After the Earthquake, Haiti Can't Get a Break.

• Author: Danto, Ezili
• Position: Cover story - Essay

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The major media called on January 13, hours after the earthquake ravaged Haiti. A black woman working for a major TV station wanted to do a special about Americans who go to Haiti and sacrifice all to help the poor Haitians. "Can you help?" she asked. "My boss wants me to interview missionaries who give up electricity, comfort, and TV."

"You don't want to know what I have to say," I answered.

She got defensive. Said she was trying to change the narrative of the story. She told me she knew about false aid, false charity, false organized benevolence. She told me she understood that much of the NGO humanitarian niche was corporate welfare on the backs of impoverished Haiti. But she had a job to do and maybe if I couldn't talk about helping the poor Haitians, being Haitian-born and all, maybe I could tell her who could.

I said, in all sincerity, there are those charity people who are conscious and who have done a good job in Haiti. Call Partners in Health. They are legitimate because Haitians are trained to help themselves there, I said. But they probably won't meet the common story line you want because I assume you're looking to interview a white person, right? Or a black American? So you probably don't want to speak to the Haitian woman who runs Partners in Health in Haiti. Her name is Loune Viand. If you want your story line, you'll have to bend things a bit and go to people she supervises. I'm sure you'll find a way to ignore Loune Viaud.

She hung up, saying she thought she could trust me to help her with Haiti because someone she knows suggested me.

The media has called a lot since the earthquake.

Suddenly, we're very popular because black bodies are strewn on the streets of Port-au-Prince. Every reporter who is somebody is rushing to take a picture. Oh, how terrible, terrible, they say.

The media called and lamented that the Haitian government was nowhere to be found.

The presidential palace collapsed, the police headquarters collapsed, the parliament building collapsed with legislators inside it, I say. No one knows how many policemen, municipal workers, legislators were there, how many escaped, or who was injured. Many government officials are looking for their loved ones. There's no communication, no telephones, no electricity, no roads in the capital that are passable, no water in many areas, the hospitals are damaged. Do you understand?

No one has heard in the immediate aftermath from the 9,000 U.N. troops in Haiti either, I further point out. They are mostly staying in their barracks, out of sight, or tending to their injured and dead also.

But the media is not concentrating on that, is...