More Noted Things

by Cliopatria

Lauren Winner,"‘The Christianity of This Land'," Books & Culture, 14 January, reviews Emily Clark's Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727-1834, Ed Blum's Reforging The White Republic: Race, Religion, And American Nationalism, 1865-1898, and James B. Bennett's Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans.

Edward Glaeser,"Why Cities Matter," The Book, 19 January, reviews Dominic A. Pacyga's Chicago: A Biography.

Dwight Garner,"After Atom Bombs' Shock, the Real Horrors Began Unfolding," NYT, 19 January, reviews Charles Pellegrino's The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back.

Tony Judt,"Food," NYRBlog, 25 November, Judt,"Night," NYRB, 14 January; and Judt,"Kibbutz," NYRBlog, 18 January are the first three in a series of memoirs by the European historian.

Aaron Bady,"This, periodically, needs to be said: Go to hell, David Brooks," zunguzungu, 15 January, and Matt Taibbi,"Translating David Brooks," taibblog, 18 January, take on DB's"The Underlying Tragedy," NYT, 14 January.

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Aaron Bady - 1/20/2010

Alan,
David Brooks' argument, put crudely (but not inaccurately, I think), is that Haiti's poverty is the fault of Haiti's cultural failings, and that the earthquake is a blessing in disguise, if it somehow encourages them to be more like good protestant work-ethicked Americans or something.

My argument is that this is racist garbage, uninformed by any semblance of knowledge about Haiti beyond twice-told just-so stories that conservative economists like to tell themselves. It erases the totality of Haitian history. And the final paragraph, with his "cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma" is incredibly callous.

Now, it's true that I didn't put forth an argument beyond that. I didn't try to predict the future, generalize about an entire nation, or moralize about a tragedy. But I think this is a virtue; it is because I know a little about Haitian history that I also know how little I know and want to be careful about making broad and general claims. Brooks makes an argument because, knowing nothing, he knows nothing about how little he knows.

For example, Brooks regards the idea that "life is capricious and planning futile" as a pernicious Voodoo superstition, because he apparently has no idea what a real fact of life that is in an underdeveloped economy. In the United States, you can plan and life is boring and predictable. But he and people like him assume their own experience to be the norm when it isn't; planning makes sense in an environment where life is predictable, but flexibility and adaptiveness are much more important in places where life really is capricious and the future is completely unpredictable (hint: Haiti is one of these places). That's why the people of such places tend to value flexibility rather than planning (though of course Brooks doesn't understand that part of it). I don't want to uncritically praise "Voodoo"; it's a complicated thing and while it might be a rational response to a problem it did not create, it also sometimes might make that problem worse. But the reason I don't make sweeping generalizations about something as complicated as the mass of Haitian religious practices -- that he oversimplifies into a cliche -- is that I know a little bit about them. He does make sweeping generalizations, on the other hand, because he knows nothing, and seems to prefer it that way.

Alan Allport - 1/20/2010

Honestly, I don't know what I think of David Brooks' argument. But he does have an argument, which so far as I can see is more than messrs. zunguzungu and Taibbi have between them.