http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/04/05/world/international-uk-quake-haiti-schools.html?_r=1
Yet, is the United States doing enough to assist?
I found one answer to this question particularly shocking and selfish. Garrett Harding (as expressed in Pasha) argues in favor of “lifeboat ethics”, which makes an analogy between drowning people clamoring for a lifeboat and impoverished people clamoring for financial assistance. Just as with lifeboats, we can only save so many before pulling ourselves under as well.
A critical theorist would argue that we are simply looking at poverty in the wrong way: Pasha argues we need to stop viewing ‘the poor’ as a mere number because this distances us from the acuteness of their suffering. “Numbers have the distinctive ability to sanitize the subjective side of human misery” (Pasha). Perhaps this is a problem US citizens face when dealing with Haiti: we need to stop thinking of the suffering in Haiti as merely flashes of light across the television screen.
The impoverished of Haiti seem to be the puppets of social policy. Thus, with their failing government comes an inability to be the authors of their owns lives. Likewise, if Haitian schools are unable to re-open in a timely manner because of poor government coordination, it will be the Haitians who lose their basic right to an education.
I agree with your analysis of this situation. To add on to your argument, I think Pasha would argue that as Americans seeing Haiti's situation as such, we are reminded that "the poor are in a way like us, something we fear the most." He would justify the aid that we give Haiti by saying "Perhaps the anxiety that we could become like them gives us the inspiration to think about helping them, reaching out to them, without becoming like them." Since Haiti's government is so weak, giving has been embraced by NGOs and celebrities in the global sphere of liberal good-heartedness. Pasha argues that this, however, shifts power away from those with actual influence. Societal norms have displaced politics.
ReplyDeleteI too agree with your analysis. The poor are looked at as just numbers far too often. I particularly liked your comment of "we need to stop thinking of the suffering in Haiti as merely flashes of light across the television screen." I find this to be so true. It seems to me that so many people will look at a television screen and say "Oh, that's awful," but do not do anything to help. This is most likely because there is no way for people in the States to empathize with just a "number." But without our aid, or the aid of any of the other well-off countries, Haitian schools will likely remain in tents, and the level of education throughout the country will slowly dwindle.
ReplyDeleteI think it is also important to remember that Haiti is so impoverished and dysfunctional as the result of the global north, particularly the United States, enacting deliberately and devastatingly cruel policies against Haiti, such that is was unable to establish a state that could successfully fulfill the role generally expected of government. As Dr. Joia Mukherjee of Partners in Health pointed out, the existence of a free black democracy threatened the narrative of white Christian superiority held so firmly by the United States, from which so much of their foreign policy and economic strategy derived its validity. But in the immediate aftermath of a specific disaster, public sympathy has been swayed in favor of Haiti, at least for the moment, and in compliance with the U.S. self-identity as a "good" state and under pressure from international norms, aid to Haiti is a popular cause. And like we talked about in class last Thursday, we designate as "noble" causes such as the education of impoverished children, and thus the idea of sending aid to open schools is a more salient goal of the well-intended foreigner than to fund a general operating budget.
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