first off, i apologize in advance for this play on paul farmer’s amazing book‘s title. i just am a little curious and frustrated at the portrayal of africa, latin america, asia and generally what some scholars call “the other world” (although most of the people on the planet live there)…
i am amazed at nicholas kristof’s post today in the ny times and thought it was exceptionally well written. as a matter of fact, since i don’t have cable and have been sickened by the presidential primaries, i was completely unaware of the misogynistic overtones of coverage on the clinton campaign until it was brought to my attention by judith warner. so, i was pleased to see such high-profile attention dedicated to redressing these wrongs. i mean, this attention to our american attitudes towards women is, in fact, what attracted me to his piece. while the call for obama to make a “sex” speech just as he did a “race” speech is a little misguided (should hillary have been obligated to make a “race” speech?), i get his drift. i firmly believe hillary should have made this speech herself early on in her campaign. i mean, a kristof commenter pointed out that hillary had made such a speech, but 1995?? in beijing??? gee, i think the american public were the intended audience of that effort…. are you kidding me?
so we have come to the first issue of perplexing powerlessness on the day: hillary’s inability to effectively counter the misogynistic attacks on her campaign. now, let me not trivialize this issue by placing all of the fault on her. however, she clearly could have addressed these issues forcefully on her own initiative. i mean, there are dozens of women in the media who did on her behalf (i just didn’t believe them until warner confronted me with the evidence). and we see that she did make such a speech. in beijing. in 1995. why couldn’t she refresh that effort and re-deliver it in, um, 2008? i mean, barack obama made an entire campaign off of twenty-year old inspiration documented in his first book. certainly she could have done the same for herself.
the second issue of powerlessness is our [american] perceptions of other humans on the planet. i am always a little troubled by portrayals of the “other world” (you know, where most people live) as being completely unable to help themselves or somehow stuck in the middle ages. to this effect, i believe mr. kristof’s advice to the obama campaign to do something about maternal mortality and women’s rights worldwide were taken the wrong way by some who commented on his post. now, of course i stopped reading when a fellow reader referred to some country named “zaire” (… LOL… we see how much he cares about africa… i wonder what you would think about my opinion if i said something about helping war-stricken women and children in czechoslovakia or yugoslavia?? LOL), and that we need to save the “500,000 american females [that] die right here in the USA every year as a result of abortions” instead… (now my friends should see why i read blog comments instead of comics or TV for entertainment. 500,000? as one example, in 2003, there were only ~800,000 abortions performed in the US… that stat alone should deflate any credibility this commenter hoped to wield)
i digress. my point is that while there are certainly problems in these parts of the world that cannot be addressed without intervention by those of us in more affluent societies, we are looking in the wrong direction for responsibility. i would go on a diatribe about how our societies are largely responsible for the social and economic conditions that allow these problems to continue (not, as some of us americans seem to believe, Kenyan or any other cultural phenomena). so the second issue of powerlessness is our own inability to engage in what paul farmer calls “pragmatic solidarity” with the oppressed. this is simply the notion of going beyond attempting to explain socio-economic patholgies by projecting them onto the cultures of those “in need,” but creating effective interventions that acknowledge our having been complicit in establishing and maintaining the social structures that facilitate such oppression and remove the barriers to personal and cultural agency these structures impose. for a better explanation, read almost anything to do with paul farmer…