My WSJ review on Tracy Kidder’s book on the Burundian genocide survivor generated this comment from a reader (abbreviated here, the full version is posted as a comment on the blog):
Mr. Easterly,
You point out that “only” 0.01% of Africans have been killed by war and genocide… each year… for the past four decades. This is only slightly higher than the percentage of Europeans who died in the Holocaust each year between 1940 and 1945, meaning that Africa has merely suffered something like a 40-year Holocaust.
In fact, 0.01% is significantly lower than the percentage of Americans killed each year in the second world war (0.08% or so, on average), a minor conflict barely mentioned in writings of the time. During the Vietnam conflict we were losing only about 0.002% of our population each year for about 16 years and people would barely shut up about it.
Thus I propose that we adopt 0.01% of the population as the Easterly Threshold, requiring that any discussion of a conflict failing to achieve this level of decimation include a disclaimer that most of the population has not, in fact, yet died. Where populations are suitably difficult for us Americans to distinguish from one another, this percentage will be calculated on an arbitrarily continental or sub-continental basis. This immediately puts the whole history of the 20th century in a much rosier light: using the Easterly Threshold, a group like the Khmer Rouge barely clears the hurdle, massacring just 0.012% of Asia’s population in a year.
Regards,
Jonathan Custer
Lakeland, Florida (soon Birmingham, England)
Dear Mr. Custer,
Congrats on your tour de force demolishing my argument that nobody should care about genocides that kill only 0.01 percent of the population or less.
You force me to admit that if a genocidal soldier killed one of my own loved ones, I myself would get only moderate comfort from the statistic that this corresponded to an American death rate of only 0.000000333 % (1 out of 300 million).
Your argument is so skillful, let’s not get pedantic that my article never made the “only” argument; it actually said that the .01 percent statistic is also “of no comfort to Africans today who are victims of still much too frequent horrors; bless anyone who can stop the horrors or help the victims.”
I was foolishly hoping the .01 percent number might induce the casual reader to re-examine his belief that the typical African family consists of a wife-beating alcoholic male and starving refugee females raped by child soldiers, soon after massacred by the janjaweed just before they would have died of AIDS anyway.
On correcting stereotypes, consider the Willie Horton ad of the presidential election of 1988 of the George Bush, Sr. vs. Michael Dukakis. A political group allied with Bush ran an ad featuring a scary picture of Willie Horton (see also the video), a black man in prison for murder whom Dukakis granted a weekend furlough. He then raped a woman while on furlough. The ad is partially credited with winning the election for Bush.
I would argue that white voters over-reacted in their fears of black crime. The propensity of black males to commit crimes is lower than the general public thinks, and other whites, not blacks, commit most crimes against whites. According to your interpretation, my attempt to correct a stereotype means I don’t care about the victims of Willie Horton. So this is a good opportunity to clarify I am not, in fact, in favor of rape and murder. I’m not that keen on genocide either.
Actually, I can do two things at once: (1) argue against exaggerated stereotypes and (2) care about the victims of crimes regardless of whether they fit stereotypical patterns. But thanks for your argument forcing me to clarify this.
Satirically Yours,
Bill Easterly
12 Comments
Nice to see some elegant debate on serious topics.
An auspicious start to my international development education/career! Now I just have to figure out how to put this on my CV (Publications? Sarcastic Blog Comments?).
The thought that most Americans view Africa as an entire continent of Willie Hortons is scary but, sadly, probably true. But I still think the average reader interprets 0.0x% as “basically nil” which is simply not the case.
All due credit for addressing the stereotype, but I would’ve preferred a couple of counter-examples (Kenya might read a little fishy after the 07 elections, but Botswana is a classic) and the general point that even in the most war-ravaged places there are islands of relative normalcy. “Percentage of the population killed each year in war/genocide” is simply not a statistic most people are equipped to objectively process.
Isn’t the 0.2% figure direct deaths though? Those are a very small proportion of those killed as a result of war.
Direct deaths in Darfur are reckoned to be 35,000. Deaths caused by starvation or disease as a result of war bring that figure up to 300-400,000. I suspect the same is true in the Congo and in many other African hotspots.
For some reason in the last post I wrote 0.2% instead of 0.01%.
The present death toll in the Congo for war related causes is around half a million a year. Out of an African population of 700 million that is 8 times the figure of 0.01% Easterly gives.
This is exactly the point: whether he had written 0.01% or 0.08% (how many readers would realize that is 8 times higher?) or even 0.1%, most people would read it as “hardly any.” Even fewer would realize we are talking about the difference between the population of my hometown in Florida and the population of the District of Columbia dying *every year*.
If that were indeed happening here, I think the Americas would very quickly acquire a similar reputation for being a violent and dangerous place (moreso than it already has). Certainly the majority of current events nonfiction would address that issue and not, say, gay rights or health care reform, which would likely fade in importance as we dealt with 1.5 million (0.5%) refugees.
And as an aside for those who might not know, Dukakis didn’t grant Horton a furlough; a state rehabilitation program, signed into law by the previous republican governor, released Horton. Dukakis had merely given the program his support.
There are of course countries with a figure of traffic accident fatalities that come to around 0.1% of the population each year.
As an aside for Peter, who apparently doesn’t know, it was in fact Dukakis’ fault, according to wikipedia:
Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts at the time of Horton’s release, and while he did not start the furlough program, he had supported it as a method of criminal rehabilitation. The State inmate furlough program was actually signed into law by Republican Governor Francis W. Sargent in 1972. However, under Sargent, convicted first-degree murderers were not eligible for furlough. After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that this right extended to first-degree murderers, the Massachusetts legislature quickly passed a bill prohibiting furloughs for such inmates. However, in 1976, Dukakis vetoed this bill.[2] The program remained in effect through the intervening term of governor Edward J. King and was abolished during Dukakis’ final term of office on April 28, 1988. This abolition only occurred after the Lawrence Eagle Tribune had run 175 stories about the furlough program and won a Pulitzer Prize. [Bold emphasis added]
Dukakis is the reason that woman was raped, and he deserved every ounce of scorn he received as a result of those ads, racist though they may have been.
The program was never meant to release people in prison for life without parole: the prison mistakenly let Horton out on a furlough, when in fact, he should not have been. I’m not saying I agree with the furlough program, but I also would not say, “Dukakis is the reason that woman was raped, and he deserved every ounce of scorn he received as a result of those ads, racist though they may have been.”
“Horton never should have been furloughed. He had been sentenced to life in prison, and was not eligible for parole for years — when the furlough program was designed to facilitate inmates’ re-entry into society.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/12/12/ED194565.DTL#ixzz0Pp25CwQv
Peter,
I don’t think you understand that that link you posted is an argument against you, not for you. From your link:
it wasn’t racism that hurt Dukakis, but his arrogant veto of a bill to ban furloughs for first-degree murderers, which showed a clear lack of compassion for victims.
Do you understand? Due to some technicality, the MA supreme court ruled that MA couldn’t have a furlough program unless it included murderers. The MA legislature rushed through a law banning murderers, but Dukakis vetoed it. This is wholly inconsistent with someone that you would have people believe he “merely” (bad enough in my opinion, but whatever) supported the law. Instead what Dukakis did was actively veto the bill that would have explicitly prevented prisoners sentenced to life from getting furloughed. I stand by my assertion that that woman was raped and otherwise brutalized because of the deliberate actions of Dukakis.
Um, no, the lines you cite is a separate criticism of the furlough program itself. I am okay with that. The article does not however support “that that woman was raped and otherwise brutalized because of the deliberate actions of Dukakis.” This is because the furlough program, as it was in state law, did not allow for the release of Willie Horton. If you want to blame the incompetence of those running the program for letting him go illegally, and through that Mr. Dukakis as well, fine. But that, to me, is tenuous link to your argument that Mr. Dukakis’s “deliberate actions” caused the rape of a women.
damned statistics!