talker Bill O’Reilly, for example, said he gives to a private charity that helps Haiti but has a dim view of government aid: “[T]he USA will once again pour millions into that country, much of which will be stolen. Once again, we will do more than anyone else on the planet, and one year from today, Haiti will be just as bad as it is right now.”
– “‘The earth shook to open people’s eyes’ to needy Haiti”, Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post, January 18, 2010, A6.
Yes, absolutely, we need to help with earthquake relief efforts. The devastation is amazing and heart wrenching and the human cost will be, when all the bodies are found, stunningly high. But why wasn’t the poverty in Haiti important to us as a people, not as a government but as a people, before now? Because it wasn’t in our face and we have the capacity to ignore indefinitely what isn’t pushed in our face by some natural or man-made disaster?
Or is it because we do care but it’s damn hard to be really invested when you know (but can not prove), that the effect of your donation – because let’s be honest, most of us aren’t going to quit our jobs and go be relief workers anywhere: it takes a special class of person to do that – is going to be virtually nil because the system into which it’s going is designed to benefit the top 1% and the top 1% already have so much more than everyone else that your $10 isn’t even going to register?
Given as a country we’ve said that we will send Haitians who land in the U.S. directly back to Haiti, I don’t know what to think.
The only thing I do know is that our attitudes as Americans toward poverty, both in and out of our country, make my head hurt.
If you are moved by the devastation in Haiti and care about making an impact on poverty in areas not 60% populated by TV commentators, try giving to an organization like Doctors Without Borders (U.S. – Other locations) or Action Aid (U.S. – Other locations) which consistently work to reduce the effects of poverty around the globe.
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