14 ms·

The New York Times is wrong about Haiti

206 points by jseliger 4y ago

debacle 4y ago
Haiti needs a stronger national identity, but it is so often victim of first world saviors that I think it will continue to struggle. Most of the immigrants (to the US) that I've met from Haiti do not speak favorably of the country and have no intention of ever returning.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hammock 4y ago
If a newspaper were to simply present the facts and let the reader come to their own conclusion, that might be viewed as dangerous.
- 30944836 4y ago
  That's not really possible, given that the mere omission of facts, or the placement of facts next to each other influences the conclusion. Besides which, people think in stories, and presenting just a list of facts isn't going to be read by anyone.
  - hunterb123 4y ago
    That's a separate issue which should be a concern but shouldn't prevent you from wanting to correct the other issues. You can compare different outlets to see ommission of news. The spin, speculation, and lack of sources are the other issues. I would read a list of facts over a story. I hate fluff. Most people don't even read the story, they read the title and possibly the first/last paragaph.
- sudden_dystopia 4y ago
  Dangerous to people that feel threatened by a feee thinking populace, ie authoritarians.
- havblue 4y ago
  I'm not sure if simply presenting the facts is a viable business model for most news organizations. User attention and advertisements are what they sell, not information.
- leononame 4y ago
  I don't think this could be remotely possible. Just by deciding which facts to publish you already present an opinion. I see this sentiment floating around a lot, but I think it's a bit of a naïve approach. Just by deciding which news to publish a newspaper already has a bias.
  - hunterb123 4y ago
    It would be a step in the right direction. You can always compare outlets from many sides to find omission of facts / topics. You can also do that to highlight the spin, but wouldn't it be nice if there was no spin in the first place?
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      > It would be a step in the right direction. The argument is that it's not possible, not that it wouldn't be desirable if it were. The way to get all of the unbiased facts not intended to illustrate a narrative is to be omnipotent. Otherwise, you're getting filtered information from someone telling you what they saw. The reason they leave out what color socks they were wearing at the time they saw it is because they're filtering the information down to what they think is relevant to their narrative.
      - hunterb123 4y ago
        Your interpretation is not possible. But the general idea of exposing facts more than speculation and slants is possible. I believe GP was more suggesting the latter than the former.
- pid-1 4y ago
  Have you ever tried presenting any facts to anyone? The word "fact" is very very sloppy.
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
The NYT is wrong about all kinds of stuff. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that they engage in quite a bit of data/mis-info. Whether purposely or via sloppy reporting, the effect is the same.
- hdesh 4y ago
  Unfortunately this is true. Someone has written a whole book[1] about this. There[2] is a podcast interview of the author of that book. NY Times' anti-India and anti-Hindu bias is also widely documented[3]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Gray-Lady-Winked-Misreporting-Fabrications/dp/1736703307 https://www.amazon.com/Gray-Lady-Winked-Misreporting-Fabrica... [2] https://kushalmehra.com/2021/07/18/the-gray-lady-winked/ https://kushalmehra.com/2021/07/18/the-gray-lady-winked/ [3] https://rameshrao-89399.medium.com/understanding-the-new-york-times-anti-hindu-bias-107cb17aab72 https://rameshrao-89399.medium.com/understanding-the-new-yor...
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    Anti-which Hindus? BJP is “sole spokesman” for Hindus now like Muslim League claimed to be for Muslims? Also with regard to India existing before 1947, you should remind yourself why Ambedkar had “India, that is Bharat…” put into Indian Constitution.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Tangentially related, but I can’t help but think what Haiti could be today had they elected Wyclef Jean. Regardless of his abilities as a politician, as an international celebrity, he could’ve brought unity and investment to Haiti. If you’ll forgive me, I don’t think he could’ve done much worse.
- Splendor 4y ago
  You couldn't be more wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C3%A9le_Haiti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C3%A9le_Haiti
  - Overtonwindow 4y ago
    That’s unfortunate, but I don’t see that he was prosecuted for anything. I still think he would’ve been a better choice
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Because you like his songs?
      - Overtonwindow 4y ago
        No I don’t listen to his music at all, just the superstar power. I think Haiti needs someone with a global image. To draw attention to the country. Haiti is going to be corrupt for the foreseeable future, I anticipate everyone involved is going to be corrupt at some level, but his star power could have been used for good.
- charia 4y ago
  I think one thing to keep in mind is that Wyclef famously used his celebrity to raise money for Haiti after the earthquake and it was shown that much, if not most, of the money raised was used by Wyclef and his family/friends for personal spending. That behavior suggests that Wyclef might have continued the same corruption that other Haitian politicians engaged in and maybe taken it a step further by leveraging his celebrity to also pocket money brought in as outside investment. Again, maybe he couldn't be worse since other Haitian politicians would have and did engage in similar corruption, but it'd be a stretch to say that it's anything we should consider as "what if" that would had the real potential for positive change in the country.
baggy_trough 4y ago
The NYT is a very powerful propaganda organ and must be read with that in mind.
Splendor 4y ago
> While I have some criticisms, most of the historical facts are correct. There are places where I could nitpick, but most of the facts are solid. I think the problems with the articles are in tone and in conclusions. The softest of takedowns.
- potatoz2 4y ago
  I agree, and it seems like most commenters (so far) seem not to have read the “takedown”. What the author mostly criticizes is that the NYT is not providing enough evidence, not that things are clearly wrong.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    Sadly, the author's title produces the same sort of response that NYT's title does. Nuanced analysis is blown over by people reacting to titles.
easterncalculus 4y ago
Ironically, like media outlets often says about people online, it does not matter how good the rebuttal is if 5,000 people see it and millions read what it disproves. The damage is already done.
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  The history of Haiti can't be distilled in a single article. You'd need a 500 page book for the abridged version. But realistically very people would give enough of a shit to read it.
  - easterncalculus 4y ago
    Definitely, I completely agree. That goes for any nation really. The difference to me is that one article is making a pretty serious claim, and the other is casting some doubt on it - the burden of proof is still on NYT.
- hiram112 4y ago
  This has increasingly been the M.O. of all the "activist" media outlets in the US for the past 5 years. Issue exaggerated if not outright fraudulent explosive headlines and articles - Russian Pee tapes, bounties on American troops, Capital police officers bludgeoned to death by rabid mobs, etc. - then months later, quietly issue a "correction" on page 10, long after the false narrative has been thoroughly disseminated into the public's version of reality. And if that wasn't shady enough, in the days of online content, these outlets often don't even bother with admitting they were wrong. They simply edit the original stories - silently and without public notice - and pretend it was never written in the first place. The NY Times was caught red-handed doing this with their 1619 content several times already.
causi 4y ago
If journalists littered their work with citations, they argue, it would disrupt the narrative and alienate the audience. That's a very 20th-century take. There's no reason why any article couldn't have a little "show version with citations" button tucked away somewhere.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  Honestly, you don't even need that much. There are plenty of other citing styles that are non-obtrusive, including those that use footnotes and/or hyperlinks.
  - causi 4y ago
    Sure, which is the version I'd probably read all the time. I'm just saying you can worship at the altar of the pageview and offer citations at the same time with no downside, aside from less ability to bullshit the reader.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    Yep the human brain is amazing at ignoring these, I never had a problem with it reading anything that I've read in the past and it helps if you wanna go into further depth later when you want more info/context.
- leononame 4y ago
  It's a lot of work. That alone is reason enough for a lot of newspapers. But I also kind of agree. While truth and sources are important and I would like newspapers to list sources and citations more often, the narrative is an important element. The author of the original article mentions that a publication they read would not be intelligible without citation because you lose the context. I don't think just switching citations on and off is a viable form of marrying good narrative and academic standards.
  - causi 4y ago
    It's a lot of work. How so? When I was writing papers in college I'd read my sources, bang out the text, then for every citable claim I'd ctrl+F my sources and cite them. For a journalist who's presumably taking notes while writing an article it should be even faster. This only seems hard if you're writing articles based purely on vibes and not information.
everybodyknows 4y ago
> The New York Times is trying to expand from the paper of record ... Do people still think of the NYT that way? The Washington Post seems to me to have the better claim nowadays. Not a great claim, but better.
- fleddr 4y ago
  It's more like a Tumblr blog.
pilgrimfff 4y ago
Great piece. Fair and even-handed in its criticism of the NYT article.
tonguez 4y ago
“The New York Times Is Right About X” would be a news headline.
richwater 4y ago
This exactly mirrors how I felt reading that NYT piece.
duxup 4y ago
I enjoyed that read although I kinda wonder about the "The New York Times is Wrong About Hati" when the author notes that ... they're also right in general? >While I have some criticisms, most of the historical facts are correct. There are places where I could nitpick, but most of the facts are solid. I think the problems with the articles are in tone and in conclusions. In many places, we do not have enough evidence to infer what they conclude. The NYT claims to solve a jigsaw puzzle, then it only shows one-third of the pieces and they aren't even connected properly. I read the NYT article and even not being well versed in Hati I wondered about some of the lines the author(s) drew in the articles. I would argue "The NYT's conclusions are questionable / at best debatable" but I'm also not sure that makes for a good title. Maybe this gets drowned out in the "OMG NYT" kinda responses but I think there's a space where the information is correct, but the conclusions are up for debate in newspapers. Granted they also should make that clear. I also think that the NYT article(s) could have been better, and this critique of them is valid too... and both existing is healthy / ok.
- next_xibalba 4y ago
  I think you are confusing the politeness of the author with agreement. For example: > Did Citibank see an opportunity for profit in Haiti? Yes. Was that sufficient to commit the US to a full-scale invasion? Not a chance. That is a flat out refutation of the NYT's article entitled "Invade Haiti, Wall Street Urged. The U.S. Obliged". > the title [of another NYT article] reveals the central thesis. The Root of Haiti's Misery. The argument is that the indemnity not only contributed to Haiti's poverty; it's the cause. > Since that all started before the 1825 indemnity, it was unaffected by the debt and is therefore one really big reason why Haiti would not have grown like the rest of Latin America. > Maybe without the indemnity, Haiti could have formed coalitions that ended the instability. But that's imagining a counterfactual that we have no evidence for. In other words, another refutation: the NYT is making strong, evidence free claims of a causal link between indemnity and Haiti's relative historical poverty. > both existing is healthy / ok. Were all readers of the NYT's Haiti series to read this article, I would agree. But that's not the case. The NYT will reach millions, this article will reach thousands. As such, the NYT should adhere to a higher standard or just get out of this business of history.
robertlagrant 4y ago
> In fact, economists believe at best slavery did not provide any growth benefits over free labor and at worst it impeded America's economic development. I don't know if this is true or not, but like this article I imagine the NYT is going to publish pro-reparations articles, and so wouldn't want to indulge this sort of even-handed thinking.
- potatoz2 4y ago
  I don’t think it would preclude supporting reparations. If I burn down your home, I don’t benefit from it but I still owe you compensation. (There’s also the fact that, in the US, it’s possible the country as a whole suffered from slavery but individual people or states benefited.)
  - tytso 4y ago
    Indeed, the statement of slavery not providing any economic benefits as a whole is a country-level statement. Whether or not there exists certain large slaveholders, or business people in the North who made their family fortune building ships for the slave trade, or worse, trading slaves, who did benefit from slavery is not really subject to debate. The hard question from a reparations perspective is suppose that business person left the bulk of their family fortune to a particular church diocese. Let's further assume that donation was made in the form of the trust fund, so it's very easy to identify the source of a particular trust fund would not have existed but for the fact that this business person was part of the slave trade. What moral obligation, if any, does the church diocese have to repairing the harms that this donor may have inflicted on a group of people more than a century ago, given that in the meantime this church diocese has been enjoying a continuing income stream that originally had its roots in the slave trade? One could argue, "none at all", and one could also point out that there was an awful lot of good being done by the works enabled from the income stream of that trust fund. Dismantling that trust fund (if it can be legally done; there might be donor restrictions that might make this difficult/impossible) would eliminate the good being done via that trust fund. But one could argue that this is a similar argument made by the British Museum when it was refusing to return the Elgin Marbles, and that it is a bogus one. Or someone could argue that no matter what the value of that trust fund should be, it pales in comparison that the harm that has been done, and so you shouldn't even try. Others might argue that at least admitting the truth of how an organization has benefited by past injustices is the important thing, and that reparations is not so much about money, as it is about repair --- acknolwedging and making at least some effort to repair the damage to the community by past injusticies. After all, if someone burns down your home, what gets lost is far more than the monetary damages; it's also the emotion impact of having your home being lost, and objects of sentimental value, such as photographs, jewelry once owned by your mother, etc., which can't be compensated using mere money. All of that is true. And yet, having a true and sincere "I'm sorry" by someone who is genuinely sorrowful and repentant, can mean an awful lot. Bottom line is "reparations" is a deeply complex topic, and it is not just about writing checks. In fact, that's arguably the least important part of the whole process. It's unfortunate that this is the part that most people who are against reparations focus upon.
DANK_YACHT 4y ago
The two main points of contention are: 1) While "wall street" did want the U.S. to invade Haiti to increase profits, there were other reasons for the U.S. to invade as well. Specifically, there was a worry that Germany would invade (Germany was 80% of Haiti's trade). This was during WWI where there were fears about Germany's Latin America business dealings. After the invasion, it appears Citibank (aka "wall street") lost out due to increased competition. 2) Haiti had a number of structural differences that would have prevented it from developing even if France didn't force Haiti to pay for its freedom. One example is that Haiti tore down their plantations and distributed land among individual farmers. These farmers were not economically productive and prevented Haiti from adopting new technology as it became available. The other example is that Haiti had extreme instability even before France demanded payment. Leaders were frequently assassinated and the government even split in two for some time. The author of this post feels the NYT glossed over the facts in order to paint a narrative.
- next_xibalba 4y ago
  The larger point, to my reading, is how NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history. Even in the face of criticism from historians who are experts in the covered subject matter.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    "Criticism from historians" is normal for everything. Historians criticize work that they even revere. The presence of academic criticism is not evidence that the NYT piece is an "ahistorical, ideology first product". In fact, the majority of criticism from the academic community (as mentioned in the article) is the fact that the historians that were consulted on this piece weren't named in the text.
    - hitekker 4y ago
      I think the GP means that the NYT has a recent history of peddling journalistic rags as academic papers, without the approval of the academic experts they've consulted. One of those fact checkers even wrote an article about how they were ignored by the NYT: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-proje...
mdoms 4y ago
tomcat27 4y ago
It makes sense to write three versions on a topic. 1. A PPT Deck. A 2 mins elevator pitch, A 10 mins potty reading 2. A Blog post. Ok you got my attention, why should I care? 3. A Careful Argument. I see your point, explain me everything People do this in ML research, and it's way better than other fields tbh.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  The new york times goal is to make money. If the careful argument costs more than it brings in they won't do it. I don't think many people would read the careful argument version of this piece which I suspect is why they went for the blog version instead.
  - tomcat27 4y ago
    Low barrier of entry is actually a good way to increase readers. I bet they are now not as influential as they were in 80s and 90s
DaveExeter 4y ago
To say that the New York Times is "wrong" is a bit misleading. The NYT article was written in order to promote reparations. It was never meant to be accurate. Many journalists and even some historians claim that American economic prosperity would have been unattainable without slavery. If you truly believe that, and you look at the billions of lives that have been lifted out of poverty thanks to this prosperity, then a callous calculus could conclude that the abuses of slavery were a cost we had to pay. But economists do not believe this claim. In fact, economists believe at best slavery did not provide any growth benefits over free labor and at worst it impeded America's economic development. If slavery was not responsible for American economic prosperity, one of the left's main arguments for reparations falls.
- pr0zac 4y ago
  Not expressing an opinion on the topic in either direction but I don't really see a reason the argument for reparations would require slavery to be a more economically productive mode of labor vs it simply factually being the mode of labor used at the time. The argument for reparations is they are owed because the value of the slaves' economic productivity was stolen from them (and thus also their descendants), its not at all dependent on slavery producing a higher economic output compared to a hypothetical situation in which slaves received fair compensation. Sorta similar to how wage theft is illegal because its stealing earned economic value not because doing so increases productivity.
  - wahern 4y ago
    True, you don't need that argument to make the case for reparations. But the left still relies heavily on it nonetheless. It's used to justify monetary reparations (as opposed to other kinds) with higher dollar figures. But more importantly, it complements the premise of black Americans as merely an oppressed, victimized, outsider class; ironically, a premise that modern leftist identity politics happens to strongly promote. Identity politics is built around the notion of victimhood and standing outside the dominate (i.e. "white", male) social and economic system, and tuned to bolster the sympathy and guilt factor, which notions of agency and independent contribution tend to diminish. Given that narrative, it's unsurprising that when making the case for positive contributions to the shared, national identity, they're going to heavily emphasize contributions via the institution of slavery. But to be fair, slavery and peanut butter is basically how most Americans understand the black contribution to the American story. The dominate narrative on the left, after failing[1] with peanut butter in the 20th century, simply reverted back to slavery. Of course, the black contribution and place in the American story is infinitely more complex, substantial, and pervasive than that. We just haven't figured out to how to get out of that rut. (And one of the primary arguments against reparations is that not only would reparations not address that, it would further it. I think even many proponents, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, would agree with the first part of that claim. Coates admits that reparations wouldn't actually fix anything; rather, he argues that achieving reparations would be the proof that we materially reconciled ourselves with and •changed* the narrative. IOW, from that perspective the solution is not in the reparations, per se, but the process of coming to an agreement on reparations. The reparations themselves are just the stakes, so people aren't just making idle, abstract commitments--talk [alone] is cheap.) [1] Or believing that they failed. The project of creating a shared sense of inclusive history is ongoing. I cringe at proclamations of first black this or first female that. But it's the proclamations that are cringe worthy and, I think, counter-productive, not the fact itself. (The proclamations are a double-edged sword--they draw attention to particular instances of representation of a group, but the proclamation also reinforces passivity and lower status of the group.) Taking affirmative action to improve inclusion across society is extremely important, though obviously it's in tension with notions of equal treatment and so I don't necessarily agree with all forms of formal institutionalization of affirmative action. If you look at countries where an oppressed class (minority or majority) has achieved formal, institutionalized preferences--Malaysia, South Africa, Rwanda, etc--it clearly doesn't achieve the goals and even tends to solidify hierarchy and economic disparity. Apropos Haiti, one theory for why Haiti has never properly developed is because the society strongly internalized a victimhood mentality from the very beginning. Long after slavery ended the national identity is still centered around enslavement and oppression, rather than on a positive sense of construction and cooperation. That makes the society easy prey for demagogues and avaricious elite--internal and external.
avgcorrection 4y ago
Economists and downplaying the economic effects of imperialism and slavery. Could you name a more amicable duo? They don’t even say that the NYT is wrong (“This is correct, but”).
yunohn 4y ago
> The indemnity was immoral, and France should be ashamed of it. Ah of course, most colonisers wish that being ashamed is punishment enough. Sadly, the victims don’t even get that since France won’t even talk about it.
- usrn 4y ago
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    What are you referring to? Was it before or after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961
  - corrral 4y ago
    You may be thinking of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_invasion_of_Gaul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_invasion_of_Gaul 8th Century. My distant recollection from university French courses is that the Battle of Tours, which repulsed the invasion, is among the earliest major events that the French consider directly part of their national history, and is a really big deal to them. Though of course "France" didn't really exist yet, at that time (it's telling that the "French" forces were from two independent kingdoms, both located in modern France), though enough elements were in place that you could maybe call it a kind of proto-France.
  - yunohn 4y ago
    So an attempted invasion of pre-France, by the entire “Muslim” group as you say, is somehow equivalent to colonial and modern exploitation being committed by the French?
    - usrn 4y ago
      - yunohn 4y ago
mikkergp 4y ago
I don't know if this is a new trend, but there's this idea of news that news is "just the facts". Now I think most reasonable journalists would disagree with this notion, and they would say that news is facts + context. What is the significance of fact A and why does it matter. But I think there is a trend towards defining not just what information the reader should take away, but what conclusions they should reach. And I think there's a growing desire among readers for media to perform this function, but it's not because they need to know what conclusions to reach, but because they want to know that other people are reaching those conclusions.
bigbacaloa 4y ago
An academic writes an article saying that a newspaper article is too academic.
gumby 4y ago
I guess I think the footnote and "paper of record trying to morph into an academic journal" argument is silly. The 1619 articles in the NYT magazine (used in this blog post as a prior example) were not footnoted. The subsequent book version is heavily footnoted, plus includes info on contributors and an index. This criticism feels like someone complaining about character development in the film adaptation of Lord of the Rings: that's not the nature of the medium. Relatedly: the NYT is hardly overreaching (and if they were, I don't consider it a justifiable criticism). Newspapers do analysis and inherently do summarization and selection. While most such articles are "small" (i.e. reporting on the recent shooting) they have had large analysis, most notably the Pentagon papers that weren't merely published but extensively analyzed. They do "long form" multi-article analysis all the time, from the recent Tucker Carlson pieces to analysis of the complex timeline of the Jan 6 incident. The definition of newspaper changes all the time and frankly more long form is a good thing. (the comments here are orthogonal to any criticism I might have of the NYT in general)
- shkkmo 4y ago
  I think that if newspapers are trying to take academic tone and content, it behooves them to also adopt some of the rigor that helps that pursuit. I too think that deeper analysis is value-able, but when newspapers do that, they should up their game. If they are trying to present themselves as more academic or scientific, they need more citations and possibly a process akin to peer review (or even submitting a paper with underlying materials themselves to a journal if they are doing original work, as the NYT is claiming to have done here.)
  - gumby 4y ago
    I think it's OK if that material is in the book and doesn't make it to the "paper" part. The audiences are different.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
The NYT article was written by some very far left activist writers, and that's why it has be taken with a grain of salt as another data point but far from the whole story. The writing is reactionist and full of venom, and that automatically turns me off.
WaitWaitWha 4y ago
>But the main controversy is centered on a strawman: should the New York Times cite sources in their articles? 100% yes. In the cyber security field, this has become such a problem. Several prominent cyber security news consolidating sites will put out very impacting articles, but remove any and all references where the information comes from. It is a nightmare of news reverse engineering. I also have a vague suspicion that the articles are scraped from the original sites, and re-written by automagically with ML tools. That is, vast majority of these articles are auto-generated. Nothing wrong with it, but no way to prevent such scraping, and no way to compete SEO with them.
unity1001 4y ago
NYT has always been an establishment trumpet. https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-766d88313d7f89c78da3f3f1684d9b5d-pjlq https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-766d88313d7f89c78da3f3...
dang 4y ago
Recent and related: Invade Haiti, Wall Street Urged. The U.S. Obliged - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31468196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31468196 - May 2022 (183 comments)
deleted 4y ago
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YATA2 4y ago
One often overlooked fact is Haiti committed a real genocide against whites, almost entirely wiping them off the island (thousands were murdered). Whites in the Americas and elsewhere were shocked and scared by the news. Many US and European sailors refused to port in Haiti due to this, which only hampered Haiti's economic growth.
- krisboyz781 4y ago
  Stop pushing fucking bullshit. US and European refused to port in Haiti because it was bad optics, as Haiti was a country that successfully freed itself from slavery while European and American countries still employed those tactics. US had no problem dealing with countries slaughtering natives, black people, etc. but somehow you're trying to paint this bullshit genocide narrative. Spoken like a person who truly has no fucking clue what they're talking about.
rgovostes 4y ago
While the referenced article does not have inline citations, the NYT did publish a bibliography: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-bibliography.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-bibl... The data for their calculations are also published on GitHub: https://github.com/nytimes/haiti-debt https://github.com/nytimes/haiti-debt
krisboyz781 4y ago
this post is garbage. This author clearly has some bias in his articles. Haiti and DR were one country at one point, the French debt forced Haitians to tax Dominicans to help pay off the money. Dominicans ended up fighting a war to separate which resulted in even more money lost. Secondly, the West completely shunned Haiti which is why France was even able to get away with the debt. US didn't want to trade with a country that eliminated slavery and other western countries felt the same. Lastly in regards to America's involvement. Who tf do you think was bankrolling dictator, Duvalier? Oh, that's right, the US. Take a look at Haiti early to mid 1900s to now. There is a stark contrast. The country itself may have not been extremely wealthy, but the image of being the poorest country in the Americas, complete collapse infrastructure destroyed what should have been a thriving tourist industry like other parts of the Caribbean. Instead the primary tourist destination of Haiti is leased by an American corporation

206 points by jseliger 4y ago

Haiti needs a stronger national identity, but it is so often victim of first world saviors that I think it will continue to struggle. Most of the immigrants (to the US) that I've met from Haiti do not speak favorably of the country and have no intention of ever returning.

deleted 4y ago

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hammock 4y ago

If a newspaper were to simply present the facts and let the reader come to their own conclusion, that might be viewed as dangerous.

30944836 4y ago
That's not really possible, given that the mere omission of facts, or the placement of facts next to each other influences the conclusion. Besides which, people think in stories, and presenting just a list of facts isn't going to be read by anyone.
- hunterb123 4y ago
  That's a separate issue which should be a concern but shouldn't prevent you from wanting to correct the other issues. You can compare different outlets to see ommission of news. The spin, speculation, and lack of sources are the other issues. I would read a list of facts over a story. I hate fluff. Most people don't even read the story, they read the title and possibly the first/last paragaph.
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
Dangerous to people that feel threatened by a feee thinking populace, ie authoritarians.
havblue 4y ago
I'm not sure if simply presenting the facts is a viable business model for most news organizations. User attention and advertisements are what they sell, not information.
leononame 4y ago
I don't think this could be remotely possible. Just by deciding which facts to publish you already present an opinion. I see this sentiment floating around a lot, but I think it's a bit of a naïve approach. Just by deciding which news to publish a newspaper already has a bias.
- hunterb123 4y ago
  It would be a step in the right direction. You can always compare outlets from many sides to find omission of facts / topics. You can also do that to highlight the spin, but wouldn't it be nice if there was no spin in the first place?
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > It would be a step in the right direction. The argument is that it's not possible, not that it wouldn't be desirable if it were. The way to get all of the unbiased facts not intended to illustrate a narrative is to be omnipotent. Otherwise, you're getting filtered information from someone telling you what they saw. The reason they leave out what color socks they were wearing at the time they saw it is because they're filtering the information down to what they think is relevant to their narrative.
    - hunterb123 4y ago
      Your interpretation is not possible. But the general idea of exposing facts more than speculation and slants is possible. I believe GP was more suggesting the latter than the former.
pid-1 4y ago
Have you ever tried presenting any facts to anyone? The word "fact" is very very sloppy.

sudden_dystopia 4y ago

The NYT is wrong about all kinds of stuff. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that they engage in quite a bit of data/mis-info. Whether purposely or via sloppy reporting, the effect is the same.

hdesh 4y ago
Unfortunately this is true. Someone has written a whole book[1] about this. There[2] is a podcast interview of the author of that book. NY Times' anti-India and anti-Hindu bias is also widely documented[3]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Gray-Lady-Winked-Misreporting-Fabrications/dp/1736703307 https://www.amazon.com/Gray-Lady-Winked-Misreporting-Fabrica... [2] https://kushalmehra.com/2021/07/18/the-gray-lady-winked/ https://kushalmehra.com/2021/07/18/the-gray-lady-winked/ [3] https://rameshrao-89399.medium.com/understanding-the-new-york-times-anti-hindu-bias-107cb17aab72 https://rameshrao-89399.medium.com/understanding-the-new-yor...
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Anti-which Hindus? BJP is “sole spokesman” for Hindus now like Muslim League claimed to be for Muslims? Also with regard to India existing before 1947, you should remind yourself why Ambedkar had “India, that is Bharat…” put into Indian Constitution.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Tangentially related, but I can’t help but think what Haiti could be today had they elected Wyclef Jean. Regardless of his abilities as a politician, as an international celebrity, he could’ve brought unity and investment to Haiti. If you’ll forgive me, I don’t think he could’ve done much worse.

Splendor 4y ago
You couldn't be more wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C3%A9le_Haiti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C3%A9le_Haiti
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  That’s unfortunate, but I don’t see that he was prosecuted for anything. I still think he would’ve been a better choice
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Because you like his songs?
    - Overtonwindow 4y ago
      No I don’t listen to his music at all, just the superstar power. I think Haiti needs someone with a global image. To draw attention to the country. Haiti is going to be corrupt for the foreseeable future, I anticipate everyone involved is going to be corrupt at some level, but his star power could have been used for good.
charia 4y ago
I think one thing to keep in mind is that Wyclef famously used his celebrity to raise money for Haiti after the earthquake and it was shown that much, if not most, of the money raised was used by Wyclef and his family/friends for personal spending. That behavior suggests that Wyclef might have continued the same corruption that other Haitian politicians engaged in and maybe taken it a step further by leveraging his celebrity to also pocket money brought in as outside investment. Again, maybe he couldn't be worse since other Haitian politicians would have and did engage in similar corruption, but it'd be a stretch to say that it's anything we should consider as "what if" that would had the real potential for positive change in the country.

baggy_trough 4y ago

The NYT is a very powerful propaganda organ and must be read with that in mind.

Splendor 4y ago

> While I have some criticisms, most of the historical facts are correct. There are places where I could nitpick, but most of the facts are solid. I think the problems with the articles are in tone and in conclusions. The softest of takedowns.

potatoz2 4y ago
I agree, and it seems like most commenters (so far) seem not to have read the “takedown”. What the author mostly criticizes is that the NYT is not providing enough evidence, not that things are clearly wrong.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  Sadly, the author's title produces the same sort of response that NYT's title does. Nuanced analysis is blown over by people reacting to titles.

easterncalculus 4y ago

Ironically, like media outlets often says about people online, it does not matter how good the rebuttal is if 5,000 people see it and millions read what it disproves. The damage is already done.

MomoXenosaga 4y ago
The history of Haiti can't be distilled in a single article. You'd need a 500 page book for the abridged version. But realistically very people would give enough of a shit to read it.
- easterncalculus 4y ago
  Definitely, I completely agree. That goes for any nation really. The difference to me is that one article is making a pretty serious claim, and the other is casting some doubt on it - the burden of proof is still on NYT.
hiram112 4y ago
This has increasingly been the M.O. of all the "activist" media outlets in the US for the past 5 years. Issue exaggerated if not outright fraudulent explosive headlines and articles - Russian Pee tapes, bounties on American troops, Capital police officers bludgeoned to death by rabid mobs, etc. - then months later, quietly issue a "correction" on page 10, long after the false narrative has been thoroughly disseminated into the public's version of reality. And if that wasn't shady enough, in the days of online content, these outlets often don't even bother with admitting they were wrong. They simply edit the original stories - silently and without public notice - and pretend it was never written in the first place. The NY Times was caught red-handed doing this with their 1619 content several times already.

causi 4y ago

If journalists littered their work with citations, they argue, it would disrupt the narrative and alienate the audience. That's a very 20th-century take. There's no reason why any article couldn't have a little "show version with citations" button tucked away somewhere.

vehemenz 4y ago
Honestly, you don't even need that much. There are plenty of other citing styles that are non-obtrusive, including those that use footnotes and/or hyperlinks.
- causi 4y ago
  Sure, which is the version I'd probably read all the time. I'm just saying you can worship at the altar of the pageview and offer citations at the same time with no downside, aside from less ability to bullshit the reader.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  Yep the human brain is amazing at ignoring these, I never had a problem with it reading anything that I've read in the past and it helps if you wanna go into further depth later when you want more info/context.
leononame 4y ago
It's a lot of work. That alone is reason enough for a lot of newspapers. But I also kind of agree. While truth and sources are important and I would like newspapers to list sources and citations more often, the narrative is an important element. The author of the original article mentions that a publication they read would not be intelligible without citation because you lose the context. I don't think just switching citations on and off is a viable form of marrying good narrative and academic standards.
- causi 4y ago
  It's a lot of work. How so? When I was writing papers in college I'd read my sources, bang out the text, then for every citable claim I'd ctrl+F my sources and cite them. For a journalist who's presumably taking notes while writing an article it should be even faster. This only seems hard if you're writing articles based purely on vibes and not information.

everybodyknows 4y ago

> The New York Times is trying to expand from the paper of record ... Do people still think of the NYT that way? The Washington Post seems to me to have the better claim nowadays. Not a great claim, but better.

fleddr 4y ago
It's more like a Tumblr blog.

pilgrimfff 4y ago

Great piece. Fair and even-handed in its criticism of the NYT article.

tonguez 4y ago

“The New York Times Is Right About X” would be a news headline.

richwater 4y ago

This exactly mirrors how I felt reading that NYT piece.

duxup 4y ago

I enjoyed that read although I kinda wonder about the "The New York Times is Wrong About Hati" when the author notes that ... they're also right in general? >While I have some criticisms, most of the historical facts are correct. There are places where I could nitpick, but most of the facts are solid. I think the problems with the articles are in tone and in conclusions. In many places, we do not have enough evidence to infer what they conclude. The NYT claims to solve a jigsaw puzzle, then it only shows one-third of the pieces and they aren't even connected properly. I read the NYT article and even not being well versed in Hati I wondered about some of the lines the author(s) drew in the articles. I would argue "The NYT's conclusions are questionable / at best debatable" but I'm also not sure that makes for a good title. Maybe this gets drowned out in the "OMG NYT" kinda responses but I think there's a space where the information is correct, but the conclusions are up for debate in newspapers. Granted they also should make that clear. I also think that the NYT article(s) could have been better, and this critique of them is valid too... and both existing is healthy / ok.

next_xibalba 4y ago
I think you are confusing the politeness of the author with agreement. For example: > Did Citibank see an opportunity for profit in Haiti? Yes. Was that sufficient to commit the US to a full-scale invasion? Not a chance. That is a flat out refutation of the NYT's article entitled "Invade Haiti, Wall Street Urged. The U.S. Obliged". > the title [of another NYT article] reveals the central thesis. The Root of Haiti's Misery. The argument is that the indemnity not only contributed to Haiti's poverty; it's the cause. > Since that all started before the 1825 indemnity, it was unaffected by the debt and is therefore one really big reason why Haiti would not have grown like the rest of Latin America. > Maybe without the indemnity, Haiti could have formed coalitions that ended the instability. But that's imagining a counterfactual that we have no evidence for. In other words, another refutation: the NYT is making strong, evidence free claims of a causal link between indemnity and Haiti's relative historical poverty. > both existing is healthy / ok. Were all readers of the NYT's Haiti series to read this article, I would agree. But that's not the case. The NYT will reach millions, this article will reach thousands. As such, the NYT should adhere to a higher standard or just get out of this business of history.

robertlagrant 4y ago

> In fact, economists believe at best slavery did not provide any growth benefits over free labor and at worst it impeded America's economic development. I don't know if this is true or not, but like this article I imagine the NYT is going to publish pro-reparations articles, and so wouldn't want to indulge this sort of even-handed thinking.

potatoz2 4y ago
I don’t think it would preclude supporting reparations. If I burn down your home, I don’t benefit from it but I still owe you compensation. (There’s also the fact that, in the US, it’s possible the country as a whole suffered from slavery but individual people or states benefited.)
- tytso 4y ago
  Indeed, the statement of slavery not providing any economic benefits as a whole is a country-level statement. Whether or not there exists certain large slaveholders, or business people in the North who made their family fortune building ships for the slave trade, or worse, trading slaves, who did benefit from slavery is not really subject to debate. The hard question from a reparations perspective is suppose that business person left the bulk of their family fortune to a particular church diocese. Let's further assume that donation was made in the form of the trust fund, so it's very easy to identify the source of a particular trust fund would not have existed but for the fact that this business person was part of the slave trade. What moral obligation, if any, does the church diocese have to repairing the harms that this donor may have inflicted on a group of people more than a century ago, given that in the meantime this church diocese has been enjoying a continuing income stream that originally had its roots in the slave trade? One could argue, "none at all", and one could also point out that there was an awful lot of good being done by the works enabled from the income stream of that trust fund. Dismantling that trust fund (if it can be legally done; there might be donor restrictions that might make this difficult/impossible) would eliminate the good being done via that trust fund. But one could argue that this is a similar argument made by the British Museum when it was refusing to return the Elgin Marbles, and that it is a bogus one. Or someone could argue that no matter what the value of that trust fund should be, it pales in comparison that the harm that has been done, and so you shouldn't even try. Others might argue that at least admitting the truth of how an organization has benefited by past injustices is the important thing, and that reparations is not so much about money, as it is about repair --- acknolwedging and making at least some effort to repair the damage to the community by past injusticies. After all, if someone burns down your home, what gets lost is far more than the monetary damages; it's also the emotion impact of having your home being lost, and objects of sentimental value, such as photographs, jewelry once owned by your mother, etc., which can't be compensated using mere money. All of that is true. And yet, having a true and sincere "I'm sorry" by someone who is genuinely sorrowful and repentant, can mean an awful lot. Bottom line is "reparations" is a deeply complex topic, and it is not just about writing checks. In fact, that's arguably the least important part of the whole process. It's unfortunate that this is the part that most people who are against reparations focus upon.

DANK_YACHT 4y ago

The two main points of contention are: 1) While "wall street" did want the U.S. to invade Haiti to increase profits, there were other reasons for the U.S. to invade as well. Specifically, there was a worry that Germany would invade (Germany was 80% of Haiti's trade). This was during WWI where there were fears about Germany's Latin America business dealings. After the invasion, it appears Citibank (aka "wall street") lost out due to increased competition. 2) Haiti had a number of structural differences that would have prevented it from developing even if France didn't force Haiti to pay for its freedom. One example is that Haiti tore down their plantations and distributed land among individual farmers. These farmers were not economically productive and prevented Haiti from adopting new technology as it became available. The other example is that Haiti had extreme instability even before France demanded payment. Leaders were frequently assassinated and the government even split in two for some time. The author of this post feels the NYT glossed over the facts in order to paint a narrative.

next_xibalba 4y ago
The larger point, to my reading, is how NYT has published ahistorical, ideology first products and presented and pushed them as history. Even in the face of criticism from historians who are experts in the covered subject matter.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  "Criticism from historians" is normal for everything. Historians criticize work that they even revere. The presence of academic criticism is not evidence that the NYT piece is an "ahistorical, ideology first product". In fact, the majority of criticism from the academic community (as mentioned in the article) is the fact that the historians that were consulted on this piece weren't named in the text.
  - hitekker 4y ago
    I think the GP means that the NYT has a recent history of peddling journalistic rags as academic papers, without the approval of the academic experts they've consulted. One of those fact checkers even wrote an article about how they were ignored by the NYT: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-proje...

mdoms 4y ago

tomcat27 4y ago

It makes sense to write three versions on a topic. 1. A PPT Deck. A 2 mins elevator pitch, A 10 mins potty reading 2. A Blog post. Ok you got my attention, why should I care? 3. A Careful Argument. I see your point, explain me everything People do this in ML research, and it's way better than other fields tbh.

colinmhayes 4y ago
The new york times goal is to make money. If the careful argument costs more than it brings in they won't do it. I don't think many people would read the careful argument version of this piece which I suspect is why they went for the blog version instead.
- tomcat27 4y ago
  Low barrier of entry is actually a good way to increase readers. I bet they are now not as influential as they were in 80s and 90s

DaveExeter 4y ago

To say that the New York Times is "wrong" is a bit misleading. The NYT article was written in order to promote reparations. It was never meant to be accurate. Many journalists and even some historians claim that American economic prosperity would have been unattainable without slavery. If you truly believe that, and you look at the billions of lives that have been lifted out of poverty thanks to this prosperity, then a callous calculus could conclude that the abuses of slavery were a cost we had to pay. But economists do not believe this claim. In fact, economists believe at best slavery did not provide any growth benefits over free labor and at worst it impeded America's economic development. If slavery was not responsible for American economic prosperity, one of the left's main arguments for reparations falls.

pr0zac 4y ago
Not expressing an opinion on the topic in either direction but I don't really see a reason the argument for reparations would require slavery to be a more economically productive mode of labor vs it simply factually being the mode of labor used at the time. The argument for reparations is they are owed because the value of the slaves' economic productivity was stolen from them (and thus also their descendants), its not at all dependent on slavery producing a higher economic output compared to a hypothetical situation in which slaves received fair compensation. Sorta similar to how wage theft is illegal because its stealing earned economic value not because doing so increases productivity.
- wahern 4y ago
  True, you don't need that argument to make the case for reparations. But the left still relies heavily on it nonetheless. It's used to justify monetary reparations (as opposed to other kinds) with higher dollar figures. But more importantly, it complements the premise of black Americans as merely an oppressed, victimized, outsider class; ironically, a premise that modern leftist identity politics happens to strongly promote. Identity politics is built around the notion of victimhood and standing outside the dominate (i.e. "white", male) social and economic system, and tuned to bolster the sympathy and guilt factor, which notions of agency and independent contribution tend to diminish. Given that narrative, it's unsurprising that when making the case for positive contributions to the shared, national identity, they're going to heavily emphasize contributions via the institution of slavery. But to be fair, slavery and peanut butter is basically how most Americans understand the black contribution to the American story. The dominate narrative on the left, after failing[1] with peanut butter in the 20th century, simply reverted back to slavery. Of course, the black contribution and place in the American story is infinitely more complex, substantial, and pervasive than that. We just haven't figured out to how to get out of that rut. (And one of the primary arguments against reparations is that not only would reparations not address that, it would further it. I think even many proponents, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, would agree with the first part of that claim. Coates admits that reparations wouldn't actually fix anything; rather, he argues that achieving reparations would be the proof that we materially reconciled ourselves with and •changed* the narrative. IOW, from that perspective the solution is not in the reparations, per se, but the process of coming to an agreement on reparations. The reparations themselves are just the stakes, so people aren't just making idle, abstract commitments--talk [alone] is cheap.) [1] Or believing that they failed. The project of creating a shared sense of inclusive history is ongoing. I cringe at proclamations of first black this or first female that. But it's the proclamations that are cringe worthy and, I think, counter-productive, not the fact itself. (The proclamations are a double-edged sword--they draw attention to particular instances of representation of a group, but the proclamation also reinforces passivity and lower status of the group.) Taking affirmative action to improve inclusion across society is extremely important, though obviously it's in tension with notions of equal treatment and so I don't necessarily agree with all forms of formal institutionalization of affirmative action. If you look at countries where an oppressed class (minority or majority) has achieved formal, institutionalized preferences--Malaysia, South Africa, Rwanda, etc--it clearly doesn't achieve the goals and even tends to solidify hierarchy and economic disparity. Apropos Haiti, one theory for why Haiti has never properly developed is because the society strongly internalized a victimhood mentality from the very beginning. Long after slavery ended the national identity is still centered around enslavement and oppression, rather than on a positive sense of construction and cooperation. That makes the society easy prey for demagogues and avaricious elite--internal and external.

avgcorrection 4y ago

Economists and downplaying the economic effects of imperialism and slavery. Could you name a more amicable duo? They don’t even say that the NYT is wrong (“This is correct, but”).

yunohn 4y ago

> The indemnity was immoral, and France should be ashamed of it. Ah of course, most colonisers wish that being ashamed is punishment enough. Sadly, the victims don’t even get that since France won’t even talk about it.

usrn 4y ago
- pessimizer 4y ago
  What are you referring to? Was it before or after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961
- corrral 4y ago
  You may be thinking of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_invasion_of_Gaul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_invasion_of_Gaul 8th Century. My distant recollection from university French courses is that the Battle of Tours, which repulsed the invasion, is among the earliest major events that the French consider directly part of their national history, and is a really big deal to them. Though of course "France" didn't really exist yet, at that time (it's telling that the "French" forces were from two independent kingdoms, both located in modern France), though enough elements were in place that you could maybe call it a kind of proto-France.
- yunohn 4y ago
  So an attempted invasion of pre-France, by the entire “Muslim” group as you say, is somehow equivalent to colonial and modern exploitation being committed by the French?
  - usrn 4y ago
    - yunohn 4y ago

mikkergp 4y ago

I don't know if this is a new trend, but there's this idea of news that news is "just the facts". Now I think most reasonable journalists would disagree with this notion, and they would say that news is facts + context. What is the significance of fact A and why does it matter. But I think there is a trend towards defining not just what information the reader should take away, but what conclusions they should reach. And I think there's a growing desire among readers for media to perform this function, but it's not because they need to know what conclusions to reach, but because they want to know that other people are reaching those conclusions.

bigbacaloa 4y ago

An academic writes an article saying that a newspaper article is too academic.

gumby 4y ago

I guess I think the footnote and "paper of record trying to morph into an academic journal" argument is silly. The 1619 articles in the NYT magazine (used in this blog post as a prior example) were not footnoted. The subsequent book version is heavily footnoted, plus includes info on contributors and an index. This criticism feels like someone complaining about character development in the film adaptation of Lord of the Rings: that's not the nature of the medium. Relatedly: the NYT is hardly overreaching (and if they were, I don't consider it a justifiable criticism). Newspapers do analysis and inherently do summarization and selection. While most such articles are "small" (i.e. reporting on the recent shooting) they have had large analysis, most notably the Pentagon papers that weren't merely published but extensively analyzed. They do "long form" multi-article analysis all the time, from the recent Tucker Carlson pieces to analysis of the complex timeline of the Jan 6 incident. The definition of newspaper changes all the time and frankly more long form is a good thing. (the comments here are orthogonal to any criticism I might have of the NYT in general)

shkkmo 4y ago
I think that if newspapers are trying to take academic tone and content, it behooves them to also adopt some of the rigor that helps that pursuit. I too think that deeper analysis is value-able, but when newspapers do that, they should up their game. If they are trying to present themselves as more academic or scientific, they need more citations and possibly a process akin to peer review (or even submitting a paper with underlying materials themselves to a journal if they are doing original work, as the NYT is claiming to have done here.)
- gumby 4y ago
  I think it's OK if that material is in the book and doesn't make it to the "paper" part. The audiences are different.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

The NYT article was written by some very far left activist writers, and that's why it has be taken with a grain of salt as another data point but far from the whole story. The writing is reactionist and full of venom, and that automatically turns me off.

WaitWaitWha 4y ago

>But the main controversy is centered on a strawman: should the New York Times cite sources in their articles? 100% yes. In the cyber security field, this has become such a problem. Several prominent cyber security news consolidating sites will put out very impacting articles, but remove any and all references where the information comes from. It is a nightmare of news reverse engineering. I also have a vague suspicion that the articles are scraped from the original sites, and re-written by automagically with ML tools. That is, vast majority of these articles are auto-generated. Nothing wrong with it, but no way to prevent such scraping, and no way to compete SEO with them.

unity1001 4y ago

NYT has always been an establishment trumpet. https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-766d88313d7f89c78da3f3f1684d9b5d-pjlq https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-766d88313d7f89c78da3f3...

dang 4y ago

Recent and related: Invade Haiti, Wall Street Urged. The U.S. Obliged - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31468196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31468196 - May 2022 (183 comments)

deleted 4y ago

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YATA2 4y ago

One often overlooked fact is Haiti committed a real genocide against whites, almost entirely wiping them off the island (thousands were murdered). Whites in the Americas and elsewhere were shocked and scared by the news. Many US and European sailors refused to port in Haiti due to this, which only hampered Haiti's economic growth.

krisboyz781 4y ago
Stop pushing fucking bullshit. US and European refused to port in Haiti because it was bad optics, as Haiti was a country that successfully freed itself from slavery while European and American countries still employed those tactics. US had no problem dealing with countries slaughtering natives, black people, etc. but somehow you're trying to paint this bullshit genocide narrative. Spoken like a person who truly has no fucking clue what they're talking about.

rgovostes 4y ago

While the referenced article does not have inline citations, the NYT did publish a bibliography: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-bibliography.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-bibl... The data for their calculations are also published on GitHub: https://github.com/nytimes/haiti-debt https://github.com/nytimes/haiti-debt

krisboyz781 4y ago

this post is garbage. This author clearly has some bias in his articles. Haiti and DR were one country at one point, the French debt forced Haitians to tax Dominicans to help pay off the money. Dominicans ended up fighting a war to separate which resulted in even more money lost. Secondly, the West completely shunned Haiti which is why France was even able to get away with the debt. US didn't want to trade with a country that eliminated slavery and other western countries felt the same. Lastly in regards to America's involvement. Who tf do you think was bankrolling dictator, Duvalier? Oh, that's right, the US. Take a look at Haiti early to mid 1900s to now. There is a stark contrast. The country itself may have not been extremely wealthy, but the image of being the poorest country in the Americas, complete collapse infrastructure destroyed what should have been a thriving tourist industry like other parts of the Caribbean. Instead the primary tourist destination of Haiti is leased by an American corporation