Continue Eating, It's Just Haiti

The recent earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12th last month has occupied a place in everyone's mind as of late. The pictures are riveting: a child crying out in anguish with a gashed forehead, a mother sobbing while pointing at a pile of rubble (the presumed resting place of a family member), and desperate riots pushing and shoving for a handout of basic subsistence items. In accord with the amount of exposure, Americans have responded with warm hearts and gracious spirits; an estimated $523 million was donated to help in just under a month. This figure is worth celebrating, but a question lingers in my mind: would Americans, myself included, have done anything if the tragedy hadn't inundated the media and pop culture for the past month? My gut tells me no. Unfortunately, Americans generally respond to events in correspondence to the level of visibility an outside source provides instead of actively living a conscientious lifestyle that seeks to alleviate injustice daily.

When you see or hear stories about people abusing cuddly puppies or cute children, you usually react with outrage. Nobody likes Michael Vick. People who drown dogs go to, well... the dog house in our eyes. Even if we take no tangible action, our hearts usually ache with compassion; regardless of response, we can agree most people at least feel sympathy for obvious cases of injustice. The media knows this and has made caring down right accessible. How convenient for us.

We watch shows like ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and "participate", by sitting on a couch for an hour, in a life transforming process for a needy family who are provided with an American-dream-made-ready home. Popular movements such as TOMS (buy a hipster pair of shoes; a needy kid gets a pair too), Stop Genocide in Darfur (sign up to an email list; get an awesome T-Shirt) and Invisible Children (watch a well-produced video; post awareness links on your facebook) make it easy to get involved in an issue of injustice. No one faults the humanitarian aid these organizations provide. What they are doing is wonderful work, but you have to admit they tote incredible marketing strategies. They know people enjoy feeling like they are making a difference in the world.

Even Hollywood has caught the benevolence bug because it knows people will go to theaters to watch movies with themes of social injustice. Films like Blood Diamond, Hotel Rwanda, and Slumdog Millionaire leave people a remote click away from gut-wrenching plots based on the suffocation of mitigating circumstances. However, does anyone who is daily subjected to systems of injustice actually benefit from our observance of their plights while sitting on a comfortable theater chair? Not often. We might feel motivated to make a difference, or we even might be emotionally scarred for a couple of days. But this doesn't seem to help the people who are in a tough spot unless empathy translates into action and real involvement in such issues. In Hotel Rwanda there is a particularly jarring (and ironic!) scene in which this is highlighted:

Paul: I am glad that you have shot this footage and that the world will see it. It is the only way we have a chance that people might intervene.

Jack: Yeah and if no one intervenes, is it still a good thing to show?

Paul: How can they not intervene when they witness such atrocities?

Jack: I think if people see this footage they'll say, "Oh my God, that's horrible," and then go on eating their dinners... What the hell do I know?

Jack's response might seem cynical, but don't people do this every day: see an issue of injustice on TV... feel a moment of sympathy... and return to their lives of normalcy. Or in Haiti's case, see a picture on TV... feel a moment of sympathy... send a text message for the Red Cross... and then return to eating dinner.

Of course the response to Haiti isn't bad in of itself: $523 million is nothing to sneeze at, but I wonder why it takes constant coverage and the unlikely trio of Jay-Z, Bono, and Rihanna performig on national TV for us to notice a disaster of such epic proportions. Even Barack Obama's State of the Union Address let Haiti know not only were we aware of its plights, but we were responding. In fact, Barack thinks our response of benevolence is part of what defines us as Americans:

"...that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people – lives on... in all the Americans who've dropped everything to go some place they've never been and pull people they've never known from rubble, prompting chants of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A!" when another life was saved."

You have to wonder whether the victims being pulled out of the rubble cared about the nationality of their rescuers and whether they thought America had been doing a good job of "fundamental decency" before the earthquake when Haiti was the poorest country in the western hemisphere, clean drinking water was scarce, basic education was a luxury, child labor was prevalent, and forced prostitution was easy to find. Or perhaps you should ask the same question to a resident of a Brazilian slum, a child sex-slave in India or one of the mind boggling 1,768,500 people directly effected during the past year by over ten natural disasters in countries like Indonesia, Albania, Tanzania, Vietnam and Ghana with a death count of 1411, a total cost of damages around $4 billion and a sum of 12.92 million donated by the United States of America in response.

Working to reverse systems of ongoing injustice will never be as sexy as a celebrity benefit concert, as dramatic as a Hollywood movie or as easy as a text message, but when help is just a click away, people lose contact with the life beat of the real people who are enslaved to their situations. The only way to stop "feeling bad" and move to a place of intentional action is to actually engage the people who are stuck in their positions of helplessness. Afterward, perhaps you can start a cool internet movement to raise awareness among other idealistic and inactive Americans.