So the robber who says: "If hadn't stolen your paycheck, you would have drunken it all away" is perfectly in their rights.
> Haiti has been the victim of injustice. The indemnity was immoral, and France should be ashamed of it. The US Occupation of Haiti abused many Haitians, and I, an American, am ashamed when I see photos of Charlemagne Peralte nailed to a door.
> But these projects are trying assign greater moral weight by claiming exaggerated economic consequences. I can condemn the Haitian indemnity for the injustices they were. But I worry that unnuanced articles like what the NYT has been publishing will cheapen those past injustices by attracting critics who believe that disproving some of the articles' claims then disproves all of them
The thing about this is he's not challenging the bare facts - that France was the force taking resources from the Haitian people. That agreed. He's challenge the conceptual framework; "if France hadn't done this, someone else would have". Whether one agrees or disagrees with this change, it's not a factual question and so his hand wringing about disproofs seem basically disingenuous.
It's not addressed to the simpletons who can't escape childish black-and-white thinking in which reality doesn't exist outside of the ammunition it provides for taking sides.
Tldr: it's ludicrous to hear the claim "reparations weren't responsible for Haiti's underdevelopment" and conclude "OH so you think the reparations were good??"
This is not saying, "reparations weren't responsible for Haiti's underdevelopment". Money paid is economic opportunities lost. France was benefiting from the payments and Haitians were suffering.
The argument being made is that this is either insignificant or OK because if France had not done this, Haiti would have been underdeveloped some other way.
It's pretty exactly analogous to thief that steals from you on Friday and when confronted on Monday says "I'm not responsible for you being broke, you would have lost the money some other way". That's sort reprehensible even if it's true. Let I repeat even if it's true.
1. The thief steals from you on your way to the bank, where you have a history of making on-time loan payments. The theft causes you to default on your loan and lose your car which leads to you losing your job.
2. The thief steals from you on your way to the tavern, where you have a history of drinking your paycheck.
Wouldn't you agree that in scenario 1, the thief owes you more compensation than just the money he stole?
Imagine if I said "If France hadn't forced Haiti to pay for its freedom, Haiti would have become a world leader in semiconductor manufacturing, like Taiwan". Do you have any evidence against that claim? Can you see why the extent of the damage is relevant for determining how France should make up for it?
France doesn't care. They're not going to pay. They still have colonies for that matter. Their museums aren't going to be losing plundered artifacts any time soon. But it's interesting that the argument against Haiti being able to ever rise out of its colonial mire was the fact they nationalized the plantations where they had been enslaved and doled them out to Haitians.
Maybe the fact the US sent marines to seize assets from the Haitian treasury (to ensure France got those payments) impacted their ability to adopt new technologies as they became available. Who's to say?
"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there." — Malcolm X
This is my point. Nobody is saying it's "okay". Facts are _upstream_ of the normative claims people use them to support, and don't always lead to conclusions that you can predict from kneejerk, nonsensical assumptions of the sort you're making.
A historian can object to the NYT (allegedly) explicitly making an incorrect _factual_ claim; that's practically his damn job! The only person rushing to project an agenda onto it so that you can get high off of outrage is you. Before we can make detailed normative decisions about reality, we need to understand the facts that underlie them.
> That's sort reprehensible even if it's true. Let I repeat even if it's true
Even the assumption that this exonerates the French doesn't make any sense! It's trivial to frame this as "the French further damaged an economy that was already at a disadvantage relative to its peers"! You're throwing away the truth for a "benefit" that doesn't even make any sense!
I apologize for the pointed language, but I can't think of anything in modern discourse that I loath more than this revolting focus on what factual claims _sound_ like instead of what they actually mean and how they contribute to our picture of the world. The world is _complicated_. Facts don't always lead you to the conclusions that this childish kneejerk style of analysis assumes they do. There are a lot of decent, serious people trying to understand the world and make it better, and it is _precisely_ this alternative-facts approach that is poisoning our modern discourse.
Now, looking at the series of instable and corrupt regimes the country had since independence, the more apt analogy would be that it was smart from the bank's (France) point of view to foreclose the property before thieves broke in and stole the TV and copper wire. If you're looking for the TV by the way, there's a man called Duvalier who knows exactly where it is.
Even recently, Wyclef Jean's humanitarian foundation (the same person who tried to ran for presidency in Haiti) was found to be diverting an impressive amount of funds to... Himself!
The issue is cultural. But that's certainly not a position that will be popular with the NYT's readership.