The reason that African starvation isn’t in the news is the same reason that coverage of the Iraq war’s deaths is being more and more muted as time goes on; something that happens every day isn’t news.
“Africa is a shithole” is not news. Africa has been a shithole since before any of us were born.
That doesn’t minimize the problem, but if you expect people to react to problems because of their status as NEWS, you’re looking at it the wrong way.
In my opinion, many, if not most, Americans seem to respond when there is a name and a face to the tragedy. As long as we don’t personalize it, we can and do block it out and remain ignorant of how bad some of the situations really are. But there is no “average American” any more that there is an “average Doper.”
Jim Wooten’s award winning book We Are All the Same took my breath away with love for one child. Then it smacked me with the reality of what is happening. I don’t know how anyone could read that book and remain unchanged and indifferent.
You are lying to yourself if you think that you can’t make a difference. Your “community” is as small or as large as you choose for it to be.
But it is not the fault of the public if the media choose to dummy down the news broadcasts. Blame that on corporate greed.
I am sick of the focus on the missing girl of the month. It is a tragedy, but how many people disappear every day? What we need is a good celebrity trial, right?
Worse network news story of the week: The flipflop scandal at the White House. How dare those young women who were being honored show disrespect for the President by wearing such casual shoes in his presence? Who do they think they are? So glad NBC didn’t let that story get by without comment!
I know people can be disappointing and frustrating at times, but Americans are nothing if not well-intentioned.
The part of your argument I take issue with is the implication that the fundamental problem is American ignorance and apathy. America is a rich and powerful nation, but even if all Americans took a vow of poverty and sent their surplus income to the world’s poor, it wouldn’t make much of a dent.
Plus, many of the problems cited (hunger, disease, etc.) are worse in America than they are in, say, Sweden. And Sweden doesn’t send a dime to America. Does that mean Swedes are culpable for America’s problems?
Folks, we are America, the richest and most powerful country on Earth. We most certainly can make a difference. Our government is democratic, and each and every one of us makes dozen of choices- from what we buy to how we vote- that impacts the third world in a very real way.
I think one reason that we don’t like to see stuff about Africa is that we are uncomfortable with the whole damn place and don’t want to deal with. How many of us can say even a few meaningful words about Africa? Africa is a great void in our heads. We don’t know what went wrong, we don’t know what we can do, and frankly we don’t hold out much hope for them. Reminding us that Africa exists, much less that stuff is going on there, only disrupts the ignorant bliss we’ve been so carefully cultivating.
Another thing is that we all kind of know our lives ride on the backs of the third world. All the stuff we buy, all our wealth, all our great living standards, all our labor laws, all our environmentalism, etc. rely on the fact that we can get people in the third world to do all the dirty stuff. An American factory using indentured servitude, child labor and other abuses would be shut down in a second. But buying stuff from a factory overseas that have these same practices is A-OK. But we don’t like thinking about that. We prefer to assume that stuff shows up magically on our store shelves because we worked hard surfing the Dope and shuffling papers that day.
In other words, we don’t want to know this stuff because we know there is more we could be doing, and we don’t want to do that. It doesn’t take much to make a real difference in a lot of people’s lives. A water pump, a public access computer, a simple surgery- these things are all something we could probably afford to give and would measurably improve lives. There are plenty of people out there that have found worthy causes and give to them. There are plenty who have found the time to make a real a difference, even if their lives are busy. And there are plenty more who take a minute before they act to think about what they are doing to the third world.
We know this, and it implicates us.
One small fact I learned via the BBC the other day. Kenya used to be self sufficient in rice. Sometimes it even managed to export some. Then came along subsidised American rice. The Kenyan farmers could not compete with these prices , they all stopped growing the stuff and they are all out of work and are dependant on hand-outs.
That’s quite a chauvinistic (and possibly racist) statement. Africans can’t help themselves, but America sure can help them!
You’re not going to get meaningful words about Africa from the news. You’ll get news about Africa from the news. And that Africa is a hell-hole and has been for the last 75 years? Not news. And if put on the news, people will say, “Yep, hell-hole,” and change the channel.
Also not news. Furthermore, I have yet to see any evidence that applying Western-style labor laws to impoverished countries helps bring them out of poverty. Pulling contracts to impose our labor laws on them certainly won’t help them. Their laws will change when their wealth changes the equation that children working is preferable to children bringing that income into the family. That’s how it happened in industrialized countries, not because of busybodies in other countries wagging their fingers.
Yes, there’s more that can be done, but will it make a real, long-term positive impact? Will a water pump make a difference if there’s no company there to drill a well? Will it make a difference if there’s no one who can service it? Will it make a positive or negative impact if it placates people so that they’re less likely to rebel against the dictator who is making their country a hell-hole?
Or as Rayne Man just pointed out, what if a shipment of pumps puts the local pump company out of business? Did that make a positive or negative impact?
Does it make a positive or negative impact if the dictator determines the location of the pump and gives it to the vilage that has been more subservient?
The US could skim off most of its GDP, impoverishing itself, and send it to Africa. This will somewhat improve living conditions for a short time. Then those same base conditions that cause the impoverishment in Africa will cause it to be impoverished again.
No fair arguing from the extreme case. The US could take just 10% of the money spent on the Iraq war, put it in the hands of organizations who actually study conditions in Africa, and probably get way better results than we did in the 1960s by trying to make 'em all 'Murrican and stuff.
But I guess we got one chance and blew it. So never again. :rolleyes:
So, glilly, are you about to argue that things are working out great as is?
Our economy is closely tied to many economies throughout the world. You can bet that if we changed our trade policies (or buying habits) huge swathes of the world would change. We vote with our dollars in the third world. For better or for worse, our daily decisions affect people’s lives on the other side of the world. We CAN choose to be aware of this and try to make decisions that do good.
Actually, the history of Africa in the last 75 years is pretty interesting- lots of drama, lots of troubling questions, lots of lessons, lots of colorful characters and lots of hope to be had. Most of the reason why we don’t find news about it interesting is because we have no background and so it’s all kind of meaningless to us. Do you remember learning about Africa in school? Neither do I.
Child labor didn’t end in America until there was widespread outcry. Indeed, a lot of America’s early industrial wealth was due to our use of child labor. Obviously we simply can’t legislate child labor out of existance around the world, nor is child labor always an entirely bad thing.
But that doesn’t mean we look at some seven year old matchstick maker and say “Sucks, huh? Well, maybe your great-grandkids will have it better.” There are ways to build and support ethical companies that make sure their workers have a future. There are ways to work with people who understand that labor systems in place around the world to find out how best to improve worker’s lives with minimal disruption on our part.
Mostly what I’m saying is that it is a lie that America does not indulge in what are considered human rights violating labor practices. We simply induldge in them outside of our borders. If you are cool with that, hey, so be it. But people ought to know where their stuff comes from and how it is made.
I forgot to mention another reason why we don’t like to think about the Third World- the answers arn’t easy. We like things that fit in nice little ten second sections on the news. Making a difference requires a lot of thought, a fair amount of money, and a long time. Your right that it’s not a matter of just dropping off a few water pumps and calling it a day. And your right that it’s wrong to assume we know what is best for people living in vastly different situations than ourselves.
But there are plenty of people out there on the ground working with people and figuring this stuff out. For example, giving a bicycle-rickshaw driver twenty bucks will make him happy but probably won’t improve his life. Nor will passing him up and not taking a cycle rickshaw at all. But there is an NGO that designed an easier-to-pedal bicycle rickshaw and leases them on a very affordable rent-to-own basis. That way rickshaw drivers don’t have to give up most their pay to the middlemen that own the rickshaws, and they still get to keep their livelihood.
Another example is that widespread adoption caused some nasty situations in Guatemala where kids were essentially being sold- sometimes against their parent’s will. But organizations like Casa Guatemala are working hard to provide a place for orphaned and abused children, stay self-sufficent, and work closely with the local community to make sure that it’s not just a bunch of foreigners swooping down determining whats right for people. In Casa Guatemala’s case they provide employment for a nearby impoverished village and free schooling for locals in exchange for use of their land.
So yes, while charitiable work can sometimes have bad consequenes, it is a total cop out to say charity doesn’t help anything. Charity is helping thousands of lives around the world daily. Yes, we need to give wisely. But no, not giving is not any sort of “real charity”.
In Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, in which he relates the experience of his overland journey from Cairo, Egypt to Capetown, SA, he observes that the self-sufficient, if technologically laggard Africans he knew during his time with the Peace Corps in the mid-Sixties have, in the course of adopting European-style intensive agriculture and habitation methods, become dependant on handouts from their benefactors and end up handing over natural resources they could be using themselves for pennies on the, er, Euro. Lacking the education and capital necessary to successfully maintain intensive farming and participate successfully in the international market, and having lost the skills that permitted past generations to produce life’s necessities from their own labors, they’ve become subordinate to aid agencies and the alms they provide. He also observed that, unlike his experience in the Peace Corps where volunteers worked along side Africans, the major UN and European aid personnel were largely contemptuous of their “clients” and seemed to benefit more from the process, in terms of salaries, job security, and the shiny new white Land Cruisers which consistantly failed to offer the author a lift, than the ostensible beneficiaries.
Historically, I suppose one could make similar observations about medieval Europe; no doubt, had an Arabian or Chinese world news service existed then the commentators would be reading headlines such as, “Another outbreak of cholera in Venice this week leaves over a thousand dead,” “Famine decimates residents of the Frankish countryside,” “London continues to suffer losses from plague-related deaths; experts project 87.2% reduction in population by 1430,” “Ethnic clensing continues in Spain as tens of thousands of minority Judaics flee their homes,” et cetera. Until about 1550CE I think just about everybody else would have been willing to write off Europe as a continent full of disease-invested superstitious illiterates with poor toliet habits and atavistic manners.
Stranger
Who the heck is Natalee Holloway? Ah, a little girl gone missing. Very sad, next? People in Africa are still starving. Very very very sad, thank goodness I’ve made a donation to the proper charities, next? See, I can give both situations an appropriate reaction. I’m talented that way.
Also, let’s not forget that there are people, children included, starving to death every damned day right here in America. I’ve taught them and it is goddam awful. So while I am saddened about people in other countries, I’ll concentrate the majority of my efforts where I’ve a more than a snowball’s chance in hell of directly effecting a positive change and clean up the mess in my own back yard.
We can’t win for losing on this one. If we leave them the freedom to govern themselves, we’re smacked for letting people die even when we could help. If we go in and make things right we’re branded the World’s Police and/or those Bastard Americans shoving their way of life down everyone’s throat.
I work exactly half a mile from a third world country and even went to grade school there. It’s hard to imagine but if you made maquiladoras stop hiring children it would make their situation worse. The kid can’t work, can’t go to school (and what good is an education if you’ve starved to death before graduation anyway?), and without that income the whole damned family starves. Workers in the U.S. send huge amounts of money to their families back home. The work they do here is tough work, but it’s paradise compared to what they’d be doing back home and for starvation wages, too. The corruption in Mexico is awesomely, staggeringly enormous. You could paper the whole damned country with pesos three inches thick and a year later the exact same people would be rich, the exact same people poor.
You know what is helping conditions in Mexico improve? Companies from around the world building factories down there, sometimes hiring gasp very young teens. When you do that, sure you haven’t fixed the problem, but you have built a step or two upon which the next generation can build. It’s the whole ‘teach a man to fish’ idea spread across a long stretch of time. Patience grasshopper.
As for the whole hating or not hating Americans thing from upthread. With tongue-in-cheek just a bit, the way I’ve looked at is-- I hate Americans, but you I like. Collectively, Americans can be jackasses ocassionally, but talk to us individually and we’re some of the best SOBs you’ll ever meet.
I guess my calling Africa a hell-hole gave you that impression (?!?).
I suppose that’s where we differ. I agree that our buying decisions do make a difference. Where you find the lowest wages, the worst working conditions, and the worst violations of what we would consider labor laws, you find the worst economic troubles. Whereas you seem to argue that these symptoms should be fought by not buying goods from these areas, I belive that cutting off income to them will not help the problem. Perhaps you will render some children unemployed, thereby taking them out of the factory, but you’ve also deprived the country of a revenue source, making it less likely there will be a job for the same child when he is an adult.
Granted.
Labor laws didn’t change in the US before they did because we couldn’t “afford” them before. Those laws will change in those countries when it becomes better for the children, on average, to not work than to work. And it will take outcry in that country for it to happen, not outcry from across the Atlantic.
If companies raise their own standards for minimum wages and working conditions, they will find a larger workforce, some better workers than you can find in the most basket-case countries. If they have crappy workers or better workers for the same price, which will they choose? I think they should chose the basket-casers, which they won’t do over the long term if they don’t have a cost incentive to.
That’s a good point. I personally think that anything but normal price signals will hurt the worst case countries in favor of not-so-bad-off countries.
This to me still smacks of chauvinism. They have to be helped by us and our NGOs. They can’t help themselves. Look at that stupid rickshaw driver who couldn’t figure out a different place to buy or rent a better rickshaw or find another job. Good thing there was an NGO there to help.
I look at charity and think some helps (mostly in the short term), some hurts (mostly in the long term). It’s close to a wash. But I do not like the implication that the reason these countries are poor is because of what we do or don’t do. That’s condesending and chauvinstic. Western countries crawled out of poverty without the help of NGOs, and African countries can also.
The ideas that with just a little more money from us NGOs can do studies and focus more on poverty stricken areas to me leaves the ugly taste of racism in my mouth. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you’re racist, but I do get the queasy vibe from the idea that Africa needs us to study and probe and fund them to make things better.
So I also don’t like the theme that if we just knew more about Africa we could help them more.
The problems in Africa are not weather. Drought isn’t the problem, farming isn’t the problem, lack of food isn’t the problem. Africans are not stupid, they know how to farm, they know how to deal with weather.
We give. TONS. Donations and help come from all over the world, and a large chunk of that comes from the USA. The problem is politics, civil war, warlords, and genocide. The only reason anybody starves to death over there is because someone, some government, some rival tribe wants them to.
I think most people know this know and throw their hands up in exasperation. What’s the solution other than going over there ourselves and forcing the rule of law? We tried that in Mogadishu, we’re trying it now in Iraq. It’s not an easy sell.
I only found out about it by reading the AP new source, and I only found out a few days ago. I don’t watch much TV news though so I don’t know if this is being covered. I donated some money to the friends of the world food program to help, but it wasn’t alot.
I posted this thread more as a reaction to what I saw (or didn’t see) on TV rather than to generate a debate, but there have been some interesting arguments made by people. To clarify, I didn’t mean that we need to be outraged at what is happening in Africa, or even surprised by it. But I think people have it wrong when they say that the news channels aren’t reporting it because it’s not ‘news’. I think the responsibilty of all news gathering and dispensing organisations is to inform the public of current affairs. For example Natalee Halloway stopped being news ages ago, but it’s still being reported. Same goes for Michael Jackson, the guy who killed his wife in California (Peter Something?)…whatever the flavour of the day is. I learn more about what is going on in the world around me through the half hour of BBC World Service than I ever do watching the cable news channels. I remember seeing a clip titled ‘80 seconds around the globe’ or something to that effect on Fox. That’s it? You have only 80 seconds to spare through 24 hours on world affairs.
I don’t condemn news channels for concentrating on local news (we have local news 3 times a day like everywhere else), or the networks for predominantly covering national news, but it is important to inform the people in depth of what is going on in the world today. I saw more vilification of Bono and Geldof over the Live 8 thing, than a news piece examining the underlying problems in Africa and why we haven’t been able to improve the situation in 20 years. Or why this concert is unlikely to fare any better. It is sad that I have to depend on a foreign channel to give on ground reporting (and thats just reporting, not investigative journalism, though the Beebs does that better too).
The only time we get in depth coverage is when matters affect a national debate (like S. Korean scientists making important progress on stem cell research), or when the US is actually generating international news (Iraq, G8).
Lastly, I don’t want people to know about what goes on in this world because they can all rush to do their bit to help. Hell, I don’t give to charity and I am not going to start until I am myself financially stable. But I make this decision being as well informed as I can be about how other people live and what their problems are. That is basically the part I was angry at - wilfully keeping important news (i use the word generally) items about the rest of the world, when it is so easy to do otherwise. The news organisations have a duty to keep the people informed. Whatever decision an individual makes after that point (about anything…) will at least not be born out of ignorance.