How Haiti became poor | Hacker News Reader

How Haiti became poor

kottke.org

19 pointsdevy15 comments

Not to excuse or condone the president's behavior in any way, but it is not at all obvious how the word "shithole" is racist. I take issue with this because this word is so overused that it is losing any meaning.

There are many light-skinned countries that can also be considered as undesirable places to live. Poverty, violence, and corruption can be quite common outside the western world (e.g. many post-soviet countries). 90s Russia is a prominent example of one such place, but lets just say Russians generally have a fair complexion.

I don't think it was meant to be an objective descriptor, but technically Haiti does suffer from a lot of sanitation problems

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/18/490468640...

The word "shithole" isn't racist. And any of my Haitian neighbors will confirm, anywhere you go in Haiti, you put your life in your hands if you try to drink tap water, which by common definition is what makes a place a shithole.

That's not the issue. Ok. Haiti is a shithole, which is why my city is full of Haitians taking any work they can and sending money home to make the country fit for safe human habitation.

What Trump was saying is that because Haiti is a shithole, my Haitian neighbors should be rounded up and sent back there, and prevented from what they're currently doing for their country with remittances from the US.

There is no way to explain that comment as anything but pure distilled racism.

>> "What Trump was saying is that because Haiti is a shithole, my Haitian neighbors should be rounded up and sent back there"

You're projecting.

Trump's comment was that we should discourage immigration from places with low-skill labor. There was nothing in his statement about rounding up existing legal immigrants and revoking their citizenship.

You're giving him way too much credit.

And he's already taking concrete steps to round up Haitians and send them back.

Your comment asserted that Trump's purported "sh--hole" comment referred to rounding up legal US immigrants and revoking their citizenship.

I challenged that; the President was referring to discouraging immigration from nations with low-skilled labor. (It has nothing to do with existing immigrants. It has nothing to do with race; otherwise we would have to say President Obama was an anti-Semite for his administration calling[0] Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu "chickensh--")

Now you are saying that the President is taking steps to round up legal Haitian immigrants and revoke their citizenship. That doesn't address the issue about the "sh--hole comment" -- you're moving the goalposts -- nor did you cite sources to make that assertion.

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-admin-moves-bar-hai...

Well? Justify this.

This is precisely what I'm talking about. It shows the President limiting the number of temporary work visas for low-skill workers.

The original comment said that the President was revoking citizenship for legal citizens based on race. That's what I challenged as false. And your link confirms this.

Where did he say anything about low skill labor?

Now you are projecting

Nope. Read the article[0], the temporary work visas on the chopping block apply only to low-skill workers without higher education.

[0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-admin-moves-bar-hai...

The use of the word shithole to describe the conditions of certain countries is vulgar but not necessarily racist. It was a combination of his connection of Latin American and African countries to shitholes in contrast specifically to Norway. And the root of the problem and what made it racist is the implication that people from shithole countries weren’t worthy of emigrating to the US solely for the misfortune of having been born there. Which would be merely bigoted in the absence of his description of the entire continent of Africa as a shithole, but is racist in the full context of his tirade.

Furthermore, to give the president the benefit of the doubt, one would have to ignore the copious evidence of his racism from his days as a landlord refusing to rent to black people, to his race baiting in the Central Park rape case, to his racist tirades against Mexicans in the campaign, etc, etc.

Trump is an oaf, a bigoted blowhard, even a monster, and it should be no surprise that his comments are totally un-presidential.

But all this self-righteous indignation is a bit much. The simple truth is that some countries can indeed be fairly described as "shitholes", and rarely is it down to just poor weather or ugly landscape.

This article seems to focus exclusively on making out Haiti, and other poor counties, to be the victims of evil wealthy western powers, but there are usually many factors affecting wealth and poverty, including climate, location, natural resource wealth.

Of course colonialism and "western imperialism", globalization, geo-politically induced instability and conflict, etc, are definitely huge factors, and very often cited as here, but I think another large, and often ignored factor, is the society itself; the culture, government, institutions, and civil society and community spirit (or lack thereof) that the people of that country build for themselves.

Not that I've been to Haiti, I'm sure it's as good a place as anywhere if you ignore the lack of "development".

This article starts off with several politically-charged insults and accusations against the President, claiming he is a racist.

As the (never-Trump) news outlet National Review posted today[0], we can't have a productive conversation that starts from a faulty premise based on politically-charged opinion.

"There’s another reason the media are labeling Trump himself racist: This alleviates the requirement to honestly assess his actions and statements. Rather than analyzing whether a given statement is racist, or whether it could be interpreted otherwise, the media simply use Trump’s alleged racism as a skeleton key answering every question. Trump says he wants immigration restrictions? It must be racism. He slams radical Islamic terrorism? Racism. He condemns violence in inner cities? Racism. Each of those statements could more plausibly be read as non-racist, but the charge of racism papers over all shoddy analysis."

[0]: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455467/media-call-trum...

Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, swims like a duck, etc.

Actions speak louder than words, but the words are already loud and bad enough.

Haiti's fate is a textbook example of Realpolitik at work, where the economic might of world powers was used to punish a breakaway state that won its freedom through military rebellion to disincentivize other colonies from doing the same. The message was simple: there are other ways we can make you miserable; and it worked to great effect. Once the stage was set, it was difficult for Haiti to climb out of the hole on its own, so it became trapped in a cycle of poverty and misery and the resulting power squabbles, which were occasionally compounded by outside interference, or terrible luck.

As to why Haiti is still poor, the reason is even more sinister. Haiti has the highest number of operating NGOs per capita, yet remains rather dysfunctional in every way. This state of affairs has been criticized from several perspectives [1][2][3]. For the most of the last 40 years, the international community has been allowing Haiti's own government and Haiti's own people very little voice and control over funding of how aid is distributed, distrusting the underpowered government as corrupt, and the people as helpless. But if international and private-sector governance results in such underwhelming outcomes too, perhaps it's time to let the people of the state take a larger role in their own destiny, instead of being treated as an untrustworthy group with no agency.

[1] https://nacla.org/news/ngos-and-business-poverty-haiti [2] https://www.npr.org/2011/01/13/132884795/the-nation-how-ngos... [3] https://newint.org/features/2012/01/01/haiti-money-ngo-un

Reply on news.ycombinator.com