White (Wo)Man’s Burden: Madonna, Malawi, & Celebrity Activism [Original Cut]
by Latoya Peterson, published at Jezebel.com
On Monday, Madonna broke ground on a new school project in Malawi; today, she takes to the Huffington Post to ask for donations. Her megawatt star power helped engage media attention – but are high profile celebrities actually hurting progress?
In the new issue of Arise, reporter Hannah Pool examines the idea that “all Africa ha[s] to offer the world was begging bowl.” The article, titled “Good Will Hunting” starts off with a bang:
“When high profile celebrities get shown visiting disadvantaged areas in Africa and those images get beamed out to the rest of the world, I believe they almost do more damage than good,” says Moky Makura, Nigerian-born, Johannesburg-based author, M-Net presenter and founder of the Africa our Africa blog. “We don’t want to keep reinforcing the image of a helpless continent. We will only eradicate our problems when we build economies based on commerce, not charity. To do this, Africa needs to be seen as an investment destination or trading partner, not as a charity case.
Pool then delves into the conundrum that faces many activists on the African continent – if many people are embracing the idea of “trade not aid” as a way to push forward development, who benefits from this “charitainment?” Pool elaborates:
The merging of charity and entertainment – or, as Time magazine called it, charitainment – has led to some damaging consequences. Celebrities (and their agents) have realised that being seen to care about Africa brings instant cool. About 25 years after Live Aid, A-list celebrities are forever falling out of the pages of magazines such as Hello! or OK!, tearfully waxing lyrical about how spending five minutes in an African orphanage changed their whole view on life. And thanks to Madonna and Angelina Jolie, some Western media appear to be under the impression that the best way to empty Africa’s orphanages is not the eradication of poverty but mass adoption by wealthy pop stars.
“Whether it’s Bono shilling for AIDS dollars, Angelina and Madonna toting their African offspring, Gwyneth [Paltrow] and David Bowie declaring they are African, or Matt Damon and George Clooney rallying for Darfur, it appears that a new generation of philanthropists have taken up the ‘White Man’s Burden’,” says South African academic Zine Magubane on the pan-African blog Zeleza Post.
As soon as Pool mentioned Matt Damon, I immediately thought of this bit from Entourage:
“Gimme the fucking check Vince!”
At any rate, Pool dropped the bomb that’s been hovering over any discussion of aid and Western involvement in Africa. The idea of The White Man’s Burden actually stems from a Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name:
Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Scholars have long debated if White Man’s Burden is a love letter to imperialism or a satirical take-down – Kipling was an avid imperialist but was also a satirist, and his intentions with the piece aren’t fully understood. However, the poem and the term have been propelled to the heights of infamy due to the application of the core concept around the globe.
Personally, I prefer Henry Labouchère’s acid-tongued retort, The Brown Man’s Burden:
Pile on the brown man’s burden
To gratify your greed;
Go, clear away the “niggers”
Who progress would impede;
Be very stern, for truly
‘Tis useless to be mild
With new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.Pile on the brown man’s burden;
And, if ye rouse his hate,
Meet his old-fashioned reasons
With Maxims up to date.
With shells and dumdum bullets
A hundred times made plain
The brown man’s loss must ever
Imply the white man’s gain.Pile on the brown man’s burden,
compel him to be free;
Let all your manifestoes
Reek with philanthropy.
And if with heathen folly
He dares your will dispute,
Then, in the name of freedom,
Don’t hesitate to shoot.
Fascinating how both of these poems were written in 1899, but still resonate to this day. (By the way, these are excerpts – the full poems are available by following the links.)
The line from Labouchère – Let all your manifestoes/Reek with philanthropy – cuts to the quick of how a “trade not aid” movement developed on the African continent. All this “philanthropy” normally comes with strings and conditions, and it can actively undermine those looking for long term solutions to a problem. Pool then discusses the work of Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist whose book, Dead Aid, who argues that aid only breeds dependency:
“Aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster for most of the developing world,” says Moyo. Rather than wanting to promote Africa as a place of business and opportunity, the West prefers to have Africa as its needy child. After all, imagine how scary a strong capitalist Africa would be. Moyo argues that aid keeps Africa politically and economically pliant, and that celebrities, with their passion for doing good rather than doing business, simply help maintain this status quo (whether they mean to or not).
However, there is quite a bit of dissent to these ideas, by those who believe any attention that directs awareness and funds to needy causes is beneficial.
For some, ‘glamour aid’ is a non-topic. Africa needs money and fast. Getting people to focus on anything else – business opportunities, the arts or tourism, for example – is tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The fact is, celebrities raise billions of dollars for Africa, and they generate immeasurable amounts of press coverage for previously ignored causes. Who in the West had given Malawi a second thought until Madonna pitched up, bringing with her the international media and, undoubtedly, valuable donations? And wouldn’t thousands of African children be without antiretroviral drugs if it wasn’t for Keys and her Black Ball fundraisers in aid of Keep a Child Alive? [...]
“Africa as a continent is torn by many issues, which are beyond the people’s control, including poverty, AIDS, and genocide, says [Paschorina Mortty, of events company The One Event which deals with foundations], “so the more celebrities who want to support this beautiful continent, the better. Celebrity support opens up media space and allows the issues to come to the attention of the public and policymakers. Rightly or wrongly, we live in a society where the media and public have a strong interest in celebrities.” [...]
Does this interest translate into the public good, or does it just become another way to prolong a problem? In the case of Madonna, I’m not too sure. Her earlier interest stunk to high heaven with the white savior complex, and the controversy over David Banda’s adoption added further fuel to the fire. After spending some more time in Malawi, she seems to have shifted out of the idea that one raises awareness by adoption and horrific images of suffering, and has shifted to promoting projects and infrastructure. The new school is a good start, and a step in the right direction. But what will Madonna do next? Will she continue learning and implementing projects that contribute to long term solutions? Or will she go back to the standard celebrity charity junket? (If her plea on the Huffington Post is any indication, we are heading back to “your one time donation” territory.)
As Pool says:
But if all celebrities do is talk, demand money and portray the same old Africa of war, famine, and poverty, should they really be congratulated? Shouldn’t we challenging them to come with something new to say about Africa?
Madonna launches Malawi school construction [Reuters]
Official Site [Arise Magazine]
The White Man’s Burden [Wikipedia]
The White Man’s Burden [Modern History Sourcebook]
The Brown Man’s Burden [Dan McDowell's History Projects]
Dead Aid [Amazon]
Related:
Meet the Neo-Colonialists: Madonna and Vanity Fair [Racialicious]
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Julia wrote:
ugh. She just can’t seem to stop herself, can she?
I think that no aid vs. aid is too extreme–clearly some of both are needed. But in the case of providing aid, there are all kinds of organizations on the ground that know HOW to do this in a way that is effective and (hopefully) does not simply create dependency. So, if Madonna or Bono or whoever wants to do something good with their money, WHY CAN’T THEY WORK THROUGH OR WITH the organizations that know what they are doing?? The arrogance of Madonna’s project (and all the others) just takes my breath away. It’s as if all of the organizations doing good work have just been sitting around on their hands, until Madonna comes along and Shazam! a Solution!
And if the true desire really is to help, WHY does it have to be all about them? I mean, can’t a school get built in Malawi WITHOUT Madonna’s image, name, etc. all over it?
Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 10:42 am ¶
Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist wrote:
To do this, Africa needs to be seen as an investment destination or trading partner, not as a charity case.
Definitely. But I agree with you, Latoya, Madonna setting up a school is an EXCELLENT start. Education is one of the greatest tools that can empower human beings.
Teach a homeless man how to fish… you don’t just hand him a fish and then walk away.
Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 11:02 am ¶
Jess wrote:
While I have a lot of issues with the celebrity thing, I’d disagree with Moyo as well.
To me, whenever I see a celebrity doing the “I care about X” thing, i sort of feel it’s nice and all, but it never really addresses any real problems. It was nice, back in the day, that Eleanor Roosevelt cared about the miners. But none of that mattered until she got her husband — the one in the situation who did matter — on board.
And Eleanor Roosevelt was in a much better position than Madonna, and had a much better sense of what was going on, and actually had some real-deal political involvement. Madonna et. al. have little or none of that. Unlike Roosevelt, Madonna and Jolie focus on the “wow, it is really horrible that people are having X problem” rather than (as Roosevelt did) asking why there is a problem to begin with.
Which gets us to Moyo. The issue I have with her stuff is that she trots out the same old free-market solutions. And those free market solutions have been as bad as or worse than the problems with aid. There’s a whole set of structures that make markets work and a big chunk of Africa simply doesn’t have them.
Also: all aid is not created equal. A lot of stuff gets filed under “aid.” Especially during the Cold War, much of that was military aid. So, for instance, the biggest African aid recipient was (and still is) Egypt. But a huge, honking chunk of that is tanks and planes.
Even when you break out the humanitarian aid, a lot of that is mediated by the IMF or World Bank, and they tended, historically, to focus on big projects (the World Bank was famous for never meeting a dam they didn’t like) and austerity programs. The latter are wonderful if you are a financial institution and make several indicators look good — certainly reducing deficits makes every monetarist smile — but they may or may not have any benefit to the people in whatever country. The WB has gotten better, but there is still a big-project bias.
Farmers — a large part of the populace of most African nations (is there any country on the continent where most people are urban? I don’t think there is except maybe Egypt or Algeria) are part of the money economy — only a small part of any crop is eaten at home. (This is true of farmers world-wide, by the way). The rest is sold, and you use the money to buy more food and other stuff you need to farm with, like tools.
Austerity programs will simply not help in that situation, especially if cash crop prices fall. In which case the farmer hasn’t got enough money to buy any food. So he goes hungry, and you have a famine. A similar pattern happened in Bangladesh back in the 70s. There was plenty of food — but nobody could afford it. (One of the side effects of reducing inflation is that money can become so valuable because nobody has any).
And even if you had land, there just isn’t any way to switch to a food crop in time to solve your problem. (Remember, it takes months to grow food). The “free market” is no help here because everybody who needs food the most is simply priced out — the local food crops are worth more if exported.
Then there is the issue of local governance, which, in many parts of Africa, is simply not very good, or effective. (Somalia being the single biggest example. I always thought the world’s most thankless job has to be Somali ambassador to the US).
There are lots of reasons for this — some stem from the local political culture and some are the effects of interference in local affairs by the European (and nowadays, Asian) powers.
In any case, I think you kind of have to take this stuff on a case by case basis, and recognize that that no matter what celebrities might do, it isn’t that big a chunk of what goes in.
I mean, Live Aid, for instance, raised some $250m (that’s $400m now) and that is tiny compared to the total amounts people talk about sending from governments and other capital flows. (Though it might be large for an individual country). Malawi, for instance, got $575m from the US alone in 2005. Count up the other countries the US sends money to and Live Aid is very small potatoes, and that was one of the biggest such events ever.
Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 11:14 am ¶
atlasien wrote:
I also think there needs to be a medium between “eternal charity” and “no aid”.
The problem with Moyo’s position is her reliance on hypercapitalism. Her position shows a healthy skepticism of wealthy-country good intentions… but a complete and total faith (and lack of skepticism) towards the power of capitalism.
There’s no country that has pulled itself from poverty to industrialized power by relying on external investment from corporations. If you look at countries like Japan and Korea, which were relatively poor 100 years ago, they got where they are today because of 1) luck – they were colonized for fairly brief periods 2) extensive state regulation of the economy and subsidizing massive infrastructure projects 3) lack of natural resources (having natural resources can be a curse because that means everyone wants to come in and take them, like oil in Nigeria) 4) AID FROM THE UNITED STATES. Not that the U.S. really gave this aid out of charity, they gave it to advance their own interests (anti-communism, military bases).
A good example of how to find a balance… the nonprofit CARE sends a lot of food aid to some African countries, but starting a few years ago, they turned down free money from the U.S. government to help subsidize that aid:
http://www.care.org/newsroom/articles/2007/08/20070823_foodaid.asp
Basically, the US subsidizes food aid, but this means importing food from the US. This helps US farmers but hurts local and regional farmers in the target area for the food aid. Transporting the food from the US is also slower and less efficient. Relying on food aid shipped from the US in case of food emergencies hurts long-term solutions like encouraging sustainable farming…
The principle for aid should be that it really helps people help themselves, and doesn’t just establish a cycle of dependency.
The focus on celebrities is really irritating because it just encourages the idea that a few heroic individuals can change everything… it feeds into patronizing forms of racism too. But on the other hand, we live in a superficial world where you have to work the media to survive, and celebrities know how to work the media.
Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 11:26 am ¶
Heather Leila wrote:
Here’s a mock piece I wrote when Paris Hilton was saying she would go to Rwanda…to do what, who knows. But she said in the press she was “scared” and in the end didn’t even go.
Please laugh, it’s not serious: http://heatherleilamoz.blogspot.com/2009/04/ms-hilton-in-africa.html
Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 3:49 pm ¶
Ruchama wrote:
Another issue with aid isn’t just whether to send it but what to send. I’ve read about this issue most with milk, but I’ve heard that it happens with other foods, too. The milk powder that the US provides in food aid can be mixed with water and sold for so cheap that local dairy farmers can’t compete — almost no one will buy the local fresh milk when the powdered kind is so much cheaper, which eventually drives the local dairy farmers out of business, so the country ends up dependent on the aid milk if they want milk at all, since they have no more dairy farms.
Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 8:23 pm ¶
CVT wrote:
Finally, somebody pointing out the REAL “Africa Problem” – the successful implementation of “aid” to actually CREATE need and neediness in African countries.
I lived and worked in Tanzania for a year (misguided youth that I was, thinking I could “help”) and I came out of it with this one, clear message: NGOs and other international aid organizations do MUCH more damage than good (on a general level, there are a very few organizations doing it right, but I mean, VERY few).
Basically (at least in Tanzania, but I bet it’s the same continent-wide), these organizations create an economy and system based on asking for hand-outs. Some twenty-something (or, in Madonna’s case, older) Western white girl or guy sees something that’s not working well (schools, orphanages), and then they decide THAT THEY KNOW THE SOLUTION. Even though they’re completely inexperienced and haven’t lived in the country (or, even if they have, certainly not the 10 years or so that it would take to truly understand the systemic causes of those problems).
So they “build a school” or “solve the problem” with some very short-sighted plan, entirely dependent on charity. They hardly ask the people what they really need. They bring in completely inexperienced and unqualified international volunteers to help “teach” or set things up. And then they’re shocked when the problems don’t go away.
Because the people just keep asking for money for this, money for that. “We need books.” So the Western philanthropist gets a bunch of donated university texts – for a people that don’t even speak English! “We need a school.” So they build a school that is now just one more building within a crumbling educational infrastructure. The World Bank and USAID and IMF all give HUGE sums to corrupt government officials who steal half of it – and these organizations know this, thinking “if half gets through.”
Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 10:01 pm ¶
CVT wrote:
(my previous post, summarized, so somebody might actually read it)
So – the corrupt power structure persists because they get half their money (and thus, power) from “aid.” The problems persist, because the people are ENCOURAGED not to think for themselves to provide solutions, but to follow other people’s guidelines in order to receive their “aid” money. Farmers can’t sell their food for profit. Parents abandon MORE of their kids because, suddenly, that orphanage is a better future than the one they had before (at home) . . .
What would happen if everyone just backed off and allowed African nations a couple of decades to solve their own problems? It would be rocky and ugly at first, but guess what? They might actually have a chance at solving the problems, without throwing money at the symptoms, anymore.
Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 10:01 pm ¶
jvansteppes wrote:
In theory I think I could find respect for people like Madonna, Oprah, and Brangelina if their financial contributions were matched by acknowledgment that colonialism and current economic policies create and/or exacerbate African crises. Well meaning stars are harmful because they depoliticize. Considering the lives lost and resources stolen in African countries, investment isn’t aid, its more like reparations.
Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 10:30 pm ¶
Ruchama wrote:
There’s an article in the NY Times about a debate over whether health aid for developing countries should be put toward HIV or toward things like diarrhea and malaria and pneumonia, which kill a lot more kids than AIDS does. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/world/30child.html?ref=health
There is no mention of what the people who are actually in charge of health care in those countries think until the fifteenth paragraph, and even there, it’s second-hand information. There are a few quotes toward the end from mothers of sick children, but not a single quote from anyone from any of the countries in question who is involved in public health decisions.
Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 11:30 pm ¶
emma wrote:
@jvansteppes
They can’t speak about those issues because they are uneducated about those issues. Oprah may be, as she is well educated, but Madonna and Brangelina certainly aren’t. Angelina Jolie is actually a high school drop out. Speaking about those issues requires way more them just reading Things Fall Apart. It requires years of study and not just dropping into a country for a photo op every now and then or whenever you need some good pr.
Posted 30 Oct 2009 at 12:33 am ¶
Jen wrote:
@emma So being a high school drop out automatically means that later in life you can’t learn about something? Do you know Ms Jolie personally? Had a squizz at her bookshelf?
The suggestion that just because someone did not complete their formal education they are incapable of learning in other ways is nasty and classist.
Posted 30 Oct 2009 at 4:22 am ¶
Ain't I an African wrote:
My biggest problem with this kinds of stories is that they ignore the amazing work that Africans themselves are doing. They make it look like we’re all sitting around wringing our hands until the white (wo)man comes to save us. More often than not, these foreigners come and replicate existing homegrown ideas – which is not in itself a bad thing. Personally I cringe whenever any of these celebrities – including the brown Oprah- opens their mouth about Africa.
Posted 30 Oct 2009 at 4:29 am ¶
Sobia wrote:
@jvansteppes:
I feel exactly the same way. There needs to be just as much attention placed on the politics of the situation as there is on the philanthropy of the celebrities and these celebrities should be using their celebrity to bring attention to it.
Posted 30 Oct 2009 at 9:24 am ¶
jvansteppes wrote:
Regardless of Jolie’s level of education, she promotes herself as a goodwill ambassador who is allegedly well briefed on statistics and local issues.
I would go further to say that she treats the continent of Africa as a bit of a playground, take a look at this article about her visit to Namibia to deliver a baby:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/327/
Posted 30 Oct 2009 at 1:05 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
@jvansteppes — I saw that link and thought, “Well, that’s an awful lot of trouble to go through to avoid the paparazzi.”
Where I come from, they don’t allow hordes of reporters into hospitals. Maybe LA is different. They couldn’t go to a small place in Riverside County? Bakersfield? Tucson? Madison, Wisconsin? Any of those places would have offered a break from the paparazzi, if that was what it was about.
There is an obligation the US, Europe and Japan have to Africa. It’s to help clean up the mess they made, just like your mother taught you. But that’s going to be a really complicated process. And sorry, Jolie, you ain’t gonna cut it.
Nor Madonna. Building schools is great. Julius Nyerere figured that out already, tho, so you aren’t bringing anything new to the table.
Celebrity charity is, at best, a very small first step. At worst it does, as you said, jvansteppes, de-politicize a process which is political by definition.
Latoya– your pairing of Labouchere and Kipling is really interesting because Labouchere was a “classical Liberal” and Kipling less so. And neoliberal economics (related to Labouchere’s conception, though not quite the same) has been a pretty bad offering for Africans generally.
And Kipling, (as you state), can be read many different ways. I’d offer that you have to do a sort of time-series on him, as his attitudes changed a bit between when he was 16 (his return to India), his 30s, (The Jungle Book) and his later life post – WW I, when he wrote “My Boy Jack.” I’d say at the time he was probably an unapologetic imperialist, who became a more apologetic one later on.
Which brings us to the way people view Africa. Writers like Kipling, John Buchan, and Henry Rider Haggard are a big reason (English-speaking) people see Africa as we do. In one sense Madonna et al. are just acting on that tradition. Which is too bad.
(Maybe we should have celebrities watch that old Roosevelt Franklin skit from Sesame Street about Africa. I don’t know what you all would think of it now, but back in the early 70s it was pretty groundbreaking. Sad that some things haven’t moved all that far).
Posted 30 Oct 2009 at 3:57 pm ¶
Rita wrote:
The impulse toward philanthropy, i.e., helping others, is a human one, and celebrities are just as human as any of the rest of us. All of us have “causes” or “issues” or “charities” that are near and dear to us, and we advocate and seek to bring attention to those issues. Celebrities understandably want to use their social clout to bring attention to issues they care about. I don’t think there is anything at all wrong with that. Is ego often involved? Yes, of course – but so it for any of us ordinary yokels as well. It’s just that our egos aren’t quite such high wattage!
All that said, it is equally true that philathropic acts can be done effecitively and responsibly, and they can also been done very badly – sometimes all at once. All of us, whether we are celebrities or not, have an obligation to carefully examine our method of philanthropy – among other things, to examine it for elements of racism, classism, sexism, colonialism and all the other isms.
Whatever your interest is, whatever you are wanting to do, it is ALWAYS good to check in with the people on the ground, the people who live with your issue on a daily life, whether it’s people who are hungry, orphans in Malawi, or autistic kids, or whatever. Work locally as much as possible.
Posted 30 Oct 2009 at 5:27 pm ¶
RCHOUDH wrote:
I wish more people would look beyond celebrity charity in order to better understand the political and economic situation throughout the rest of the world, particularly in Africa. It doesn’t help to rely exclusively on aid in order to help people; that creates a cycle of dependence. I’ve heard of charities that established schools for example and because of the cycle of dependence, when charities ran out of money to fund the schools, they had to be closed. Also relying on charities absolves the corrupt governments in alot of developing nations. These governments will continue to remain in power so long as they are not challenged by their people over why they fail to provide basic services. The people, instead of challenging their government to either provide or step down, will come to rely on outside aid from developed nations, which is usually intermittent. And I’m highly suspicious of developed nations providing “aid” from government to government. That sends a message to the people of whatever country receiving aid that the developed world is turning a blind eye to their government’s atrocities and corruption because that government is a Western ally.
Posted 01 Nov 2009 at 2:20 am ¶
Baiskeli wrote:
I hate, hate hate!! with a passion celebrity charity!! I find it paternalism of the worst sort. And to understand aid one has to realize that in most cases aid is not an altruistic interest, it is a tool to serve the giving countries national interest. And it usually comes with strings attached.
Want to help Africa? Well, then stop screwing us through tarriffs, so called free-trade etc. If the Western world was really concerned about Africa they would either drop farm subsidies (the E.U and U.S farm subsidies cost Africa 6 times what it receives in Aid) or allow African countries to erect trade barriers to protect fledging local industries. The truth is that the West has used Africa as a petri-dish of their neo-liberal economic theories, and these theories have been an abysmal failure. Yet we reward people who come up with this crap (i.e Lawrence ‘Lets dump toxic waste in Africa because they don’t live long anyways’ Summers) with high positions in society (i.e the Harvard Presidency and now an advisory post).
For a quick primer on the issues of globalization and how it affects the developing world read
http://www.ifg.org/programs/alternatives.htm
For Lawrence’s Summer’s illuminating memo that shows just how reductionist and immoral these peoples thinking is
http://www.whirledbank.org/ourwords/summers.html
1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.
2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I’ve always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.
Isn’t it ironic that one of the few African countries that was in a position to tell the IMF/World Bank to take a hike in the 1980’s is now the only middle-income country in sub-saharan Africa? The other countries, most of which had received cold war loans that the rulers then squandered, were on the hook to the IMF/World Bank and had to take what was forced down their throats.
Posted 02 Nov 2009 at 7:49 am ¶
yolio wrote:
I don’t believe for one millisecond that anybody at all thinks that the solution to Africa’s orphan problems lies with celebrity adoption. The “problem” with celebrities is a straw man. It is just the usual condescension and snarking towards pop stars, and only works because it plays into the stereotype of celebrities as unavoidably shallow.
The problem with demanding that celebrities make a politicized statement is that celebrities lack political credibility. Demanding that they try to persuade with rhetoric reflects a basic misunderstanding of the nature of pop celebrity. It doesn’t matter what their actual, personal education level is. I would bet sweet money that Madonna is very well-read on the subject of Malawi, but she is also savvy enough to keep her trap shut. People do not pay attention to celebrities because they care what they think, they pay attention because they are famous. Celebrities haven’t earned the right to demand that the world take their opinions seriously, but people will sit and listen while they say it.
Madonna and Brangelina are really savvy about how to use their influence and their money. This is partly because they understand their place: they are rich people and attention magnets. They are not the next coming of Ghandi.
Posted 03 Nov 2009 at 6:12 pm ¶
Orville wrote:
I thought it was okay that Madonna is opening a school in Africa. HOWEVER, I do hope Madonna will not be promoting religion to the students and just focus on education.
Posted 04 Nov 2009 at 8:13 pm ¶