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Partly Cloudy Failure of imagination knocks Haiti off radar
A massive earthquake hits Charlotte, N.C. Mountains of earth collapse schools, crush hospitals and homes. Hundreds and then thousands of bodies fill the morgue, spilling into the surrounding streets. Police and fire departments are crippled; communication is dead. Roads are blocked and airports close.
On the streets of the city, cries can be heard from beneath the piles of rubble. Days go by and hope fades for survivors. The numbers of dead rise into the tens of thousands. Unimaginable, right?
Charlotte is about 600 miles from New York, where we sit now, and Haiti is about 600 miles from U.S. shores — safe, progressive, first-world America. Imagine this island country, desperately poor, uneducated and backward on a good day. Haiti is our neighbor, as close as Charlotte is to New York, but it might as well be on the moon, for all anyone cares.
If such an earthquake struck anywhere in the U.S., the response would be swift and efficient — except, of course, if it involved poor black people living in New Orleans. Then bodies would be floating in the water, piling up outside the morgue, and people would die waiting for help. New Orleans is no Charlotte.
We expect our government agencies and the military and private charities to respond to the emergency in Haiti. That’s what we do best. Anderson Cooper of CNN was on the ground in the midst of the devastation within hours. Hillary Clinton cut short a trip in Australia. The Red Cross mobilized. That’s what we generous, efficient Americans do.
But where were we before the earthquake struck? How is it OK that with all our resources, and even the billions of dollars we’ve poured into the desperate island nation over the years, we accept the appalling day-to-day existence of millions of people only 600 miles away?
How did we neglect New Orleans and its collapsing levies until it was too late? I think race is part of the answer in both Haiti and New Orleans, but poverty is a bigger factor. Poor people have no lobbyists in Washington. If we took the nation-building dollars we’ve spent in Iraq and sent them to rebuild New Orleans or to Haiti . . . well, we all know the answer.
