David Brooks’ Hubris
Featured, Social Justice — By Ian Barnes on January 20, 2010 at 12:00 amThe horrifying devastation that was unleashed in Haiti following the Januar
y 12th earthquake has shocked us all. Relief groups have mobilized, people are praying and donating money, and many people are also asking questions. Why has this happened? What can we do about it right now? Can we do something that will make the next earthquake have less of an impact? We know that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. We also know that an incredibly large sum of aid money has poured into the country over the last several decades that has done little to raise the average Haitian standard of living. Many people are rightly saying, “we want to help, but we want our help to have a lasting, sustainable impact.” Economists and development specialist of all stripes have also joined the discussions. These are people who face these tough questions on a daily basis and who have worked in their respective fields for years. For the most part, these questions have gone unanswered or have been answered unsatisfactorily. However, one person is convinced that he knows both why this happened, and how our help can have a lasting impact. David Brooks, in his weekly column at the New York Times makes two major points about the destruction in Haiti, why it was so bad, and what can be done about it: Haitian culture is to blame for the destructive impact of the earthquake, and a paternalistic approach to future aid is what is needed to increase the Haitian standard of living, thus preventing this from happening again.
This short article will not attempt to point why, exactly, this happened; neither will it will defend previous aid programs or point out specific ways to help. It will merely look into the ideas that were postulated by Brooks. Let me also state for the record that I work in the international development field (currently in South Sudan), I am not a liberal, and I have no moral problem questioning another culture. But I do believe ideas have consequences, especially bad ideas.
What disappoints me most about Brooks’ article is his smug assurance that he has it all figured out, followed closely by his lack of humility in presenting his argument that culture is at the root of Haiti’s problems. Brooks starts out his assessment of the damage caused by the earthquake by noting the large amount of aid that has been spent in Haiti over the years. He selectively quotes from What Works in Development?, co-edited by aid-skeptic Bill Easterly, noting that economists have not been able to reach a conclusion as to what works in development to decrease poverty. Brooks concludes that because aid has failed to alleviate poverty or increase economic growth rates, there must be something else wrong with Haiti. It’s unfortunate that Brooks does not stop and ask exactly why aid has failed because aid programs fail for many reasons (Was it stolen by corrupt dictators? Was it used inefficiently?). For example, should it have been used to improve infrastructure, or to increase access to public health and education? Or maybe it should have been used to reform public institutions? Brooks does not look into those questions, instead he merely states that aid failed to alleviate poverty, and therefore determines that something else is wrong with Haiti.
Before Brooks pinpoints culture as the culprit, he notes that several factors worked against Haiti, but quickly brushes them aside as meaningless. First, there is Haiti’s “history of oppression, slavery and colonialism.” Not a big deal, says Brooks, Barbados had those same problems, and they are “doing pretty well.” “Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions,” declares Brooks, but whatever, so has the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic, which shares a border with Haiti, has “the same basic environment” as Haiti, but “with trees and progress.” These comparisons would serve us well if Brooks was comparing apples to apples, but he is not. Haiti and the Dominican Republic have different histories, they were colonies from different world powers, and they have had different leaders. Dominican Republic dictators Rafael Trujillo and Joaquín Balaguer were brutal just like Haitian dictators, however, “they did at least demonstrate some interest in building that country’s infrastructure, unlike the Duvaliers.”
Contrary to Brooks’ claim that they share the same basic environment, historian Jared Diamond, notes that the two countries actually have quite different environments, as well as social and political differences. To summarize Diamond’s points: Hispaniola’s rains come from the east, so the Dominican Republic side has more rainfall. The Dominican Republic also has better rivers, broad valleys, plains and plateaus and much thicker soils. By contrast, the Haitian side is drier, the area best suited for intense agriculture is much smaller than the Dominican Republic side, and the soils are thinner and less fertile. Diamond also notes that “all of those French ships that brought slaves to Haiti returned to Europe with cargos of Haitian timber, so that Haiti’s lowlands and mid-mountain slopes had been largely stripped of timber by the mid-19th century.” There are more key differences in Diamond’s article, but what’s included here is enough to show that any comparisons between Haiti and the Dominican Republic are futile. In short, if you had a choice between the two countries of where to be born, you would pick the Dominican Republic based on geography alone.
After casting off slavery, colonial history, bad governance, foreign invasions, geography and climate as non-informative, Brooks pinpoints Haiti’s culture as the ultimate source of their woes. Brooks sits in an office in New York City, writes about people he has never met, places he has never been, and something (development economics) he knows little about it. Yet he feels comfortable saying things like:
Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
There are at least four claims in that quote, but Brooks offers nothing of substance to back this up – even something anecdotal would have been nice. These statements are lazy journalism at best, and slanderous at worst. What exactly is the impact of voodoo religion? How are these high levels of social mistrust calculated? What exactly are these neglectful child rearing practices and what impact do they have on poverty? Brooks essentially belittles an entire national character without offering any evidence. It is tough love without the love. It is not the fact that Brooks is questioning culture that should bother us, it is the fact that he does so without offering anything of substance to support his ideas, and without it his ideas just look callous and crude (especially coming only two days after the earthquake). This is also important because ideas have consequences and statements like these give those who are already hard-hearted an excuse to continue ignoring the current situations of those living in poverty. It gives comfort to smug people who sit back and say “see, this is what happens when you have a backward culture.”
After establishing why Haiti has suffered such devastation after the earthquake, Brooks then precedes to tell us how to solve Haiti’s troubles: “locally led paternalism.” He makes his point by, again, comparing Haiti to another country, this time America. In America, Brooks states, we tried to fight poverty with money and it didn’t work, so now some people are trying something new in Harlem. Brooks doesn’t really describe these programs other than they “don’t take excuses,” and they “demand that poor people accept middle-class values.” Brooks’ conclusion is that these programs are apparently working in Harlem because of their paternalistic nature, so any future development in Haiti should also be paternalistic. (Brooks’ general preference for paternalism is a bit ironic considering he quotes from a book co-edited by Bill Easterly who is famous for denouncing top-down paternalistic approaches to aid, calling it the height of hubris).
The general idea of paternalism in development theory is often linked to benevolent dictator Lee Kuan Yew, who famously presided over Singapore’s economic successes from the 1960s to the 1990s. I suppose it would be nice if benevolent dictators were on sale somewhere, but they are not. And even if they were, there is the problem of sustainability. Sure, there might be short term gains, but what happens when all the Yews or the local paternalistic community leaders are gone? The concept of local or individual ownership and participation in a project is very important for long term success. In the long run, Haitians need development that brings them into the process, empowers them, and builds up their capacity to address their own needs.
Economists, development specialists and practitioners who critique Brooks’ ideas call them “overly reductionist,” overconfident, and “off the rails” – and those are the nice ones. Bill Easterly retweeted Brooks’ article with the tagline, “aging white dude shares ethnocentric opinions on what’s wrong with Haitian culture.” A long article on why Haiti is poor, including a discussion of voodoo practices can be found here. Tyler Cowen, economist from GMU, came up with a list of reasons why Haiti is poor, everything from crippling colonial debt to poor governance to culture and then states, “Overall I don’t find this set of possible factors very satisfactory. Is it asking too much to wish for an economics profession that is obsessed with such a question?” Is it also too much to ask for humility and caution from pundits before pronouncing the next Big Thing on the pages of the New York Times?
The point of this article is not to say why Haiti is so poor, why the destruction was so bad, or what, specifically, should be done about it. The point of this article is that the people, of all political stripes, whose lifework is to wrestle with these questions on a daily basis, do not know these answers, so how can we know with Brooks’ certainty what we should do about it? The answers to these complicated issues need to be more than blanket unsubstantiated statements about culture, and the solutions should be more than vague references to paternalistic programs in Harlem. We should all be cautioned by Brooks’ practice of calling correlations causation, and his misleading apples-to-oranges comparisons.
Brooks, however, did get one thing right: we do have a lot to learn about ending poverty. We don’t know all the causes of poverty or what all the right solutions are. This is why we need to listen to a wide range of people who are involved: economists, development specialists and practitioners, and last but not least, local people themselves. So do the Haitian people a favor; support an organization that works WITH the Haitian people and has a vision for long term sustainable change. Two great NGOs worthy of your consideration: Haitian Partners and Partners in Health. Not only will these organizations work to address immediate needs, but they will remain to continue working with the Haitian people to help enact long term change.
15 Comments
Are you saying that culture has nothing to do with their poverty, or are you saying you think that it has something to do with it, but less than Brooks thinks it does?
I read his article a few days ago and found it worthwhile, even if I don’t agree with every point. He surely knew when he wrote it that he’d be slammed for daring to blame the culture of a people group for its troubles, because it violates every tenet of political correctness. But PC talk, and being afraid to step on toes, should never keep anyone from acknowledging the truth.
It’s not so much acknowledging the truth as overstating the case to such a ridiculous degree that he loses credibility. You cannot make a statement like that without doing a thing to back it up. It’s extremely dangerous and extremely arrogant not to consider the power he wields as an arbiter of opinion.
Thanks for the article, Ian. I believe culture plays a significant role. I doubt that you are denying this. It would be absurd to. For example, if we consider corruption as an integral aspect of a country, we would say that it is part of its culture. If a culture is deeply corrupt, it will be economically stunted. The culture is partially to blame, especially since a corrupt culture often does not even recognize itself as corrupt. NOTE: I do not know enough about Haiti. I do not know if it is corrupt. I am using corruption merely as an example.
You are arguing for humility in our approach to the dilemma of solving the problem of poverty. I agree.
One other thing; I have not read Brooks’ article, but I hope that it mentions the intervention that the United States has performed in the last 20 years, which has often been tragically harmful to the Haitian economy and governmental stability. For example, check out this interview at democracy now posted today.
P.S. According to the organization that considers it their business to know these know these kinds of things, Haiti is the 11th most corrupt country in the world. Of course this is a hard thing to track, given the nature of corruption.
If only AIG was considered a nation… they’d chart.
(Sigh). We Americans are so adept at this sort of discourse. It’s just a high-flutin’ way of saying the girl got raped because of what she was wearing. Shame on her. Such talk serves primarily to absolve us of any responsibility (read guilt) to assist the hurting and contributes to the delusion that bad things like this won’t happen to us.
Thank you Ian for your excellent article. Op-Ed or not, if Brooks is going to make such serious allegations he should avoid such extreme oversimplifications.
I must mention, however, that your critique of his idea of “locally led paternalism” seemed problematic to me. Your critique of it jumps from his suggestion of “locally led paternalism” similar to that (as he sees it) in the Children’s Zone, and No Excuses Program to the paternalism of Lee Kuan Yew. You then eviscerate that type of paternalism as insufficient due to it’s lack of”local ownership and participation”.
While I don’t know that I buy Brooks’ argument that those two programs are effective solely due to their “locally led paternalism”, you can not honestly argue that those examples demonstrate a lack of local ownership or participation (even if he does use the hot-button word “paternalism”).
In short, whether his argument is bull or not, comparing The Children’s Zone to the paternalism of Singapore is comparing apples to oranges.
While I agree that Brooks’ op-ed went too far and that he has little authority to speak on the subject, I do agree with Brooks’ underlying conclusion, which I understood to be that it is important that, in helping Haitians rebuild, we look to some other models than we have in the past in our aid to the country. In my brief knowledge of Haiti, it is obvious that there is systemic injustice at play. As Richard Dahlstrom said, “it’s vital that all of us with means think long and hard, not about whether to invest, but about how to invest, so that our investment leads to changed lives and changed cultures, not just handouts.”
David Brook’s tends to analyze cultural values-and at his best, he challenges public policy that does not fit into cultural paradigms. His most resonant writing usually deals with American politics, and I agree with Ian here-and am highly uncomfortable with a catch-all analysis which wrongly blames the rich culture of Haiti for the poverty they live in. Brook’s, being a conservative, tends to work with and appreciate culture, not it…the exception here is interesting and I think it’s because he extends his opining to outside American boarders.
sorry- that should say “Brooks tends to appreciate and work with culture, not challenge it”
Indeed, it is important that we not just “hand out,” but the history of aid in the western world has often been a self-serving hand out (70s oil boom money that they wanted to invest – they often chose corrupt dictators; buying cold war allegiance no matter if the political system was opposed to ours; throwing money at a problem because we’d rather not look at how our systems aid and abet the injustices that cause poverty and destitution). This is our fault, not theirs. What we CAN do, is step out the way, decline to impose our own culturally-specific solutions, and honor and affirm the intelligence, resilience, and participation of the people who will remain after our outpouring of aid ceases. It’s not that we don’t have good ideas and solutions, but that if we impose them on people they’ll fail. We should have learned this lesson by now.
A quick anecdote, sadly it is true. I know of a church that went to one of those impoverished countries to “help”. They showed up and built the local pastor a nice new brick building because the church was meeting in a tent. They took many pictures, held many babies, and went home.
The next year they returned to take more pictures of “their” church and found 4 families living in the building and the church meeting in the same old tent down the road. They asked the pastor what happened and he told them the owner of the property demanded more money for rent, but since the church could not afford it they moved back to the tent.
The American “missions team” was enraged and asked why they weren’t told that the church did not own the property. The answer was simple, “Because you didn’t ask.” When asked what they needed the pastor said mats to sit on.
We can spend all the time in the world debating why Haiti is in the state it is in, but like Penny said, we can’t help them OUR way. Lets not make the same mistake with them that this church, and many other well intentioned savior complexed North Americans make every day throughout the 3rd and emerging worlds.
The very best people to be heading the relief efforts are the Haitians. Who knows the needs of the Haitian people better than their own? Now I am not saying we should leave the corrupt politicians nor the people on the take in charge, but rather the PEOPLE. If you want to give your money to help the rebuild look for groups that are headed, or working closely with the Haitian people. They cannot afford our egotism.
I think I agree and disagre with this statement. I have been counseling for many years, and what I have found is that, yes it is important for people to work things out for themselves, that is always best. Yet there are times where intervention is as equal critical because people are to close to the situation to make a clear and rational decision. I don’t give a wit about “was it an act of God or was it not”, or “did they diserve it or not”. That fact is it happened, now how is them best way to help with the situation and the lives of those who are left.
I meant to post this over the weekend, but apparently it didn’t work.
James:
This is more less what I don’t like about Brooks’ critique of Haitian
culture:
“It is not the fact that Brooks is questioning culture that should bother us, it is the fact that he does so without offering anything of substance to support his ideas, and without it his ideas just look callous and crude (especially coming only two days after the earthquake).”
So yes , I think culture certainly has something to do with poverty (along with a lot of other things), I don’t really know how much, nor does anyone really. I would really enjoy ready an intelligent argument about how changing Haitian culture would lead to decreasing poverty. Unfortunately Brooks does not do that.
arryq:
My point in linking ‘locally lead paternalism’ to Yew was just to point out the inherent danger of any paternalism (it was not to draw a direct comparison): it is dependent on the leadership skills of one person, and has a danger of breaking down once that person is gone. It doesn’t matter if that person is a dictator of a country or in charge of a tiny rural village. The benefit of having a community participating in, and taking ownership of development projects themselves is a much higher chance of being sustainable. The drawback is this type of development takes longer because it is from the bottom up. The siren song of paternalism is that positive change can happen much faster. So maybe one way forward is a combination of the two: strong leadership vision coupled with active community particiapation. I don’t know if Brooks’ examples demonstrate local ownership or participation or not. There will always be a tension between the top (paternal) and the bottom of any organization. So, I think, by definition if Brooks commends some organizations for being paternalistic then there will certainly be less “participation” by the bottom.
sara:
The only thing I would disagree with is your support for investing that changes culture. I’m not exactly sure how one would do this, but culture needs to change because people want it to change, not because someone from the outside thinks it would be a good idea. I think Penny hit the nail on the head when she said “What we CAN do, is step out the way, decline to impose our own culturally-specific solutions, and honor and affirm the intelligence, resilience, and participation of the people who will remain after our outpouring of aid ceases. It’s not that we don’t have good ideas and solutions, but that if we impose them on people they’ll fail. We should have learned this lesson by now.” We know aid has failed, but solutions will come from the bottom up, not the top down.
I honestly think Brooks cares about the people of Haiti and wants to help. But I think his certitude is what gets him in trouble. Since we don’t know all the answers, caution and humility, are what is needed most. There certainly are some people for whom some questions are off limits (culture, race, etc.), but my generation of development practitioners and economists is much more concerned about what works than offending someone’s delicate sensibilities.