Haiti

Haiti collapsed again yesterday. Ravaged, it seems. This time not by the Duvaliers, the Americans, the French, or their own street gangs, but by something even greater and more indiscriminate than all these. Nature. The same nature that ravished New Orleans in Katrina, Sri Linka in the tsunami, and the Philippines in recent monsoons again reared her ugly head to remind us that no one is immune.

I couldn’t sleep well last night after I got the news. Too many images invaded my head and wouldn’t let go. Images of the broken presidential palace, just blocks from my old house. Images of poverty and decrepitude, but that was there long before this earthquake hit. We think it is a terrible shame when these things happen, and it unites humanity in such an odd way. Maybe it’s because we genuinely feel it could have been one of us, and that no one is fully immune from such forces of nature, as wealthy as we might be.

It frustrates me because I know there will be an overwhelming outpouring of aid. People will come forward now to give money, but what about every other day of the year when Haitians are starving? This year, 24,000 more people will die of hunger throughout the world. Are we saddened and shaken by these sudden deaths in Haiti that hit too close to home, as though the dice of chance just missed me this time, but not my Haitian neighbors Gustav, Izetta, Catelyn and Lovelyn? Are we less saddened by the 24,000 deaths from hunger this year because they are expected?

What angers me most is realizing that just as no one chose to live ten miles from the epicenter of an earthquake, no one chose the country, America or Haiti, the race and color, white middle-class or black poverty-stricken, or the educational and work opportunities available in the country where you are born. It’s as much to chance that Gustav is Haitian that I am American, and that he will have to fight twice as hard for everything he has in his meager life than I’ve ever fought. I was born into so much, don’t I owe something to those who did not have such good fortune? We are sadly not all born equal, but we could start by making more efforts to recognize this reality, how relatively wealthy we are compared to the rest of the world. Ideally it shouldn’t have to take tsunamis, hurricanes, and now earthquakes to highlight the poverty and inequality that is becoming increasing accepted throughout the world.

I should take a moment to add, before I offend half my friends and family, that my anger is not as much directed at working-class America. It’s the ultra-rich upper crusts of society that infuriate me most. The insidious Kardashians, Hiltons, Enron executives or the other obliviously wealthy who don’t seem to have questioned how they got so rich, or what effect their consumerism has on those who are toiling away to make all that they buy, or those poor who have to live on the land exploited for the natural resources used to make such extravagant lifestyles possible. And I’m not worried about offending those people—they’re not reading my blog anyway.

I’m quietly stepping down from my soap box now. Thanks for letting me vent.