In July of 2015, I posted this article in the Boston Review to address not only the absurd comments from Angus Deaton, but also the shocking, pervasive racism that is so often expressed by intellectual yet arrogant people.
I spend a lot of time explaining and promoting Rwanda’s
record on public health to audiences around the world. Together with our
research and funding partners, Rwanda has made unprecedented strides on almost
every health measure. We are one of the few developing countries that will meet
all MDG targets. All Rwandans have access to health insurance, and maternal
mortality has fallen at historically unprecedented rates.
For Angus Deaton, these gains only served to entrench
dictatorship and repression in Rwanda. How? By threatening to let our children
die unless altruistic and gullible Westerners pay our government to keep them
alive.
Deaton believes that we ‘provide health care for Rwandan
mothers and children’ in order to ‘insulate ourselves from the needs and wishes
of our people’. I can’t tell if he means that Rwandans don’t wish for good
health, or that our country would be more democratic if we neglected basic
needs.
As a Rwandan, and as a physician, I have heard a lot of
outrageous statements in my life. But Professor Deaton has invented an entirely new level of absolutism.
How does one begin to reply? More facts and figures about
Rwanda’s progress would only reinforce Deaton’s grotesque logic. Testimonials
from the donors and researchers who know Rwanda best would be dismissed as
compromised.
Moreover, Rwanda is not the issue here, and I would feel no
satisfaction if Deaton apologized to Rwanda and then went to pick on a
different country that better exemplifies his stereotypes.
The issue is moral, and it concerns all of us. Deaton’s
theory rests on the assumption that Africans don’t feel love for their children.
It follows that President Kagame, being an African, sees children as a commodity,
like copper or sweet potatoes, to be sold to people in the West who value their
lives more highly.
Angus Deaton doesn’t know Paul Kagame from Kunta Kinte. The
president is just a cartoon character he uses to argue against foreign aid.
Deaton isn’t referring to the real Paul Kagame or the real Rwanda, but to a
generic ‘other’ whose moral inferiority is so self-evident that it requires no
elaboration.
In other words, Deaton knew his readers would share in the
contempt. In point of fact, Paul Singer replied complaining about Deaton’s criticisms of
his work; but he made no mention of the scandalous libel of President Kagame.
This is neither ignorance or carelessness. It is an ideology
of moral superiority, a form of racism that is all the more pernicious because
it has no name and leaves no marks on its victims. Eventually the victims
internalize it and come to despise themselves.
By dropping the mask a little, perhaps Angus Deaton has done
us all a favor. We need to have more honest conversations about the assumptions
implicit in judgments we make about each other.
Rwanda’s story is tragic and hopeful in equal
measure. Maybe the first step is for Angus Deaton, Paul Singer, and anyone else
who feels concerned by this exchange, to visit Rwanda and see for themselves what
kind of people we are, and how we care for our children. They would not be the
first visitors to Rwanda who left with a deeper appreciation for our common
humanity.
