I think ethnocentrism is a big part of this forgetting: we are so concerned with upholding our "powerful, mosaic, America the great" kind of status (so concerned with our own culture and customs and comparing/measuring ourselves to others), that we forget about issues in Haiti, Cuba, or any other place in need of aid.
We tend to forget even our own issues, while we are trying to advance our image in the world scope, we forget our own people suffering from poverty, hunger, pain, lack of family, etc. and we instead, get our hands busied in others' issues before our own.
It's as if we are on a de-pressurizing airplane that lowers its oxygen masks: Do we first administer the mask to our neighbor or do we first put on our own mask before helping others? The solution is not so simple.
Of course, I am not condoning the absolute dire situations of people like those in Haiti or those suffering the recent earthquake in South America and suggesting that we solely improve our own issues, but I think we need to get our priorities straight here. It doesn't make sense that Haiti and its ongoing issues are only discovered after its recent disaster--this makes me wonder: what is going on in our country that may be ubiquitous or rarely seen (and that may not be questioned), that we are unaware of? Do we really not see the homeless people on the streets with their pathetic signs and cups for change; instead, assessing them as faking and potentially using our change to support their drug habits? We write things off all the time, assuming that someone else will handle the situation and take care of it.
Or we do what I first mentioned: we are shocked, then we get emotional and proceed to turn off our television screens, or stop reading the paper, shutting ourselves off from the very real tragedies. It's easy for us to disregard such tragedies since "no one I know has been harmed, thankfully," BUT what about your counterparts who are suffering? Do they not count because you can't account for them and do not know their name and their history?
Sometimes we donate necessities like water or clothes to shelters, or we donate money to a cause, or we advocate for help by wearing our cool graphic "invisible children" or "Save Darfur" tees--But are we just doing this to forget? Are we doing it because we feel we have done our share, our part, to relieve those who are desperate since we are told "every bit counts?"
Journalist, David Reiff explains that the trajectory of news coverage of disastrous events moves in the same, classic way: "First the images pour in. Soon the grief of immigrants from the affected countries also becomes a feature of the coverage. There is a mobilization - the army, the churches, the NGOs. For weeks, a strip on the bottom of the TV screen tells viewers how to donate to various groups. Politicians take to the airwaves declaring their determination to set things right, and the airports are soon full of cargo planes and specialist firefighters, search-and-rescue teams, and emergency water and shelter experts. And for a while the work is covered in detail, often, at least in the first week after the disaster, with some preempting of scheduled programming."
Our news systems seem to be conditioned just as we are. We only seem to have attention spans and interest in the issue for a few weeks at most, until we are numbed by the information or too heart broken; thus, we change the channel or the news casters focus our attention on celebrities adopting children in Africa--oh so philanthropic! [Example: The war in the middle east seems to be background news at this point.]
So..is it possible to keep these victims in our mind? To do more than just acknowledge them and their needs? What should we do?!
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