Translating David Brooks
A friend of mine sent a link to Sunday’s David Brooks column on Haiti, a genuinely beautiful piece of occasional literature. Not many writers would have the courage to use a tragic event like a 50,000-fatality earthquake to volubly address the problem of nonwhite laziness and why it sometimes makes natural disasters seem timely, but then again, David Brooks isn’t just any writer.
Rather than go through the Brooks piece line by line, I figured I’d just excerpt a few bits here and there and provide the Cliff’s Notes translation at the end. It’s really sort of a masterpiece of cultural signaling — if you live anywhere between 59th st and about 105th, you can hear the between-the-lines messages with dog-whistle clarity. Some examples:
This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.
The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.
In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.
The chastened tone of these essays is captured by the economist Abhijit Banerjee: “It is not clear to us that the best way to get growth is to do growth policy of any form. Perhaps making growth happen is ultimately beyond our control.”
TRANSLATION: Don’t bother giving any money, it doesn’t do any good. And feeling guilty about not giving money doesn’t do anyone any good either. In fact, you’re probably helping by not doing anything.
The second hard truth is that micro-aid is vital but insufficient. Given the failures of macrodevelopment, aid organizations often focus on microprojects. More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord’s work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.
TRANSLATION: I, David Brooks, am doing my Christian best right here at home. Look, I even used a capital “L” in the word “Lord.” And I wrote that thing about Obama’s Christian Realism a few weeks ago. So I‘m doing my part. Of course I’d volunteer to help, but intellectually I just don’t think volunteering really helps. I mean, there are studies and everything.
Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.
As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.
TRANSLATION: Although it is true that Haiti was just like five minutes ago a victim of a random earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people, I’m going to skip right past the fake mourning period and point out that Haitians are a bunch of lazy niggers who can’t keep their dongs in their pants and probably wouldn’t be pancaked under fifty tons of rubble if they had spent a little more time over the years listening to the clarion call of white progress, and learning to use a freaking T-square, instead of singing and dancing and dabbling in not-entirely-Christian religions and making babies all the fucking time. I know I’m supposed to respect other cultures and keep my mouth shut about this stuff, but my penis is only four and a third inches long when fully engorged and so I’m kind of at the end of my patience just generally, especially when it comes to “progress-resistant” cultures.
Fourth, it’s time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.
These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.
It’s time to take that approach abroad, too. It’s time to find self-confident local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people — maybe just in a neighborhood or a school — with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.
The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington used to acknowledge that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old.
TRANSLATION: The best thing we can do for the Haitians is let them deal with the earthquake all by themselves and wallow in their own filth and shitty engineering so they can come face to face with how achievement-oriented and middle-class they aren’t. Then when it’s all over we can come in and institute a program making the survivors earn the right to keep their kids by opening their own Checkers’ franchises and completing Associate’s Degrees in marketing at the online University of Phoenix. Maybe then they’ll learn the No Excuses attitude real life demands, so the next time something like this happens they won’t be pulling this “woe is us” act and bawling their fucking eyes out on CNN while begging for fresh water and band-aids and other handouts. Maybe that will happen, or maybe we’ll just keep sending money, fools that we are, so that they can keep making more of those illiterate ambitionless babies we’ll have to pull out of the next disaster wreckage.
p.s. Did I miss anything? Because I think that’s pretty much it. One would have thought a column on the Haitian’s lack of an achievement culture could maybe wait until after the bodies were cold, but… hey, who am I to judge?
p.p.s. I’ve got to put this comment up on the main piece, since so many people seem to have missed my point.
Again, unlike Brooks, I actually lived in the Third World for ten years and I admit it — I’m not exactly in the habit of sending checks to Abkhazian refugees, mainly because I’m not interested in buying some local Russian gangster a new Suzuki Samurai to tool around Sochi in. And I’ve actually seen what happens to the money people think they’re giving to Russian orphanages goes, so no dice there, either.
But you know what? Next time there’s an earthquake in Russia or Georgia, I’m probably going to wait at least until they’re finished pulling the bodies of dead children out of the rubble before I start writing articles blasting a foreign people for being corrupt, lazy drunks with an unsatisfactorily pervasive achievement culture whose child-rearing responsibilities might have to be yanked from them by with-it Whitey for their own good.
An earthquake is nobody’s fault. There’s nothing to do after a deadly earthquake but express remorse and feel sorry. It’s certainly not the time to scoff at all the victim country’s bastard children and put it out there on the Times editorial page that if these goddamned peasants don’t get their act together after a disaster this big, it might just be necessary to start swinging the big stick of Paternalism at them.
I mean, shit, that’s what Brooks is doing here — that last part of the piece is basically a threat, he’s saying that Haiti might have to be FORCED to adopt “middle-class assumptions” and an “achievement ethos” because they’re clearly incapable of Americanizing themselves at a high enough rate of speed to please Brooks. That’s this guy’s immediate reaction to 50,000 people crushed to death in an earthquake. Metaphorically speaking, he’s standing over the rubble and telling the people trapped under there that they need more of a “No Excuses” culture, which is insane on many different levels.
Brooks’s implication that the Haitians wouldn’t have died in such great numbers had they been Americans is the kind of thing that is going to come back to bite us the next time we have a nuclear accident or a hurricane disaster or a 9/11 and we’re looking to the rest of the world for sympathy and understanding. The notion that these deaths aren’t an accident but someone’s fault, among other things someone’s fault because they practice an unhelpful sort of religion, is beyond offensive.
p.p.p.s And yes, Brooks is Jewish. So let’s say he’s doing his Judeo-Christian best. Again, this guy is saying that Haitians got killed in an earthquake because their religion makes them planning-averse. Are we really to believe that Haitians don’t live in earthquake-proof homes because of their religious beliefs? We have millions of Americans who literally believe the rapture is imminent — would Brooks expect them to blow off flood insurance?
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Finest piece of commentary I’ve read since Twain’s
“The Further Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper”
Matt,
Something I appreciate about this piece is that you’re explicating a set of assumptions and not just pointing out Brooks’ insensitivity. Brooks’ shining work isn’t just a critique of aid policy, but it is part of an aid-theory that is premised on racist assumptions. Brooks says in his column, “We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.”
This does a couple things that are racist and classist. Prior to writing this gem, Brooks says that there is no formulae for development that is consistent across the board. Then he blames US aid as being the wrong kind to promote progress, instead suggesting that the outside world shouldn’t let the Haitian “progress-resistant” culture continue. Outside of hearkening back to some colonial justification (something the commenters in the article seem to openly support), the article ignores the reasons that US aid has been ineffective.
The reason US was ineffective is because the US has always tied it to a series of bullshit Washington Consensus reforms that just don’t fucking work. US policy and World Bank loans were always predicated on installing some American-trained team of very smart technocrat that would drop tariffs and open an economy. Countries that accepted this are doing less than swimmingly–Indonesia, the Philippines, the D.R., Mexico, etc.
Instead, Brooks points to countries that have not received aid from the US and acting like it US aid must be a Medusa’s stare because it enables people. This is where we get to the racist part. Brooks says that, “the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.” He then blames those who receive aid with not having a “No Excuses” culture that depends on the aid to help them succeed.
This is the classist and racist part–it sort of assumes that people who receive aid in this country are being enabled as well, and draws a faulty analogy between the poor here and the entire society of Haiti. He has these fucked up conjectures that Barbados and the D.R. are great places to live–which might seem fine to a cold rationalist in a comfortable New York office. Guess what? The gamut is about the same in Haiti for inequality as it is in Barbados and the D.R.–and there is sort of a bottoming out that happens for workers when wages are low and jobs are scarce and labor laws are unenforced: you slave for innumerable hours for a pittance in your country with no prospects of improvement or education for your children. But I’m sure David Brooks can look at GDPs and say the Dominican’s is bigger than Haiti so it must be like Orange Fucking County there.
Apologies for the rant. Nice work, Matt.
Tragic irony is, things were finally improving in Haiti. In the last few years a kind of political stability had settled in; foreign direct investment was increasing and certain public health and education measures were creeping up. Bill Clinton, as special U.N envoy to Haiti was marshaling consensus around some form of debt relief. Your right Matt, Brooks looks at Haiti and sees only vaguely frightening negro mobs.
well, isn’t this a self-righteous holier-than-thou column?!
I am no fan of David Brooks but what he is saying is actually right on target. Aid is meaningless unless you teach the people to fish; otherwise it mainly serves to assuage the guilt.
Haitians have destroyed their environment and now have to take responsibility for repairing the damage. No more Papa Docs, no more gangs, no more corruption, curtailed power of the mulatto elite… tis simple.
Of course, for Matt, it’s self-righteousness that rules
[...] There is much more of the babbling Brooks and Taibbi’s translation – click here to read it. [...]
Philosophically, Taibbi’s broadside (it’s not really an essay, is it?) is called “muddying the pond.” When you lack argument by which to win or insight by which to criticize, you stir up the mud. In this case the mud is Taibbi’s charge that Brooks must be a racist. After all: he’s white, and he’s a Jew.
Whereas Brooks provides historical evidences and socio-political observations—some of which can be responsibly argued against, perhaps defeated—Taibbi talks about the motives of Brooks’ criticism, as though motives can be as easily known and responsibly argued as, well, facts.
But if there is a racist edge to either writer’s argument, it may be revealed in Taibbi’s charge of penis envy, suggesting it to be at the root of Brooks’ expression of very real and perhaps sincere concern for the future of Haiti. In this Taibbi reverts to a racial stereotype so deeply rooted in historical prejudice and fear that one might wonder whether the mud ever again will settle to the bottom of the pond.
And since there is no evidence of racism in Brooks’ remarks, and since Taibbi suggests we may not be smart enough to read and understand Brooks for ourselves (we are, after all, reading Taibbi), he “translates” for us, as one would for a child. And because translation is as much art as science—like a really good spitball—Taibbi does a middling job of keeping the mud in the water…although one wishes he had accomplished it with more art and less spit.
Not long ago I was in Kenya, too briefly to be of any use to anyone, but pretending to help an AIDS clinic serving 300 seriously ill children. What I came away believing is something Brooks is talking about: just as aid to Haiti has been wasted by a failure to accomplish social reform, helping children condescends to becoming a way for middleclass do-gooders (such as myself) to cheer ourselves up…unless that help is relentlessly continued and uniformly supported by concerned involvement in the outcomes. Merely keeping an African or Haitian child alive another 6 months does little good of itself; the child just dies later, and perhaps more miserably. Brooks argument that we may need more social involvement (control, if you must) if we are going to educate and elevate the next generation of Haitians is accurate, even if it may become evil…at some point of social control, instead of a successful project in Harlem, we have a failed project in Iraq. But sporadic aid that is unconcerned with realities on the ground is like sporadic military attack that has no ability to win a war.
And what Brooks says about the influence of religion on a culture (although in this case specific) has macro evidences to support it: change the patterns of belief in a society, and you may change outcomes for the society. However, that opinion may be flawed in the current instance: although it’s true that magical thinking can have negative consequences in terms of motivation, it doesn’t appear to have harmed the Chinese, who still accept fate as being a principal element in all human outcomes. As is opined by a Chinese proverb: “If it is meant to be, it should not be hard work to achieve.”
Would that were true for Haiti.
Maybe Taibbi’s argument gets more responsible further down (I decided two thirds of the way through that I would find and read the Brooks essay instead of finishing Taibbi’s)…but I suspect he’s still more interested in comparing penises than considering evidences and working towards a more successful Haitian policy for the benefit of the Haitian people. And he as much as admits that he’s more interested in spitballing Brooks than in helping Haitians: he mentions the charitable efforts in which he has not become involved because of the corruption he has personally witnessed. Catch 22: won’t give to poor people, won’t consider alternatives.
The Grand Gesture is what the Office of the President is good at. But the result has been the funding of petty dictators and the pilfering of the wealth of many nations without respect for the good (or harm) it does. That’s what Brooks addresses, to the alarm of a kid who appears to have forgotten to take off his hat when he came in from playing stickball…a kid who doesn’t realize “Judeo-Christian” is an amalgamation more apt when criticizing a Christian than a Jew.
Of course, Taibbi’s “translation” is not intended to be that precise. It’s about mud. But even if Taibbi’s method is more like throwing pots than blowing glass, he doesn’t use his mud to make even a bad pot, but to attempt the ruin of a good pond.
Cliftonjolly,
Doth protest to much…Matt was right on the money David Brooks is garden variety racist and a redneck.. He is also a white jewish bigot you long winded excuse for brooks reveals the how deep the spectrum of this diease is in or nation…
Thanks again Matt for having the journalistic courage for calling out a white jewish male racist and bigot David Brooks is..
Matt, you are missing a key point here. Of course this idiot David Brooks will miss it too, but that is something I expect.
“An earthquake is nobody’s fault.”
True. But the consequences are. The point is: it’s not the haitians fault. Haiti has been exploited ruthlessly by the imperial powers (first Spain, then France, then the US) for hundreds of years. Their abject misery IS MOSTLY OUR FAULT. Or our leaders, at least, the ones who act in our name.
We did nothing (maybe because of ignorance, sure) when the US supported and encouraged coups, backed corrupt leaders, backed paramilitary terrorism, pursued via the IMF the bankrupcy of their peasants (which had to move to the cities, thus overcrowding them and leading to this disaster) by lowering trade barriers to US subsidized rice, had to use most of its national budget to repay debts whose origins were in US backed regimes, and a large list of etc.
As the good investigative journalist you are, you should know this.
[...] problem is a “progress-resistant” culture. See Chris Blattman for a polite critique and Matt Taibbi for a less restrained reaction. I took a look at the source Brooks cites for his conclusion, a book [...]
I’m back Matt. I left because I assume you’re one of TPTB. Nevertheless, I missed you. And now, after reading this article I’m consumed with the passion only you can incite in me. Someone give me a cigarette.
I suspect these reader comments, that are not only allowed but encouraged, are a way to spot the troublemakers amongst us. Why else would they allow you to spew so publicly? But fuck it, it’s not like a big secret or anything that my nickname is “Trouble”, so I guess I’ll stick around for awhile. In the meantime, if you could be so kind as to prepare a secret room in your home lest those black helicopters start circling my apartment building, I would be most appreciative. LOL as in “Lots of love” Matt.
matt – you’re my hero.
Whenever people bring up these cultural-determinist explanations for uneven development, you really only need to say one word: Korea.
South Korea started the postwar era as a miserable backwater barely out of the medieval ages. Rigid, obscurantist Confucian-Buddhist culture, official corruption so widespread that you can’t even really call it corruption, 90% illiteracy, the whole package. Then you had the Korean war, which devastated the country. Almost all of the (already rather pitiful) infrastructure was desroyed, millions were killed, millions more made homeless. South Korea was left looking like, say, the Central African Republic does today. Those who were getting by at all were doing subsistence agriculture; the rest were just milling about in the rubble.
Forty years later South Korea was an industrial-technological powerhouse, the envy of the world. If Brooks is right, there must have been some incredible sea-change in Korean culture; perhaps they all converted to Calvinism, or started reading Ayn Rand. Of course, this is not what happened.
South Korea was allowed to enact nationalistic, development-oriented economic policies. This was part of a general strategy the US Cold Warriors adopted for countries on the periphery of the Soviet sphere; they did not have to play by the same free-market rules that, say, Latin America got. Furthermore, there was a truly massive influx of US aid. During the 1950s, 80% of Korean savings were from US aid. In addition to the “official” aid, there were enormous quantities of US military supplies which “fell off the truck,” so to speak, and found their way into the Korean black market.
When countries are allowed to enact economic-nationalist policies, and especially when they are helped along by large flows of loosely-conditioned aid, they tend to develop successfully, defying all culturally- or racially-based prognostications. When they are repeatedly invaded and intervened in to forestall nationalist policies, and given aid only on the condition that they privatize everything, they tend to develop very poorly.
It is the job of people like David Brooks to systematically neglect and rewrite economic history, so that this is not generally realized by Americans.
I was pretty shocked when I read this article too. But what I was hoping either Matt or someone else commenting here was gonna’ point out was just how similar this train of thought is to Pat Robertson’s comments. The “voo-doo” comment here is as offensive as saying “they made a pact with the devil” crack that Robertson made last week. This article is just the “bobo” version, to use Mr. Brooks own term. It’s obviously a different world view than the evangelicals, but it’s no less uniformed, condescending and downright racist as Pat’s views. And the media should be jumping on Brooks with the same veracity they used on Robertson. Kudos to you Matt. At least someone is calling out this smug offensive article for what it is. Thank you!
When our fellow human beings are dead in the streets and wounded severely the natural tendancy of most of us is to help them. Mr. Brooks should go to Haiti and perhaps then he may feel his own humanity.
[...] will sympathize with me/my request. For a better understanding, Matt Taibbi clears the thickets by translating excerpts of Brooks’ essay so we can further appreciate his timely insight – “This [...]
[...] am not alone thinking this. Amy Wilentz tackles these issues in the Nation, as does Matt Taibbi, and the author Mark [...]
Brooks even gets the science wrong. His whole hypothesis is premised on a false equivalence between the World Series San Francisco earthquake and the current one in Haiti. In fact, at Richter 6.9, San Francisco is 5 megatons less in destructive force than Haiti at 7.0. More importantly, the epicenter of San Francisco was 60 miles from the city and 11 miles deep. In Haiti it was 16 miles and 8 miles. Santa Cruz, at 10 miles from the San Francisco epicenter, had much more destruction than the larger city. As the depth, the distance, and the force greatly effect the destructive force, either Brooks is scientifically ignorant, careless, or intentionally biased to prove his point. I suspect all of the above.
First off, I have been very vaguely familiar with the name Matt Taibbi, although I haven’t followed you. I actually got here because of your recent blog post on the Royals, but read through older posts.
I was enjoying what I was reading until I got to this. I rarely agree with Brooks, and I don’t know how much I agree with his op/ed.
That being said, I read Brooks expecting to see a fairly bad column that would be well countered, and I was completely wrong.
First off, it doesn’t seem to me that you have disagreed at all with Brooks. Do you disagree that there are cultural elements in Haiti that contributed to their inability to handle this disaster? Can you provide an argument that we have determined an effective way to distribute foreign aid? Do you believe aid should be provided without calls to help alleviate the fallout from future catastrophes?
Am I fair to believe that your response to this article is mainly driven by a preexisting belief that Brooks is a racist neocon (not a belief I would be inclined to disagree with, by the way)?
Yes, Brooks op/ed has that “white-man’s burden” aroma to it that permeates neocon thought, but I rarely find the typical liberal reaction to such events and topics to be aroma-free either.
Brooks, even if he is a little misdirected, brings up a very good point. The feel-good nature of foreign aid has led to a great schism in terms of quality and quantity.
And when would you propose to approach this issue? Do you honestly believe that this op/ed would receive any attention if published two months from now? Should we approach the strategic side of foreign aid while we are motivated and committed, or after we have moved on to more pressing (to us) issues?
The knee-jerk sympathy you are calling for is the exact opposite of what we need right now, as it is all movement and no direction. We need considered discussion of our role in developing and assisting foreign nations now more than ever.
[...] I don’t think Kirkpatrick’s penis size has anything to do with the argument he is trying to make. But I do think there are a few quick points that are worth [...]
http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2008/07/30/david-brooks-as-the-kinder-gentler-steve-sailer/
Steve Sailer on David Brooks:
“One of the eerier feelings for me is to start reading a New York Times op-ed and realize partway through that the columnist is engaging in an argument with me, even though I’m not named. That happens several times per year with David Brooks’s NYT columns. (I’ve been told on trustworthy authority that he is a regular reader, so I’m not just being paranoid here.)”
“A moderate amount of his stuff seems to be either echoing or arguing with me, (The last time Brooks mentioned my name in the NYT back in 2004, he got a lot of grief from the commissars about it.)”
“Without the Secret Decoder Ring, it’s often hard to figure out what Brooks is talking about.”
So what you’re saying is:
David Brooks is not very nice.
Is that about it?
[...] of robber baron swine. The pompous turdbag befouled himself something shocking over Haiti, with a cornucopia of racist depravity dressed up as free-market rationality, and I am therefore slightly troubled to find a little common [...]
[...] SOURCE: http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/01/18/translating-david-brooks-haiti/ [...]
Matt Taibbi is the only guy trying to keep everyone honest. People in power, people with influence, and people who read. I can’t say many times his essays made me question-and usually change-my thinking, my assumption that what others wrote must be true. And Matt isn’t one of those tough talking but chicken shity in person guys either. He goes on Imus and other programs, and defends his positions. Guys like that are always worth listening to. Matt Taibbi is badass
Matt Taibbi is the only guy trying to keep everyone honest. People in power, people with influence, and people who read. I can’t say how many times his essays made me question-and usually change-my thinking, my assumption that what others wrote must be true. And Matt isn’t one of those tough talking but chicken shity in person guys either. He goes on Imus and other programs, and defends his positions. Guys like that are always worth listening to. Matt Taibbi is badass
[...] Matt Taibbi vs. David Brooks (part 2) [...]
Pat Robertson was generally trashed in the MSM for his condemnation of the victims in Haiti, but David Brooks in his Brooks Brothers suit gets by with writing even worse racist tripe in the NYT.
To the people defending Brooks I would point out that he argued against sending money saying it wouldn’t do any good, but he didn’t talk about better ways to help except changing their culture through “no excuses” and “achievement oriented” programs that sound like indoctrination and blaming the victim.
The “don’t throw money at it” line is only used when the recipients won’t be giving anyone any big under-the-table paybacks, like for improving public schools here in the U.S. We are more than willing to throw money at and waste money on military spending and bailing out large companies. Brooks has taken a few true facts and used them in an intellectually dishonest way to conclude that we don’t have to help these people except to give them moral instruction.
Matt, very interesting article and sorry for the awfully late comment. Hope this isn’t irrelevant yet.
I’m sorry to say that I seriously disagree with you entirely on this issue and I think the line you have taken here is indicative of a dangerous dogmatic entrenchment of modern times which says “all cultures must be respected and all foreign aid is always good and anyone who says otherwise is just a racist and a selfish bigot who doesn’t want to give money to poor people”.
There’s nothing that Brooks says that suggests he wants us to turn our backs on Haiti or that we should divert our compassion elsewhere. The point is not that we should not help Haiti, but that we have to RETHINK how we help Haiti, since (and I don’t think we can deny the empirics) foreign aid in its current incarnation has not done a damn thing of substance for the people of Haiti.
Brooks makes entirely reasonable points about Haiti’s culture and they may be points that are offensive to some cosmopolitan sensibilities but they are reasonable nonetheless. I’m sorry to say that if I found anything offensive, it was your take on the issue. Unlike Brooks who at least tries to talk about Haitian culture in an adult tone, you patronizingly treat Haiti’s people and their culture like helpless child-like institutions that need to be protected from bad white men like Brooks. You also shy away from engaging with Haitian culture at all – I hope the reason for this is not that you only think of Haiti as a blank place-holder of stock black people for your anti-racist indignation whenever a conservative white male makes critical comments.
And the timing of the article? What better time to bring our attention to deficiencies in our current aid policy than at this time?
Anyway, that’s the end of my rant.
[...] him as today’s Hunter S. Thompson, some deride him as a self-indulgent hack. In any case, I thought his piece on David Brooks’ column on the Haitian earthquake was excellent, not because I hate Bobo [...]
[...] taibbi, m. - translating david brooks [...]
Matt, I love that Brooks measures his penis in one-third inches. Most men would round up to 4.5, but Brooks has the honesty to admit his is only 4.333333333.
Greg
[...] true of academic liberals who too often assume working class racism/homophobia while ignoring far more destructive (though more genteel sounding) discrimination coming from the top. How many liberals bemoan each [...]
[...] need a good, unapologetic rant) has lately been picking Brooks’s columns up in his teeth and shaking them back and forth until their necks [...]
[...] “Translating David Brooks.” True/Slant blogger Matt Taibbi’s response to Brooks. [...]
I like Taibbi’s blogs. But, I have to say that he is totally off-base here in his attack on Brooks. The attack is all about not liking Brooks’ position, rather than proving why it is wrong. Personally, I don’t think it is.
Unfortunately, Brooks is only speaking the truth. And, the longer “feel-good” liberals refuse to accept it, instead clinging to the party-line that “no one has the right to judge whether someone else’s culture is good or bad”, the longer countries like Haiti are going to continue to suffer the devastating poverty that they do. As for Brooks’ timing, maybe bringing his message to the fore at the very time when the most pain is being felt is actually the best way to promote real and positive change in Haiti.
Thanks Matt. I wrote a couple of emails today. One to Deborah Sontag and one to David Brooks of the NYTimes. Sorry for the length of the comment. I tried to cram in quite a few issues that bother me about the coverage of Haiti in the media. Note: you are not an embedded journalist and I hold you in high esteem for your integrity. Here is the one to Brooks:
Re: The Underlying Tragedy
Mr. Brooks:
Dead Iraqis had Judith Miller of the NYTimes as a seminal representative of media corruption, hypocrisy, and intellectual dishonesty. Dead Haitians have Deborah Sontag, David Brooks and oh so many other NYTimes “embedded reporters.”
When will you and the Western media cease and desist their racist characterizations of Haiti as “a corrupt society” — how dare you trow stones after US’ Wall Street thieves, the US bankers and mortgage “brokers” brought down the economies of the world with their dirty, bankrupt, and corrupt dealings in “derivatives” and other fraudulent “products?”
Another popular characterization of Haiti is that it is the “poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.” I wonder though; how much is the credit card debt of individual Haitians — probably minuscule to nonexistent… If all the markers were called in by the rapidly disintegrating and failing banks in the US, how would the individual American citizen be living? Maybe in a tent pitched in front of the White House, in the city (Washington, DC) with the Western Hemisphere’s highest HIV rate at 3%? The HIV rate in Haiti is not the highest (2.2%) Mr. Bill Clinton, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC… and neither is the crime/violence in Haiti the highest in this Hemisphere.
Mr Brooks, in the aftermath of the US financed and organized coupknapping of Haiti’s democratically elected president, where was your voice raised in protest at the scuttling of democratic principles? The unholy alliance of the US, France and Canada planned the coup at the Ottawa Initiative–no Haitian government official was invited to attend. They wanted Aristide out because he was a Liberation Theologist who was popular with the poor. He raised the pitiful minimum wage (to 38 cents/hr) and the cadre of poverty pimps howled in protest; he decried the “shadow government” headed by the US Embassy, USAID and other NGOs and “charities” and piously hipocritical church organizations and other foreign embassies and he was accused of being a dictator, drug dealer and thief. Never mind that Aristide had only demanded what was just; reparations (21 Billion) from France, the real thieves. France extracted an onerousness debt from Haiti for freeing the enslaved population and declaring independence–the US brought the “debt” and was the creditor for the last 11 years). The extortion was paid at a heavy price to Haiti’s development and sovereignty and was the start of the cycle of debt and dependency that has lead Haiti to this state of paralyzed impoverishment.
It is instructive to read the history of interventions and of US-Haiti policy ( http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=haiti ) in order to see the pattern of racism, greed, corruption, militarism and moral bankruptcy that has prevailed — on the part of the US. The US has collaborated with Haiti’s worst elements. Primarily the military, business interests/the morally repugnant “elite” to rob Haiti blind. They hope to keep Haiti’s people in ignorance. Those that seek education are miss-educated and indoctrinated by the Church and fed the colonial narrative that keeps Haitians at each others throats… that way the West can continue to pick at Haiti’s bones and stealing from this resource rich nation. http://bit.ly/l960t Starvation and “clorox” hunger drove Haitians to protest and demand the return of Aristide, yet the food riots in 2008 that is the direct result of US trade policies — the dumping of subsidized food in Haiti bankrupted local farmers and caused many to move into overcrowded shantytowns in Port-au-Prince (magnifying the tragedy of the deadly earthquake)–yet the US declared its 2004 intervention in Haiti, a success. http://bit.ly/9gCQbe Why? Because the goal of the intervention was to protect US “interests.” Mission accomplished. Government archives destroyed, foreign company contracts revised to benefit the multi-national corporations–the mining, mineral interest… a pliant Rene Preval installed, Fanmi Lavalas leaders systematically targeted and eliminated. The empire was targeting the Haitian constitution for revisions ( http://bit.ly/cWXOll ) — when fortuitously (for the enemies of democracy) this catastrophic earthquake occurred. Game. Set. Match. Right?
But not so fast. Demands are getting louder for the return of Aristide. A taste of democracy has left its mark with the population and defend it they will.
The real tragedy is that the NYTimes never raises a voice in defense of the people of Haiti and their humanity. Their right to exist and live free of the shackles of debt and dependency. The Paris Club is generously asking Haiti’s donors to forgive the debt — now that they own Haiti. The US military has seized control of Haiti’s airport and staked its claim by staging a show of force landing of paratroopers at the destroyed National Palace. They marched out to do their appointed duties as conquerors of the oppressed and suffering mass of Haitians gathered on the periphery of the Palace. Haitians proud faces refusing to portray the humiliation, hunger and pain they felt. You see the symbolism was not lost on Haitians gathered there that day, because these military men did not carry water, food or shelter.
Where was your voice when in the aftermath of the coup the international community (MINUSTHA) in alliance with assassins and thugs continued to try and destroy the country’s most popular party, Fanmi Lavalas… Jean Bertrand Aristide’s party? They indiscriminately massacred, disappeared and held its members as political prisoners in the disease infested jail in Port-au-Prince.
The slow and painful killing of Father Gerard Jean-Juste resulted from his false incarceration. The Haitian police held him for 7 months in a bogus conspiracy of lies and false accusation that they knew would not stick, but served the political purpose of scuttling his supporters political aspirations for Jean-Juste. The detention had a deadly consequence for the beloved Haitian hero priest. The progress of the deadly Leukemia that ravaged his body could not be turned back. Father Gerry was ill with Leukemia, but he died of indefinite detention. Thank you for your in depth coverage of his suffering and death NYTimes.
Where was the NYTimes when the Haitian police was targeting innocent peaceful marchers and members of Lavalas, who were calling for Aristide’s return? Where was the US media when MINISTAH was killing community organizers like Dred Wilme in the Cite Soleil massacre? http://bit.ly/c0woy3
Fanmi Lavalas members were/are targeted for death, disappearances and political incarcerations. The NYTimes was/is blind, deaf and mute to the people’s voice and plight. Even now they are being starved by the redlining of Haiti disaster zones. You see the aid is not distributed to those who live in the red zones. Aren’t they deserving of life and support in their dire circumstances?
The NYtimes is a tacit, implicit and on the record collaborator with killers, criminals and thugs (like Guy Phillipe and Louis Jordel-Chamblain. Guy is on the Feb 2010 ballot that is now postponed, FL is not –where is your outrage??).
The hypocritical NYTimes has bloody, bloody hands! You and your colleagues are on the wrong side of history.
Power to the people of Haiti. Democracy is one person, one vote. “Tout moun se moun” — every human being is a human being
Vive retour Aristid!
Chantal
http://www.thehaitianblogger.com
CORRECTION: The compensation for the loss of “property” to the French was taken over in 1915 by the US when they occupied Haiti. The French debt was paid off in 1947 by Haiti, so the time period when the US administered the independence debt that Haiti paid to France (1825-1947) was 32 years not 11.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/restitution4haiti/
Thanks!
CL
Who cares about timing. You think that some poor soul trapped under a ton of concrete is giving up hope because he might have heard about the Brooks column? Typical bleeding-heart bullshit thinking. I don’t like the man but Brooks made some good points, stuff you wouldn’t have considered. If the truth hurts it hurts and maybe they will consider taking all the money flooding into that area and invest in writing a building code and enforcing it.
At first, I did think it a bit harsh, but I do see how it would rile a person who’s seen the tragedy up close and personal and/or who has great empathy, as does Matt.
I think, had he gone to Haiti, exposed himself to the grief up close, he never would have penned that article. It’s likely his editors wanted something from him on Haiti.
I’ve never been a fan of Brooks. It fascinates me that most of the political pundits lack good insight, but I think here he has done about as well as I’ve seen him. Though his timing sucks.
-RLee
http://therleepost.blogspot.com
What is Matt Taibbi thinking, translating David Brooks into, “I, David Brooks, am doing my Christian best….” Is MT unaware that David Brooks is Jewish?
Matt, I like your article. Just one thing- David Brooks (in case you were being literal) is not a Christian, he is an atheist.
oops- I didn’t read to the end.
I learned about as much from this post as I learned from Manderlay.
Liberals are racists and bigots too so having a liberal affirmed Brook’s racism is not a newsflash from the optics of Black folks like me..
yeesh. you think by using profanity/belittling his sexual organs, your point is made more valid.
his point is not that an earthquake is haiti’s fault. his point is that the RESULTING DEVASTATION, completely disproportionate from devastation that results from earthquakes in developed countries, displays a discrepancy- points to factors other than just a natural disaster. Why do earthquakes in California not result in a hundred deaths? Because our buildings don’t collapse, our infrastructure remains strong, our relief agencies are well equipped. Katrina was an example of a natural disaster that can devastate even a developing country- why? Not because the flood was stronger than any that have affected other countries, but because there was no preparation and weak infrastructure. He’s exploring the factors that go behind no preparation and weak infrastructure, he wants to hold people accountable, not place the blame on a monstrous natural disaster completely out of our control.
His comments may have been insensitive given their timing, but David Brooks was correct on every point. Liberals love to believe they’ve actually helped the human beings behind those pathetic black faces in publicity pieces for various charities. The truth on aid, and development efforts in general, are conveniently overlooked.
Note the recent riots in Haiti protesting foreign assistance since the earthquake, and particularly the resentment from the Haitian medical establishment. “How can we make money when they’re giving it away for free,” is how one top government doctor put it last week.
Truly.
Regarding Mr. Taibi’s defense of voodoo I’d like to point out that human progress is impossible as long as we afford religions unfettered control over people’s lives, or “respect” that none really deserve. We face and uncover the ugly truths of white religions quite bravely — intolerance of evangelical Christians, pedophilia in the catholic church. But once the practitioner’s skin darkens all criticism is off limits, e.g. Islam and Voodo.
Ditto for social dynamics. My wife runs a charity that is active in the Dominican Republic, where many Haitian refugees live. The cruelty of Haitian parents towards their children is legendary.
We can continue to hide our heads in the sand regarding third-world problems. But our eagerness never to offend anyone, particularly dark-skinned people, to the point of allowing them essentially to mass-murder themselves and their own kids, serves nobody and nothing but liberals’ innate sense of guilt.
Brooks is a garden variety bigot his comments about Haiti were wrong and full of contempt for thier humanity…
Brooks analysis was contaminated by his contempt and bigoted insights on the culture and people of Haiti not only was his timing offensive but it was a major theme of his overview and as such the talking points which did have merit were clouted by his petty racism. Brooks’s premise that a culture of a government enhances or becomes a detriment to development is true and reflects how 3rd world venues are impacted by the exploitation of governments with the mindsets of people like Brooks..
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