The Internet is abuzz with condemnations of Paul Shirley’s rant against Haitian earthquake relief. (Yes, I’m once again following up on a Salon.com “This Week In Crazy” feature.) Shirley has been accused of a lack of compassion, racial intolerance, and plain nut-jobbery, all of which might be true as far as I know – I only knew him previously as the writer of some very entertaining ESPN columns about his adventures as a professional basketball player – but what I want to focus on here is the one thing he got right:

While the earthquake was, obviously, unavoidable, the way in which many of the people of Haiti lived was not. Regrettably, some Haitians would have died regardless of the conditions in that country. But the fact that so many people lived in such abject poverty exacerbated the extent of the crisis.

One of the secondary tragedies of the Haitian disaster is how infrequently Shirley’s observation has been echoed in news reports and opinion pieces. While the compassionate response of the world in giving to Haitian relief has been a wonderful thing to see, it’s unfortunate that this disaster hasn’t also caused our collective attention to turn any more persistently than usual to the problem of global poverty. This latest episode in Haiti’s woeful history might have triggered a discussion about the lingering effects of past colonialism and Cold War politics, and about the staggering degree of wealth inequality in the present world order. (Which might in turn have spared a better educated Shirley from going on to absurdly blame the Haitians for their own suffering!)

As it is, it looks like the past will once again be prologue. We’ll text our $10 donations to Haitian earthquake relief and return to playing our favorite iPhone game. Then, a couple of years down the line, the next earthquake or tsunami or hurricane will devastate some other vulnerable area of the third world. We’ll be horrified – and utterly surprised – and will, hopefully, give freely to the relief effort yet again. But will we finally wake up to the broken global economic and political systems that treat the billion or so extremely poor humans among us like so much fodder?

If we don’t, it will be small consolation that we’ll have many more opportunities to do so in the future.

 Wealth inequality by country:

Wealth inequality between countries:

Another blog post by me on the same theme