Asombroso la reaccion al disastre en Haiti

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EliA

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I will admit to being a very reluctant Facebook user, and only among my Argentinean friends, but today's series of hideously racist posts by people I consider friends/people I know and like/their friends is making me rethink this crossover to the dark side of social networking (not to mention some harder-to-face questions without answers).

Has anyone else heard or read racist reactions to Haiti's earthquake? Here are a few from my "friends" and their friends, not to mention the people who "like" what's being said - thumbs enthusiastically up almost across the board, and if not an outward 'liking' at least no sort of backlash, except for my comments, also posted here.

~~

Post: ¿En que estoy pensando ahora? En que en paises donde el alimento no alcanza para todos hay herramientas naturales que sirven para el control de la natalidad y de la población.

Reply: asi como se murieron, vuelven a reproducirse masivamente al no haber educacion y al estar sumidos en la pobreza no creo que el tsunami haya afectado el crecimiento poblacional en el sudeste asiatico.

My reply: Asombroso la falta de compasión, compadre. Cuéntame, cómo tuviera que ser Haiti para no haber merecido tal disastre? Como Argentina, donde no existe el hambre? Les recuerdo que ser blanco no quiere decir educado; de hecho, muchas veces quiere decir maleducado.

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Post: Alguien sabe cuantos muertos hay en Haití sin contar a los negros?Reply: 4 cascos azules (?)


http://www.facebook.com/hernancitoOP reply: Al fin alguien que me entiende. Llevo contado esos cuatros y el jefe de la delegación de la ONU y una medica brasilera. Por ahora solo seis. El darwinismo social está funcionando



Reply: Esto me hace acordar a unos chocolates milka que se repartieron hace mucho en el burger de florida. Creo que alguno mas de la lista se tiene que acordar.




My reply: No quiero ser pesada pero realmente te parece que sea un tema como para bromear? En este mismo instante hay cientos y puede ser miles de personas quien siguen atrapados, ni hablar de los ya muertos o heridos...
 
Yeah i know, i was on a website where they showed a video of the aftermath and this are some of the comments i read that were very innapropiate:

What planet are you friends from? Hell perhaps

-Let me guess? 1 million people died because they live in squaller farking shacks that would fall down if i farted on them? what a joke 3rd world countries are. just bomb them all please.

an then there were replies like these:

Quoted comment by jerry35: let me guess? 1 million people died because they live in squaller farking shacks that would fall down if i farted on them? what a joke 3rd world countries are. just bomb them all please.

Humanity is coming to an end with people who comment like this!
 
Publish publicly the name and surname of those people. Shame on them. :mad:
Back to Bs As, it is also revolting that some people from the so called "upper class" porteña, have the same stupid criteria towards shanty town dwellers.
By the way, I think that Haiti was the first Latin American nation to gain its independence in 1804.

Una argentina permanece desaparecida en Haití - Ambito.com


another good news from the highly intelectual Argentinean press
 
Well the one good thing is that at least not all of Argentina thinks this way -- they are actually springing into action and sending a Hercules today full of more humanitarian aid workers. There are already 560 Argentine humanitarian aid workers from the Air Force stationed there.

http://www.clarin.com/diario/2010/01/13/um/m-02119291.htm


There's a$%holes everywhere. We'd all like to think more of the people around us, and those we think of as "friends" but there's a lot of close-minded and uneducated people out there.

Any time I read an article on immigration in one of the Canadian newspapers, I torture myself by reading the comments section -- I'd like to think that most people reading the Globe and Mail are a pretty educated, metropolitan bunch, but any time an article on immigration comes up, the comments section fills up with a bunch of racist commentary.

Good for you for calling out your Fbook "friends" -- did you go so far as to defriend them? I don't understand people on Fbook with lists of hundreds of friends, lets face it, you probably don't know these people as well as you think, and they're not "friends" they're contacts. Unless you have to be in touch with them for some reason, I'd just post a comment and say "after seeing all these racist remarks coming from you, I realise that we don't have anything in common, and I'm now going to de-friend you. Goodbye."
 
Syngirl, I only have 30 FB friends - like I said before I sort of hate it and only gave in to peer pressure and to find out what my local friends are up to - and unfortunately the main instigator IS a friend, so it's a little more complicated for me to figure out how I want to react and move forward.

He emailed to apologize and said he was only taking comments out of the local newspaper that he thought were inappropriate and wanted to see how his friends would react, and then apologized that those friends didn't take it seriously. But, I don't know... if I were to quote a newspaper I think I'd say "Found this in La Nacion, what do you think?' instead of posting it like it was my own thought.

For me it's just a lack of respect all around - respect for those involved, respect for mother Earth who caused this in Haiti, and respect for themselves to behave in a more appropriate/less irreverent manner. But my expectations are probably too high and I've been told more than once to 'lighten up' in my life so I try to keep that in mind as well.
 
I am saddened and shocked to learn about some of the comments that people have posted on FB, EliA!! Thank you for sharing!

There's always been racism in Argentina, sadly, starting with the attitudes towards our own indigenous peoples. One problem is that a lot of people in this country never accepted it openly.

I could go on and on, but I think that, from my beginner's understanding of the Buddhist perspective (and maybe all religions, too), the action to be taken would be a mix of feeling compassionate for the way their minds work and the life experiences they may have had, actively engage them in a conversation about it, and of course join in whatever efforts can help the people in Haiti right now from here.
 
Elia, I don't know if the question mark after cascos azules was put there by you or by the person in facebook, but it refers to soldiers that are (temporarily) working in service of the UN (they're equipped with blue helmets).

About the (open) racism in Argentina: I have encountered it especially in the more affluent sectors of society, especially in BsAs and Zona Norte. However, it also has some historic roots. Argentina's elite has always identified itself with Europe and the 'Western World', emphasizing their connection to Europe and trying to distance them from Latin-America and its mestizo/indigenous inhabitants. The only political current less obsessed with these European ties were Peronism during Perón (45-55) and the Peronist since the Kirchners took power.

But it have been the intellectual architects of the Argentine nation, Like Juán Bautista Alberdi - who effectively wrote Argentina's first Constitution (1862) that said "gobernar es poblar": Argentina had potential but in order for it to prosper it needed a population. As intellectuals deemed the indigenous Latin American population inferior, they decided to import people from Europe. If that's the base your building your country on, you're always going to have racism. What a shock it was for the landed elite, when Perón came to power in '45 and they saw all these shirtless "cabecitas negras" from the conurbano on the Plaza de Mayo (until then still a place for the wealthy).
 
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