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Haiti in the news
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 01:04 pmThis has been so predictable. Crying children. Miracles of saved children. Crying women. Women stuck in the rubble, making me wonder what complete asshole of a photographer prioritised taking a picture over helping. White people in uniforms helping. And dogs helping, too.
The stories in pictures as seen by me in onine versions of papers and magazines has a pretty predictable pattern common to all disasters - victims are always female, people showing emotions are usually women, looters are usually male, people helping are usually white. Still, this earthquake killed about two hundred thousand people, and some of them are bound not to have been young, attractive women. And even those nameless, storyless women who are crying and being saved and being tended to by white saviours now are bound to get up and go out and search for their families, find their children, bury their dead. They may dig through rubble in the hope of finding someone still alive even today, and help organise the people come to help, because they are bound to know her home better than the foreign white saviours. And then they will help rebuild homes, and then go back to their lives as farmers or doctors or servants or teachers.
In many newspapers, it seems as though the Haitians don't do anything apart from lying half-naked and dead in mass graves, stumbling around in a daze, shooting each other and going looting, while white people are helping and Keeping Order. The earthquake was a horrific tragedy, and its sickening that this kind of reporting apparently helps to get people to donate.
The stories in pictures as seen by me in onine versions of papers and magazines has a pretty predictable pattern common to all disasters - victims are always female, people showing emotions are usually women, looters are usually male, people helping are usually white. Still, this earthquake killed about two hundred thousand people, and some of them are bound not to have been young, attractive women. And even those nameless, storyless women who are crying and being saved and being tended to by white saviours now are bound to get up and go out and search for their families, find their children, bury their dead. They may dig through rubble in the hope of finding someone still alive even today, and help organise the people come to help, because they are bound to know her home better than the foreign white saviours. And then they will help rebuild homes, and then go back to their lives as farmers or doctors or servants or teachers.
In many newspapers, it seems as though the Haitians don't do anything apart from lying half-naked and dead in mass graves, stumbling around in a daze, shooting each other and going looting, while white people are helping and Keeping Order. The earthquake was a horrific tragedy, and its sickening that this kind of reporting apparently helps to get people to donate.
