I recently had the pleasure of listening to a fascinating presentation in my Introduction to International Relations class. The professor showed the class pictures what one family in a variety of different countries ate during the duration of a week. The pictures came from the book Hungry Planet, by Peter Menzel. Time Magazine published a series of excerpts (part one and part two) of these pictures.

It was quite interesting to see the typical weekly meal of one family in several countries, ranging from Japan to Germany. The American photo, unfortunately, was the picture-perfect stereotype of over-consuming pre-prepared food (rather than real food).

There was something else that caught my eye, however, as the presentation went on. Like many people, I looked forward to seeing the typical weekly meal of a family in China and a family in India.
Here is India:

This is, needless to say, not a typical family in India. In one of the most crowded countries in the world, this Indian family is the proud owner of an entire house. It looks to be a very nice and well-maintained house as well.

Just by looking at the photo, it’s pretty clear that this Indian family is far and above better off than most Indian families. It’s not very representative of India.

Here’s China:

Again, there’s a big surprise here. This Chinese family has somehow managed the trick of having two children. The family also appears to live in a pristine apartment which is definitely not working-class.

It probably requires a lot of money or connections to have more than one child in China. That means that the family pictured here, just like the Indian family pictured, is very unrepresentative of the typical Chinese family. Both families are much wealthier than the typical citizens of their countries.

What’s the point of this?

Well, here’s a picture of a family in Chad:

This is the stereotypical “starving” African family. The food is obviously not enough for the six people in the picture.

There are two pictures of sub-Saharan African families in the entire photo set – and the other photo also fits the stereotype to a tee.

But this family is very definitely not a typical family in Chad. The family here is living in a refugee camp for Darfur refugees, called the Breidjing Camp. Most Chadians do not live in refugee camps. The family pictured here is probably in the poorest ten percent of Chad’s society. It’s not very representative of Chad.

What you may not know is that Africa’s GDP per capita is actually higher than India’s GDP per capita. There’s an argument to be made that Africans actually live better than Indians.

Yet the African family pictured is chronically short of food, while the Indian family (with their comfortable house) obviously belongs to the country’s elite. So does the Chinese family with its multiple kids.

The Point

China, India, and Africa are not nice places. There are hundreds of millions of very very poor people in all three areas.

Yet, as this picture-album perfectly shows, the portrayals of these three civilizations couldn’t be more different. The media always shows India and China as making great progress. China and India are on the path to the good life. Thus the elite families portrayed in this album.

Africa, on the other hand, is perpetually portrayed as an impoverished wasteland. Dictators, starvation, war – it’s hell. Supposedly. The impoverished Chadian and Malian families in Peter Menzel’s pictures are great examples of this theme.

What would the world be like if the media showed impoverished Indian and Chinese peasants all the time? What would the world be like if the media showed rich and wealthy Africans, rather than starving war refugees, all the time? It’s certainly possible to do. There are more than a billion poor peasants to pick in China and India. Africa has plenty of rich people. But somehow I feel that this won’t happen anytime soon.

–inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

The 2012 presidential election is shaping up to be an election highly focused on economics and class. It seems that one of the main themes of the election will be class, or the gap between the rich and the poor. At this point, it’s pretty likely that the main Democratic attack on Mitt Romney will be an attack based on class. Mitt Romney will be portrayed as rich and out-of-touch, a Wall Street banker.

Now what does this have to do with the title of this post?

Well, obviously this critique of Mitt Romney wouldn’t work if his opponent was also a billionaire businessman. The attack against Mitt Romney relies on the fact that Barack Obama is not rich, is not out-of-touch, and is not a Wall Street banker.

Except one of these things is false. Barack Obama is rich. His income level squarely puts him in the top one percent.

One can make a good argument, of course, that Obama’s wealth is a very different thing from Romney’s wealth. Obama is wealthy mainly due to the success of his books. He has never been and will never be rich in the way Mitt Romney is. Before gaining political success, Obama was pretty heavily indebted. Not to mention that he deliberately chose to be a community organizer after college, not the most high-income of jobs.

But more importantly than all these facts, there is the fact that Barack Obama just doesn’t look very rich. The typical American does not think of Obama as belonging to the top one percent when they look at him. Obama just doesn’t exude wealth in the way Mitt Romney’s very presence does.

Why is this? The answer is pretty simple: it’s because Obama’s black.

Despite the occasional successful black entertainer or athlete, the black community is still very strongly associated with poverty. Think about, for instance, the first image that usually comes to mind when people talk about poverty in America (and especially urban poverty).

The result is that Americans almost never associate Barack Obama with being rich, even though today he has become quite wealthy. This is one of those subconscious things which most people don’t even realize is happening in their minds. Nor even do many political experts realize this. Nor did I for the longest time.

But the fact that Obama is African-American, and the fact that very few people associate African-Americans with wealth, will end up making a huge difference in the 2012 presidential election.

–inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

The Economist, Great Britain’s magazine for the American elite, recently published a special report on Latin America. While the magazine noted the continuing challenges facing Latin America, it also perceived that Latin America has made great strides in the past decade. This has especially been the case with reducing inequality, a perpetual curse of that region in the world – and perhaps the greatest obstacle to economic advancement in Latin America.

In doing this, The Economist published the following table:

This table indicates the rate by which a country’s inequality – measured by the Gini coefficient – has declined since 2000. The table stops at 2006 or a later date; unfortunately it does not say which countries have data until 2006, and which countries have data after that.

All in all the table paints a bright picture: inequality is down in most countries, from Brazil to Mexico to Argentina.

Several countries, however, stand out as exceptions. The most notable is Venezuela, which has been governed by President Hugo Chavez since 1999. Under Mr. Chavez, inequality has barely decreased. When compared to other countries, Venezuela has on done worse than average.

Since so much of Mr. Chavez’s political messaging rests upon his appeal to the poor, this is a startling failure. Mr. Chavez proudly characterizes himself as a socialist, determined to reduce income inequality and redistribute wealth more evenly. Yet after more than a decade of rule, inequality has barely budged – in stark contrast to the rest of Latin America.

One finds that this is the case with a number of Chavez-aligned countries. Anti-American President Daniel Ortega governs Nicaragua, and former anti-American President Manuel Zelaya ruled Honduras until 2009. In both countries the presidents are (or were) left-wing anti-American hardliners committed to socialism and helping the poor. In both countries income inequality has actually increased.

There are exceptions. President Evo Morales is as left-wing and anti-American as any Latin American leader, and Bolivian inequality has decreased substantially. Moreover, some of these leaders were not in power before 2006, so they may not be responsible for what the graph shows (although in some cases the data may be more recent). Their elections may have been a response to rising inequality – rather than to say that they failed at reducing inequality.

But Mr. Chavez has been in power since before 2000. He has no such excuse. When a president comes into office promising to help the poor, a good way to measure whether he or she has kept the promise is to look at how the poor have done relative to the rich. By that measure, Mr. Chavez – for all his about rhetoric about socialistic revolution – has not helped Venezuela’s poor.

–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/