Pwoblèm Ayiti: responsabilite yon grenn krityen vivan? (2)

[Pitit Ginen]

Lafanmi lonè,

Guy, m' ap koumanse ak dènye pati mesaj w-a pou-m di ke se nan anpil mesaj, sitou nan brase lide ak sò Ezili, mwen pale anpil de Inite sa-a ke Tyè Monn-nan blije fè pou-l rive siviv anba fachis-yo (FME, BM, OMK elt.) Men fòk mwen di-w ke-m konsyan ke, sitou ak koze globalizasyon sa-a, lit pou liberasyon peyi Tyè Monn-yo vin mil fwa pi kòryas. Yon dal dirijan chen, bagay ki bay kè plen, toupatou nan Tyè Monn-nan ap vann peyi-yo ak tout sa k ladan-l. Kouman, nan yon sityasyon konsa, militan konsekan-yo pral rive rekipere richès peyi sa-yo, remete sosyete nou-yo sou pye nan mete kanpe yon leta ka p travay nan enterè mas pèp-la (sa-yo te konn rele leta pwovidans-lan) nan konstwi lekòl, lopital elt.? Mwen konsyan Guy ke bagay-yo pa fasil ditou.

"Epoutan, ak resous ekonomik yo gen nan men yo, arab yo te kapab soutni demann frè palestinyen yo pi byen lontan, si yo te kè. Ki leson ou kapab tire de sa? Ou panse se yon afè pèp k ap pale tout bon?"

Li rete klè ke se yon kesyon de enterè politik ka p pale. "Lepèp pa nan pari"(Manno). Dezoutwa gouvènman ki ta vle ede Palestinyen-yo tout bon, tankou Irak ak Siri, se yo menm menm ke nou wè Etazini ap chache netralize ak konplisite gouvènman arab malpouwont-yo. Pandan ke evenman sa-yo fè tout militan konsekan, konsyan mal anpil, nou paka di ki kote sityasyon sa-a ap mennen. Nan enpwisans nou, nou pa gen chwa ke kontinye reflechi, eseye konprann ak konsyans tyè mondis ki nan nou-a.

"Men di mwen, kouman ou panse peyi Tyè-Monn yo te kapab anpeche bagay sa yo fèt nan lane 2003 a, amwens ke w ap pale de estrateji yo te fèt pou deplwaye sa gen 20, 30, 40 an deja".

Li rete klè tankou dlo kòk ke Tyè Monn-lan pa reprezante anyen sou sèn entènasyonal-la jodi-a. Se vre ke peyi sa-yo pata ka fè anyen pou anpeche baba-yo al touye moun ann Irak. Se yon konsta ki fè nou tris, men se pa yon bagay ki dwe dekouraje nou. Pase, se nan moman difisil sa-yo, ak zafè mondyalizasyon sa-a ki vini pou foure pèp Tyè Monn-yo nan trou nèt, ke lespwa ap fin pa leve nan sann dife pou-l pote liberasyon.

"...si nou pa chache fè solidarite ak eleman pwogresis nan popilasyon meriken an, batay la ap pi long toujou, e nou gen dwa pa janm genyen li".

Si Tyè Monn-nan revele-l enkapab pou-l ini-l, malgre diferans-li, se si e sèten, n' ap bizwen konkou blan pou-n kanpe devan sistèm-lan. Men èske gen ekzanp klè nan listwa ki montre kote blan pwogresis w' ap pale-yo te ede Tyè Monn-nan nan lit-li kont enperyalis ka p mache vòlò, touye toupatou. An-n espere ke n' ap jwenn konkou vre nan men blan pou ede-n defann tèt nou devan yon sistèm enperyalis ki pafwa tonbe nan fachis. Men, kite-m di-w ke si fòs pwogresis-yo ta rive gen pouvwa politik nan men-yo epi ini-yo, n' ap kapab kanpe devan fachis-yo (la-a n' ap pale de sityasyon ekstrèm tankou sa k pase jodi-a nan politik amerikèn-lan. Ojis, mwen te dwe di emperyalis-yo.)


Lè n' ap pale de Tyè Monn, nou pa gen nan tèt nou mete yon kan kant yon lòt. Reyalite-a rete ke pou sistèm enperyalis-la toupizi, vòlò tout sa k gen nan Tyè Monn-lan, se tout peyi blan-yo ki mete-yo ansanm (ou pito, se tout dirijan peyi blan-yo ki mete-yo ansanm). Mwen kontinye di ke sèl fason pou pèp Tyè Monn-yo rive jwenn Dinyite-yo, fòk gen konsyans ak inite nan mitan dirijan peyi sa-yo. Yon estrateji konsa pa vle di Tyè Monn-lan pral nan lagè ak peyi blan. Non! Se pa sa ditou nou gen nan lespri-n. Dirijan azyatik-yo devlope, y' ap ranfòse yon konsyans nasyonalis nan sosyete lakay-yo, y' ap konstwi Inite antr-yo (ASEAN), yon fason pou yo ka defann enterè rejyon-yo fas a enperyalis dechèpiyè, vye kolon baba. Entansyon-yo se pa al nan lagè ak okenn peyi blan. Menm taktik azyatik sa-a dwe deplwaye nan lòt rejyon nan Tyè Monn-lan. Si lòt rejyon tankou Karayib-la, Lafrik ak Lamerik Latin-lan paka fè tankou Lazi, alòs, mwen regrèt sa, n' ap pase tout ekzistans noun nan lesklavaj, nan malpwòpte. E kite-m di-w, frè-m Guy, se pa okenn blan ke w sipoze ki gen bòn volonte ka p vin retire-n nan tenten.

Mwen panse ke Tyè Monn-lan gen yon potansyèl pou li debouye-l devlope. Potansyèl sa-a, se pa sèlman lwil ak matyè premyè, se sitou yon bagay ki rele INITE. Mwen panse ke se bagay sa-a menm ke lenmi-an pè. Li pa vle, li refize tande pale de bagay sa-a. W pa remake depi nou fè sa nou reyini nou, jan sa te fèt nan Lababad lòtrejou ak nan Afri Disid, kolon-yo mete machin pwopagann-yo an mach pou yo jwenn tout agiman pou yo choute sou gwo mouvman brase lide sa-yo. Zafè INITE-a, yo sèmante, nou pa dwe rive fè bagay sa-a. Se poutèt sa, yo pre pou yo peye moun lakay nou gwo kòb pou yo anpeche bagay sa-a fèt. E se poutèt sa, fòk nou reflechi sou mwayen ki ka pèmèt nou anpeche-yo achte moun nan peyi nou, fè presyon sou dirijan lakay nou jan y' ap fè sa-a ak aristide kote yo itilize Konvèjans-lan kòm ekran. Fòk nou reflechi sou mwayen ki ka pèmèt nou netralize lenmi-an ansanm ak konplis li-yo ki nan sen nou.

Mwen dakò ke nou pa dwe panse lit-la nan sans pèp nwa kont pèp blan, e se pa sa ditou nou gen nan lespri nou. Men poutèt n' ap denonse politisyen blan-yo (genyen ladan-yo ki se kareman de fachis), ka p fè tout manèv pou yo anmègde, kenbe nan kaka (Wi! se mo sa menm mwen vle itilize) peyi Tyè Monn-yo, sa pa vle di nou gen pwoblèm ak tout blan. Se pa sa li ye ditou. Pa kite yo pran nou nan kraponay sa-a Guy! Nou fenk kare goumen kont dirijan fachis-yo ka p sèvi yon sistèm ekonomik sanginè !!! Epi tou, nou pata fou pou-n bliye ki kantite san manman nou genyen nan mitan nou! Si-n ta bliye yon bagay konsa, se ta p yon swisid klè.

Pitit Ginen.

[guysanto*]

Pitit Ginen, m apresye anpil repons ak klarifikasyon ou bay yo, eksepte petèt lè ou di: "E kite-m di-w, frè-m Guy, se pa okenn blan ke w sipoze ki gen bòn volonte ka p vin retire-n nan tenten." Lò mwen li fraz sa, mwen blije mande tèt mwen ki sa ojis mwen ekri nan tout sa mwen ekri sou fowòm lan, ki ta fè w panse ke mwen ta rete kwè nan Papa Nwèl toujou. M espere se pa konsa ou entèprete sa mwen ekri yo, paske si ou retounen sou sa mwen ekri ki ta kreye konfizyon sa, mwen ta byen renmen pote klarifikasyon tou. Mwen rete kwè ke si yon gwoup ki oprime pa pran LIDÈCHIP pou liberasyon l, e byen nenpòt ki sistèm liberasyon yo ta vin fè l kado, se yon liberasyon krizokal l ap ye. Lò mwen pale de solidarite entènasyonal, mwen pa te jamè souzantann pou nou atann nou aske zòt vin fè nou kado kwakseswa. Antouka, si sa nesesè nou va retounen sou sa.

[Pitit Ginen]

Frè-m Guy,

Sensèman, mwen te konprann w te kite-yo pran-w nan tonton nwèl lè w ta p pale de alyans ak eleman pwogresis. Men ak presizyon w bay la, mwen byen konprann sa w te vle di. Mwen kwè ti presizyon sa-a w bay la ase klè pou-n pa chita sou sijè sa-a.
Yo pa p pran-w nan tonton nwèl, mwen menm nonplis, yo pa p pran-m nan tonton nwèl, konsa ann pouse pou pi douvan nan chache wout pou-n soti nan labirent mizè, magouy, mansonj, pwopagann sa-a.

Frè-w,

Pitit Ginen.

[Ezili Danto*]

One e Respe to all;

OUR POINT OF DEPARTURE:

First off, Guy, this post uses your post to Ezili Danto, dated June 23, 2003 to comment on some other related topics placed on this forum and perhaps to further our discussions and dissemination, of hopefully, useful information with regards to the Haiti situation.

I respond to your post-dated June 23, 2003 to Ezili Danto not because of our point of agreement but because of our differences.

However, we both issue from a position of respect and appreciation for the others view and values. hat is our given. And, as you also point out “…it should never be forgotten that we are all engaged in the same struggle: the fight against inequity in this world we temporarily live in, to create a better tomorrow for those who will come after us.” (See, Guy to Ezili Danto, under General Issue: Pwoblèm Ayiti: responsabilite yon grenn krityen vivan? P. 1 “ Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2003 9:59 am, post subject: “A few points in response to Ezili's post” . http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=272 (NOTE: Readers must stroll down to the post dated at June 23, 2003 because I don’t know how to get the link directly to a particular post. Guy, HELP? If it is possible for you to correct this and get it there directly, deleting these descriptive note (s), I’d appreciated it.)
*******

I wrote the last post to Guy, in particular, because, in his post dated Sun Jun 22, 2003 1:37 am, entitled, “Dife nan wèl sanginè-yo” and placed under the General Issues topic “Dife nan wel sanguine-yo” Pitit Ginen wrote:

“Apre chen anraje-yo (yon pakèt blan ki te met ansanm) antre nan peyi sa-a, apre yo fin bay yon bann manti santi, san sans nan radyo ak televizyon”

And Guy, replied “Pa bliye Colin Powell ak Condoleeza Rice tou. “ (See, Guy’s posted under General Issue “Dife nan wèl sanginè-yo” Sun Jun 22, 2003 12:28 pm , post entitled “ Ki taktik pou nou adopte nan fè fas kalamite sa yo?” http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=301 )

DIFFERENT MAGNITUDES OF CULPABILITY: That remark covers one spectrum. A spectrum of thought perhaps that finds our REAL adversaries so inaccessible, invincible, and completely out of range that one who is disenfranchised would vent anger on the NEXT most unfortunates within the African community ladder, the Black opportunist. This spetrum of thought, may not be Guy's only outlook, but it would hold the ideology that would also automatically, comment, as follows:

l. “E alò, ki jan pou nou reponn? Ou panse si nou rete nan dyalektik blan kont nwa, pèp kont pèp, elatriye, se konsa nou pral resi gen viktwa a?” Guy to Pitit Ginen, under, General issue, Dife nan wèl sanginè-yo, posted: Sun Jun 22, 2003 12:28 pm, post subject, “Ki taktik pou nou adopte nan fè fas kalamite sa” ( http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=301 ) and,

2. “Lenmi nou pa gen koulè, li pa gen nasyonalite, paske li san fwa ni lwa. Jodi a, pi gwo lenmi mwen petèt se yon Ayisyen frè mwen ki pap ezite redui mwen a lenfinitif pou l pwoteje enterè dwòg li, ou enterè kay vakans li vle bati pasi pala. Si nou panse pa gen yon bon valè Ayisyen ki dèyè Bush nou nan lerè, paske gouvènman Bush lan reprezante enterè yo, e gouvènman Bush lan pap ezite fè alyans avèk yo.” (See, GuySanto to Pitit Ginen under, general issue “Dife nan wèl sanginè-yo “ Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2003 12:28 pm. Post subject: Ki taktik pou nou adopte nan fè fas kalamite sa yo? http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=301)

Before I begin, let me first repeat something I've already written on this Forum, and that is, when the Haitian poor hurt they don't ask which is worst: US inflicted pain or the elite agents' inflicted pain, they want it to stop. I also don't like to patronize Black wholeness, by absolving the Black opportunists of responsibility for their own actions. I will also say that it is much easier to stay neutral and carry favor with everyone, all the time. And I have no innate wish to be disagreeable. For, of course, I wish nothing more serene, sometimes, than to spin into the nothingness from which I came, where race, gender and points of references have no place. Except that’s impossible and from the spectrums of thought I hold, I find the above statements particularly appalling. Why?

Because, in the annals of US history, except during Slavery - in the American South, under US-government, legally sanctioned enslavement of Black peoples - except then, when toddlers where routinely used as ottoman stools, and, in the winters, as foot warmers; except for then and perhaps during the 100 years of Jim Crow lynchings, in the annals of US history, no other US administration, in recent memory, has gone to the cruel and mean lengths of the Baby Bush administration to beat down defenseless Black people such as the Haitian immigrants, even toddlers locked-up, indefinitely, under armed US-armed Federal, INS guards at this
very moment in Miami hotel rooms.

For anyone to point to Blacks in the Baby Bush Administration giving their presence the same weight and power as that of the Pentagon system, this is to trivialize the pitilessness racism, the draconian depths, the wholesale denial of human rights and international laws currently being propagated by the Bush Administration. It is also a denial of history. For the same White power structure today represented by the Bush Administration is on the same heinous profit-over-people continuum that Toussaint and Dessaline fought against.

The connections are not tenuous. The past is very much in our present, no matter the progression of the assimilation of Blacks into the system. It cannot be destroyed until whites can also assimilate a level of African consciousness. Until that day, it is very much about White tyranny imposed to underdeveloped, marginalized and keep Africans contained-in-poverty, to better to exploit them.

But if every time, we are searching together for strategies to overcome our oppression, and the enemy is identified as W.E.B. Dubois identified it, as the color-line problem and the automatic African intelligentsia's response is “don’t forget Black accountability” than we stay at square one. Because the magnitude of one culpability is peg downed to the level of the Black opportunist personal non-institutionalized failed accountability.

This purposeful denial minimizes the seismic scale, the sheer magnitude of the current Pentagon systems, it’s current worldwide criminal deeds, as represented by their foreign policies around the developing world, and even, at home under the Patriot Act or even Patriot Act II (?) now being bounced around; and, it denies how the White-powers-that-be and their biological fatalistic viewpoints, their constructed bio-socio “races” or categories of race, which assigns human worth and social status using whites as the paradigm, how that system is animated and sustained to destroy, exploit and de-humanize the lives of vulnerable people and their resources. How, under this system, Euro/Americans are the principal beneficiaries while Black people are the victims and bearers of the burden and the costs.

It is frankly falling into the trap the White settlers, descendants of the Planter mentality, have set by, for instance, putting these two sell-outs up front to deflect the sheer heartlessness of the powers-that-be. Anyone who would place Baby Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcrofts’ Pentagon powers, in the same sentence as Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice’s vicarious powers, lacks an understanding of White power structure tactics, that is very troubling.

As I wrote, in my last post, Guy is saying it’s not about White against Black or People of Color against White people and I believe it is. I believe to compare the power of Powell with the power of the Pentagon establishment, the big businesses they represent, is to totally miss the point. Furthermore, to point to Blacks within the Administration is to distract Black progressive from the task of building a Black consensus/pan-African unity in favor of continuing Black fratricide, while White hoarding destroys our people.

In a mythically color-blind society, it may be the pure moral and righteous viewpoint to constantly center on personal Black accountability, but, under our current situation and facts, it is politically unintelligent as a strategy of resistance. I’ve said this before. I stand by it, whether or not it makes ideologically rigid.

********

I repeat, it’s time, for us Africans in the Diaspora and in Haiti to look outwards together. And, I mean first together as Black people, as Haitians, as Africans, as Ginen. Without that legitimacy, we are not leading from source. “…The Black opportunist doesn’t have power without White Consent, White Force, White Entitlements. Period…”

In the last post, I also said I recognized, that, at least Colin Powell, used to have a conscience, a recognition that his color was being used to give legitimacy to White power structure pronouncement destroying his own Black community. I wrote Powell should have quit his Baby Bush post before so thoroughly losing all shreds of substance. But, for profit, Colin Powell “has commercialized his skin color, made it a commodity and sold it to the Whites for their imperial uses. There’s no difference between what he’s doing than what the discredited local elites in Haiti are doing. I don’t respect this, just as I have no respect for the local agents of imperial power now in Haiti looking to regain their old positions.”

Guy responded that Powell didn’t have a conscience from day one.

Writing, in part: “………I think that Colin Powell has been Colin Powell from Day one. Look up the role that he has played in the cover-up of the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War, as well as his record of direct influence in the illegal invasion of Panama and the two Gulf Wars. I do not consider myself a "Powell basher", as I look rather pragmatically at the whole political structure, however I find it strange when people hold on to a rather sentimental view of Powell which they absolutely will not accord to others. Colin Powell has accomplished much, in spite of the odds. I, for one, do not subscribe to calling him a "house nigger" in the way favored by Harry Belafonte and others, for that matter. However, I do hold Colin Powell to the same rigorous set of moral criteria, and I find him particularly lacking.”

The word “sentimental” according to my Word dictionary, means, inter alias, “appealing to or expressing tender, often romantic feelings…. expressing or experiencing tender sadness or nostalgia…”

I was NOT, in any way expressing tender feelings, or self-indulgent emotions about Colin Powell. If you think so, I think you’ve lost it beloved.

I said I pitied the man. That’s a pretty good put down in my book.

He has done wrong. But on a political, not moral level, we who need tactical alliance can't afford to ignore his access to power, even if its NEVER at the same level as his white counterparts. And, knowing the web of repression which creates our various Black tragic elites, throughout this world, I still believe I would be willing to forgive someone who admits his wrong and is in pain because of it and willing to make public restitution. That’s what "I-pity-the-man" means to me. And that’s only if you take what I said out of context because I also said he has now thoroughly lost all credibility.

That is not sentimental. What I was expressing was that, notwithstanding his current unforgivable stance, is that, I used to find him a man of some, albeit, questionable, but of some substance. A deliberator of some sorts, not just a mindless mouthpiece.

But I’ve always found him to be a man who used his talents in a miserable and regrettably wasteful manner. I haven’t forgotten or glossed over Mr. Powell’s role in the moral killing of the Haitian people’s dreams to lift themselves out of poverty, disease and illiteracy.

I haven’t forgotten, in particular, Colin Powell’s role in the Powell/Jimmy Carter/Sam Nunn September 19, 1994 Cedras talks that empowered these Duvalierist thugs at the expense of the Haitian people’s movement for change. That agreement Colin Powell, Jimmy Carter and Sam Nunn hacked out and signed with the illegitimate Haitian imposter “President Jonassaint” which gave, I mean, forced Haitian Parliamentarians to give, AMNESTY, to coup criminals while replacing the Haitian army with the US army presence in Haiti for almost two years, that, is not something I will likely EVER forget. Here it was, we had a duly elected President held hostage in Washington, while the US-imposter mortgage away Haiti’s future, creating the dynamics you and I are facing in Haiti today, in 2003.

This is not something Haitians can ever forget. I know too these comparisons: that Toussaint was killed, betrayed by his own, while attempting to negotiate, compromise and please White power, then captured and killed in a French prison. Almost two hundred years later, Aristide was betrayed and morally killed, politically castrated, within the US bulletproof cage we saw him return in, on that fateful October 14, 1994 day. Aristide suffers the fate of most African men, all over this world, who gets to only see their people through Plexiglas prison doors. I won’t ever forget Colin Powell’s role in that enterprise. But yet in still, I know who animates and gives a job and meaning to the lives of the Colin Powells’ of this world. It’s the same people running USAID and the offshore export assembly sweatshops which reminds one that African labor, in the new world, is still the property of the few white ruling elites.

But you’re right Guy, about one thing. I didn’t know of his involvement with the My Lai massacre cover-up in Vietnam when I wrote, “he used to have a conscience.” I was thinking of his, at least seeming moderation, initial recalcitrance to go forward with the Iraqi War. At least it seemed to me he was not as hawkish as, say Rumsfeld, Rice, et cetera. There seemed to have been a public hesitancy on his part. Perhaps that was a ruse. I think his involvement in both Gulf Wars and especially in Haiti with the Governors’ Island Accord and the 1994 Cedras negotiations where reprehensible. However, for some reason, he seems more pitiful to me than a sociopath, or psychopath, like Baby Bush and his other cohorts, who have risen to the highest levels of power and are currently threatening life and liberty on earth everywhere. Powell has become an errand boy for the establishment out to make a personal buck and cover his butt, no matter the consequences, rather than someone who’s clinically unhinged.
******
THE WILLIE LYNCH LETTER http://matah.com/Lynch1.ihtml?mtcnbc=:mtcnbc & LET’S MAKE A SLAVE pamphlet ( http://matah.com/mthlyn.ihtml:

But, I really could care less about discussing a non-entity, like Colin Powell any further. Upon reflection, his role in Haiti’s empoverishment alone, is evidence he never had a conscience.

For now, I want to look at the other paragraph you wrote, which puts forward a similar proposition, I cannot, in all honesty agree with. To be specific, after pointing the two Black opportunists in the Bush Administration, you write that:

“Lenmi nou pa gen koulè, li pa gen nasyonalite, paske li san fwa ni lwa. Jodi a, pi gwo lenmi mwen petèt se yon Ayisyen frè mwen ki pap ezite redui mwen a lenfinitif pou l pwoteje enterè dwòg li, ou enterè kay vakans li vle bati pasi pala. Si nou panse pa gen yon bon valè Ayisyen ki dèyè Bush nou nan lerè, paske gouvènman Bush lan reprezante enterè yo, e gouvènman Bush lan pap ezite fè alyans avèk yo.” (See, GuySanto to Pitit Ginen under, general issue “Dife nan wèl sanginè-yo “ Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2003 12:28 pm. Post subject: Ki taktik pou nou adopte nan fè fas kalamite sa yo? http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=301)

That specific phrase, it appalls. Why?

It is very easy, pat, conveniently “color-bind.” It smacks of, a very, let say, “Eurocentric” view, of the assimilation, internalization, or, better, the epidermalization of inferiority.

There is a wealth of meaning in these two pronouncements. They bring to the fore a historical pre-disposition of Haitians elites ever since our great Revolution. There is an enormous amount of Black self-contempt in the allegation that a single Haitian druggy is a Black intellectuals “greatest enemy” just as there is a wealth of meaning in automatically asking for Black accountability when white responsibility is put into question, as the Colin and Rice statement did.

This mindset, in fact, as Guy notes, is perhaps his greatest differences vis a vis Ezili Danto’s views. For, it goes to the heart of a position I firmly advocate against, and therefore, it cannot be glossed over and ignored. A deeper historical analysis will be attempted by using the following:

1. The Willie Lynch pamphlets – Willie Lynch letter and the Let’s Make a Slave pamphlet.

2. The Web of Repression in Haiti – How the Euro/Americans play Haitians from both sides with their good cop/bad cop strategies. Elites vs. disenfranchised majority. Disenfranchised majority and the merchant class elites vs. different sectors of the old Haitian land-based oligarchy. For instance, destroy the agricultural elites in favor of the assembly plant /merchant class while using the Haitian people’s thirst for empowerment, justice, transparence and participation, to keep both Haitian elite sectors in check, but always increase or minimize the power of the Haitian elite, army, police, and aid’s organizations, as necessary for pushing forward a US/USAID agenda, keeping Haiti simply a service area, a haven for US exploitation.

3 The Haitian traditional meaning of “blan-yo” which doesn’t necessarily have a racial stigma attached (in another post to follow); and,

4. To comment on the Global White Supremacy outlook Guy claims covers my outlook on human history, I will, in another post, briefly go into the legal and traditional US/European traditional meaning of “White” which, as. W.E.B. DuBois, maintained established a color-line, and which through the processes of European slave making, imperialism, colonialism, racism and apartheid established a caste system. A caste system which today wrecks the life and dreams of every single Black person on this earth, and finally

5. I will look at the WTO’s secret tribunals, NAFTA and the EU-ACP agreements and how globalization is wrecking democracy all over the globe and changing old paradigms, to continue oppressing African and Africans of the Diaspora.

Yes, Guy, the Euro/Americans, the Western Nuclear Powers established the “White vs. Black” dialectic when Europe first made problematic the existence, meaning, color, worth, and status of peoples of color. Blacks didn’t create this caste systems, whites did, for their own unification and imperialistic purposes.

In his autobiographical book, Dusk to Dawn, DuBois, wrote “My life had its significance and its only deep significance because it was par of a Problem; but that problem was, as I continue to think, the central problem of the world’s democracies and so the Problem of the future world.”

I believe the fact that “white” defines itself as more valuable, more equal, more meritorious of the worlds bounty, I believe that is the reason why Haitians, and Blacks in America, and all over the world, are disproportionately, to understate the thing, living in abject poverty, either on slave-wages or marginalized in prisons and ghettos. And for anyone to miss this point and to automatically ostracized the lone Black opportunist, in the ways outlined above, in relation to talk about “white responsibility” for the sorry state of the world, that, is too disingenuous, we Blacks are to easy a mark. It’s too “automatic” for us to constantly point at Black failings. It feeds a psychological need that has been inculcated in African people, by the fostering of fear, distrust and envy for control purposes, as expressed in “The Willie Lynch Letter ( http://matah.com/Lynch1.ihtml?mtcnbc=:mtcnbc ) and the “Let’s Make a Slave” pamphlet and the like. ( http://matah.com/mthlyn.ihtml ). If we want to understand what happened to the Haitian warring elites, after the 1804 Revolution, after the assassination of Dessaline. Then Haitians and all Africans should read these two pamphlets in order to get further insights into Black self-hatred and Black on Black, or Haitian on Haitian crimes. Then, we would know and understand why we automatically trust and defend “white” more than we do our own, on every occasion.


DIFFERENT MAGNITUDES OF CULPABILITY: As with the Powell/Rice issue, one cannot possibly compare the action of one drugged-up Black Haitian to be so atrocious it makes him, perhaps your BIGGEST enemy in this life as opposed what? the oppression, humiliation and daily insult and cumulative “Black tax” we Africans pay in this world.

To make such a comparison is to, again sprout a neutered viewpoint, a desire to please outlook, for it deliberately minimize the issues at hand - the search for strategy to counteract, reduce the Haitian nation’s interminable sufferings, at the hand of the White elites who control our economy, our opportunities, destroy our self-esteem, damage and distorts our own humanity, destroys the legitimacy of our culture, language, spirituality and very essence. It’s like saying the greatest enemy in America is the Black drugged up teenage male.

But my question is - who floods the ghettos with drugs? You don’t see the nexus? Who are the arms dealers, importers of the drugs and arms in Haiti, the biggest distributors? CIA drug trafficking doesn’t come to mind first, right? The British and French and American arms and drug-trafficking agents, aren’t they your biggest enemy? The world’s biggest enemies? Show me the gun manufacturing plant in Haiti, run by Haitians. The Haitian Coast Guard boats protecting international waters, then I agree we have some culpability. But, this is an instructive discussion.

I know you don’t believe it’s, as you say, your Black Haitian brother interested in getting a drug fix that’s your biggest enemy in Haiti? Do you really think that? If so, you’ve bought their nightly media stereotype of the young Black male as criminal. We’ve given our adulthood and vision away, becoming afraid of our own misguided children.

We’ve bought the press that’s keeping the Haitian Diaspora from investing in Haiti, while White offshore assembly work entrepreneurs, and their Haitian sycophants and white “international aid” US government cohorts live it up in our country. You’ve bought the straight-up devaluation of the Haitian being, his equal-ness in humanity to any white person.

You are representing what both you and I want to destroy and you’ve entrenched yourself in the Black fratricide ghetto in stating, what I keep reading on and on in the US and Haitian mainstream press about – that is, how the meager, Haitian opposition, is supported by the world’s single most powerful superpower, and so what?” That, therefore, our only hope of survival is to make alliances with said superpower too? How about our only hope of meaningful survival is to change said superpower’s policies, change its societies, its nations, its ruling elites priorities - more precisely, our dignified survival demands an end to racism, and it’s economic underdevelopment, a change in the US/Euro White vs. Black dynamics by having open discussions about it, by changing the profit-over-people dynamics which started this war back in 1492.

You say, “Si nou panse pa gen yon bon valè Ayisyen ki dèyè Bush nou nan lerè, paske gouvènman Bush lan reprezante enterè yo, e gouvènman Bush lan pap ezite fè alyans avèk yo.” So what, we fold? Since it’s absolutely impossible to find another such “Superpower” to back the Haitian and African majority’s desires. Or, is it that there are some of us who refuse to believe there will always be people in our society who will sell their soul for kickbacks, consulting contracts, CIA protection like Toto Constant, Cedras, Michel Francois, et cetera.

But why are these people, who pick the easier way out, a total reflection of Haiti’s innate immorality? Are they any different, any more morally repugnant than the usual US politician and businessmen who live off government patronage and political kickbacks? There are criminalized politicians within both borders. We cannot allow these people to distract us from addressing the urgent needs of real governance that is necessary today in Haiti.

Yes, I agree, as Franz Fanon, points out, our victim-making-victim mentality does make us dangerous to each other. Still and yet, it’s also a very normal human paradox to be hurt by those closest to you, no matter your race. Yet, and still we are not talking here strictly about personal tragedies here, nor about the run-of-the mill small time criminal or socio-path .We were talking about strategies to counteract Haiti’s 200-year containment-and-poverty fostered by the Euro/Americans and how to leverage the 1990s’ gains towards concrete development. Well, at least that’s what I was doing in my post to you. (See, post to Guy from Ezili Danto, under, General Issue: Eske pwoblèm Ayiti se responsabilite yon grenn krityen vivan Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2003 5:37 am, Post subject: Malpwopte Ayisyen pa pi red ke malpwopte miltinasyonal http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=272

I know you were making “broad or ancillary comments.” However, you say, “Lenmi nou pa gen koulè, li pa gen nasyonalite, paske li san fwa ni lwa.” Yes, the enemy has a color and a race He has constructed. He has identifies himself as “white.” I din’t make up that designation. The white power structure did, a long time ago.

Today, it is represented by the Washington oligarghy and the White nations of Western Europe, the Western nuclear powers, (Colin Powell and Condonleesa Rice nothwithstanding; who are Establishment artifacts, White Establishment creations, simply, to paraphrase Frantz Fanon yet a
gain, Black skin/White mask wanting to turn their race and roots white.)

It belies the on-going brutal domination led by these White nations on behalf of their White oligarchy, their richest White few, who impose their rule on Haiti and the world, so that the benefit society offers, the resources in the world shall always be the property of this ruling class and race.

Under their “free market” economic policies, White Euro/Americans are the principal beneficiaries while Blacks and other people of color are the victims, bearers of the burdens and the costs of their “doing business” as usual.

*******

THE WEB OF REPRESSION IN HAITI:

The majority of the Haitian people are urban slum dwellers and rural peasants, who make less than 200 a year, annually. Now, if white-owned USAID, which has billions of dollars, billions of pro-business dollars at its disposable, if said organizations’ basic purpose in Haiti is to funnel those dollars to repressive sectors of the Haitian community by bribing, throwing lots of cash to Haitian business men, and by helping to reset-up FRAPH-like paramilitaries so USAID and the profit-over-people interests it represent, could, despite the majority’s wishes, expressed in three (1990, 1995 and 2000) fair and square elections; if the entire economic agenda of the US multi headed monster (USAID/IMF/World Bank, IADB) and all its initiatives, as promulgated by the US Embassy, are, to keep democracy from flourishing so that Haiti remains a service area of the United States; if that is the realities we live and struggle with, who, with power in the US, are we supposed to ally ourselves with who are more POWERFUL than these allies of Haiti’s business elites? (See also Haiti: Dangerous Crossroads, edited by NACLA, especially essay written by Deidre McFadyen, entitled “FRAPH and CDS: Two Faces of Oppression in Haiti,” at p. 153 to 157)

In the book Haiti: Dangerous Crossroads, the essay, entitled “FRAPH and CDS...," written by Deidre McFadyen, explores how both the militant right-wing paramilitary (FRAPH attaches) and the Centers for Development and Health (CDS), a multi-service health clinic in Cite Soleil, were both funded by USAID during the coup years in 1991 to 1994.

She outlines how one played good cop, the other bad cop. The ultimate aim was to stifle the pro-democratic Lavalas movement. So, for instance, to further it’s CIA sponsored role for decapitating the Lavalas Movement during the years of the Coup, on December 27, 1993, FRAPH attaches burnt down 10,000 shanty houses in Cite Soleil, burning and killing hundreds of unarmed, men, women and children. Then, the US Embassy/USAID swooped in, with “emergency funds” given to Haitian-elite-run pro-US CDS to restore order, or was it, as Larry Swing, then US Ambassador, put it, for “disaster relief.”

Later on, we learn, from Toto Constant, that the USAID, recruited FRAPH members within Cite Soley by handing out food aid and medical services. This pattern continues with US “aid” in Haiti to this day.

Their mechanism are either overt oppression, like the terror of FRAPH, or, the more passive forms of repression and control of giving “aid” to elite business owners who: take census for US-military tracking purposes; give some food and health care to the Haitian poor who are compliant and docile while collecting evidence under the guise of “giving aid” the better to target pro-democracy militants for extermination said militants, who always have trouble getting food, work and health services from USAID-sponsored relief programs.

As Deidre McFadyen pointed out, the victims of the FRAPH fire were, under AID’s funded CDS “relief”, were supposed to be allotted some food and $6 US dollars per family, “…(a)ttesting to the intricate web of repression people in Cite Soleil claimed that many of those handing out food aid were among those who STARTED the fire.” (at p., 154) (See, also a report in “The Nation” in October 1994 by Allan Nairm, which stated that, at least, four senior FRAPH attaches, actually worked at CDS, recruiting FRAPH spies and members from Cite Soley, under the guise of giving out food aid and nourishing malnourished Haitian babies.)

Given the intricate web of USAID/US Embassy repression in Haiti, why would Progressive whites in America, be our best allies? Are you sure they have the interest or history of institutional power that has, at ANY time, in recent memory, been exercised in the best interest of the urban and rural poor in Haiti?

Now, I am not talking about isolated individuals. I am talking about institutional power we could build solidarity with, not academic power, which generally also relies on US-government funding and is necessarily walking a thin line.

Unfortunately, our natural allies, are poor people - the disenfranchise everywhere. Which is why, I would have pointed, to, not progressive whites-Americans who, as I’ve indicated are more interested in Global warming and animal rights, but, if we were simply looking at the US, I would have pointed to progressive African-Americans and their purchasing power as something we need to tell our story to and ally with more effectively.

For we are both disenfranchised by racism, de facto segregation, marginalization, profit-over-people big businesses and our communities are underdeveloped in terms of education, health care and access to opportunity and mobility. And, there is, at least, a consistent institutional political history and cultural commonality there. Why not work to make it an economic history of solidarity, also? Perhaps then, our workforces wouldn’t so easily be able to be pit against one another other, willy nilly, by the international and domestic pro-business policymakers in the US.

Ezili Danto

[guysanto*]

[You are representing what both you and I want to destroy and you’ve entrenched yourself in the Black fratricide ghetto...]

I am really trying hard to forget this sentence, Ezili.

[... in stating, what I keep reading on and on in the US and Haitian mainstream press about – that is, how the meager, Haitian opposition, is supported by the world’s single most powerful superpower, and so what?” That, therefore, our only hope of survival is to make alliances with said superpower too?]

I have stated that our only hope is to make alliances with the single most powerful superpower??????

[How about our only hope of meaningful survival is to change said superpower’s policies, change its societies, its nations, its ruling elites priorities - more precisely, our dignified survival demands an end to racism, and it’s economic underdevelopment, a change in the US/Euro White vs. Black dynamics by having open discussions about it, by changing the profit-over-people dynamics which started this war back in 1492.]

You may bend over laughing, but honestly that's "the change" I thought I was advocating for all along.

Well, let me stop here and take a deep breath...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ezili... I did find some spectacularly unfair characterizations in your note about what I have written, but knowing and appreciating your stance over the years leads me to believe that the fault must have been mine in not expressing my thoughts in a clearer and more thorough manner. I will not attempt to redress now either, I am sorry to say, for fear of engaging in an endless debate on meanings and connotations which would end up pitting us one against the other, rather than uniting against these catastrophic policies of globalization that are wreaking havoc today here and there, and tomorrow just about everywhere.

I will only point to one rather grievous characterization and another faulty assumption, as mere examples of where you take off and slay the beast, without truly taking stock of what truly, really is so bestial about its appearance.

First you make much of a "Black druggy" analogy which quite literally I did not introduce. I am sorry for the heightened misunderstanding that my own words have created, though our more fundamental differences on the notion of accountability remain the same. I sincerely say "sorry" for the misunderstanding, but I do not apologize for what I actually said, because in referring to a Haitian brother who, at any point in time, could be my worst enemy because he would not hesitate to exterminate me (and mine, including family and friends) while protecting the crass interests of his commerce (whether that be in drugs smuggling, arms smuggling, pharmaceuticals contamination, slave labor profiteering, and other unfathomable acts in which our governments and elites have most deliberately participated in continuing our people's disenfranchisement), I unwisely assumed that people would get the meaning of my denunciation of "Ayisyen frè mwen ki pap ezite redui mwen a lenfinitif pou l pwoteje enterè dwòg li, ou enterè kay vakans li vle bati pasi pala".

You encapsulated what I said in the form of "Black druggy", while I neither used the terms "Black" nor "druggy". And then you gave me a lesson on the flow of drugs internationally and in our inner cities. No, I don't blame you. Yes, I am aware of some facts that you don't even mention. I am aware that Haiti is only a transit point, that Haiti is not a drug producing country, and that Haiti does not have a drug culture. I am keenly aware of the fact that drugs are used in America by the overwhelmingly white people who can afford it, recreationally or due to chemical and psychological dependency. I am aware of the fact that the military and intelligence forces in the U.S. bear responsibility for having trafficked cocaine in the contra war in Nicaragua and in largely black populated American inner city ghettoes. I am aware of the fact that the U.S. is conducting a genocidal and phony drug war, as we speak, in Columbia. I am aware of the fact that American leaders have never been serious about this so called "War on Drugs", which keeps creating jails all over the country to emprison more young blacks in their late teens and early twenties than you ever find attending institutions of higher learning. I am aware of the fact that those prisons were never meant to house the spoiled drug-abusing children of American elite families, who can still afford to attend Ivy League colleges, regardless of merit, and then accede to the highest echelons of power, while spouting hypocritically pious statements about God and the Moral Majority, and enforcing "three strikes you're out" laws for sending black youth to jail indefinitely and sending a disproportionately high number of black men to death row.

I could go on, but that won't be necessary as I simply want to say that this "Black druggy" characterization of my statement was extremely unfortunate, in my view point. Once again, I feel sorry that I expressed what I wanted to say in a manner that would lead you to preach to me about the drug trade. This really is the matter of another discussion, in which I would be happy to participate, but let's close the door for now on this "black druggy" line of argumentation which bothers the hell out of me, due to basic and faulty assumptions about my naivete or willingness to beat up on the principal victims of the phony drug wars. Let me only add this one remark: does any sane person believe that the world policemen in these drug wars are, or were at any point in time, incapable of neutralizing the "drug lords" of Haiti? It is more than obvious that the drug trade passing through Haiti is a duly protected and incorporated business. When I spoke of "enterè dwòg li", I was speaking metaphorically of "drugs", and not of addicts and powdery or leafy substances. It's too bad that I was so obscure.

As for your faulty assumption with respect to my beliefs about "progressive whites-Americans", you say: "I would have pointed, to, not progressive whites-Americans who, as I’ve indicated are more interested in Global warming and animal rights, but, if we were simply looking at the US, I would have pointed to progressive African-Americans and their purchasing power as something we need to tell our story to and ally with more effectively." First of all, Ezili, if you carefully read all the points and counterpoints in this exchange about "progressives", a term that I did not introduce (I abhor all sorts of labels), you will discover that in essence I only advocated for alliances with like-minded groups and individuals, regardless of color, race, religion, gender, and nationality. I did not once set about advocating for an intersect of Americans, Whites, and Progressives. I did react to certain exclusionary lines in the sand that were brandished about specific races, nations, and groups of nations. On this, I suspect that we will continue to have two very different ways of looking at the human race, though I also believe that there is much to gain from our different view points if we honestly make an effort to understand each other rather than engaging in a self-and-other-destructive war of words. If I promote international solidarity, it is because I believe in what I say out of my entire life experience, it is because that is my principled outlook, and not because I have been brainwashed by White paternalism, as you seem to imply in your expose. Who says in fact that I was not thinking of "progressive African-Americans and their purchasing power as something we need to tell our story to and ally with more effectively"? IN FACT, I WAS. Who says that I was not thinking of like-minded sub-Saharan Africans who are most likely to identify with us in this global war (against black people, you say; against all disenfranchised people, I say; if you set out to prove to me that "black people = disenfranchised people", then I may very well agree with you, but in my mindset, race is only a factor in the equation, it is not the whole equation). And about this famously talked about intersect of Americans, Whites, and Progressives, I think that it is badly patronizing to say that they are chiefly interested in global warming and animal rights. And you know what? I am also interested in global warming and animal rights, perhaps not at the same level as an affluent person, but that does not make me any less "BLACK" or "HAITIAN" in my mental constructs than anyone else. And I have met a great many individuals in this intersect of Americans, Whites, and Progressives who are also passionate about issues of social justice, and who are just as militant against the dehumanizing policies of their government as any who come and read our debates. I never even felt the need in our previous conversations on this topic to advocate for allying with "whites-american progressives". That's not where I was coming from, but if I CLEARLY PROJECT THE LEADERSHIP OF WHERE I WANT TO TAKE MY PEOPLE, and those like-minded individuals, be they whites, or African-American, or African, or Cuban, Chinese or Japanese, I will gladly accept their support and work with them. The only thing is, I am forever accountable for defining where I want to go and how, and if I cannot do this then I had better get out of the way.

My dear sister, this is just not about disagreement on view points. I sense some unfairness about the way you situate my positions in your argumentation, but perhaps I am just being overly sensitive. More than likely, I just have to learn to express my positions more clearly. When I so succinctly say "Do not forget Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice", it's way too easy for someone else to conclude falsely that I am equating so called "black accountability" with "white accountability", whereas in my own mind, I was not equating anything. I simply was warning against (and I am most deliberate and most determined about that, no matter which way others might attempt to colorize my opinions) putting ALL accountability in only one basket. Regardless of how you view the historic white accountability for the social evils of this world, I will first and foremost attack the power structures, whether they are inhabited by blacks or whites and all the shades in between. This was a simple recall, and I still stand by it in essence, though in hindsight I would have phrased it differently if I thought that my statement would imply some equalization of a global set of accountabilities. Anyway, enough said about that. I'd rather work with you to achieve our common goals than debate endlessly about which one of us has the correct or more correct view of the world.

[Ezili Danto*]

One et respe to all;

Ohhhhhhhhhhh, Guy, Guy, you, are definitely NOT going to like this next installments. For, I did say, in my post, that I wrote a few parts, remember? I wrote them and let them sit for a week to be sure, but I didn’t want to post them all at the same time and overwhelm. I reiterate and repeat that:

OUR POINT OF DEPARTURE:

Is to comment on your post to Ezili Danto, dated June 23, 2003 and on some OTHER related topics placed on this forum and perhaps to FURTHER our discussions and dissemination, of hopefully, useful information with regards to the Haiti situation.

I respond to your post-dated June 23, 2003 to Ezili Danto not because of our point of agreement but because of our DIFFERENCES.

But Guy, I do add, though, perhaps I have a few more years of experience at adversarial constructs that don’t change personal relationships when the work is done. This is not a refection on you, but you know I take protecting the civil, political, economic and cultural rights of Haitians, at home and abroad, as a personal mission, don’t you? Again, this is a matter of views. In this life’s work that I do, I have been called upon to destroy stereotypes and stigmatization. I don’t go looking for it, but I recognize it when it’s displayed. I know too, there is never be a single viewpoint. You have a right to your way of seeing, as you say, it’s based on your experiences. And, so are mines. When I pick a point to make, or a story to tell, though it may appear otherwise, I don’t see myself as an ideologue who wants to pit one absolutist ideology against another. I just want to share my way of seeing in this world.

Thing is, it just so happens these two contrasting views, White accountability vs. Black responsibility, have been at issue since the first day my shackled African warrior-captives arrived on these shores and said to the whites mwen se granmoun lakay mwen. And they answered, No, you are in my house now and what we tell you are is what you will be. Unfortunately, as the WILLIE LYNCH LETTER http://matah.com/Lynch1.ihtml?mtcnbc=:mtcnbc & LET’S MAKE A SLAVE pamphlets ( http://matah.com/mthlyn.ihtml, the white man systemized and institutionalized, for 300 years, a way to break Africans, like horses.

Oh, and while I am referring to animals, for the record, pain deliberately inflicted on any sentient being hurts, bothers and disturbs my senses, irreparably. But I, know I’ve said this before, in my initial post to you dated don’t have as much of an interest in animal rights as I do with the rights of children that could slid down my Black thighs, I just don’t. would otherwise be possible. Horses were treated, and sometimes, even today, poodles are treated better, in white societies than the Black maid and her children, and certainly with more rights than the young black males languishing in the prison system, sometimes for nothing more than that they exist and are African males.) Ok, to continue, many of us were broken, and thus, we believe His-story. I, I tell my own and have had to defend Haiti, as a Black nation, in the same way Malcolm X always said that to be pro-African does not mean he is anti-white. The problem is, in this society, certain Black people do get offended about Black self-love. It makes them automatically think “exclusion” of white people, where white self love is not thought of as “exclusion” of black but absolutely natural, as it is. These are very well documented facts of Black travails on this globe, and testify to a lack of imagination, and the vulnerability, fear, paranoia as well as the utter ruthlessness and of “white” power. So, today many of us, without a Ginen or African outlook put on the white men’s visor, fit into our invented “caste”, stay in our place-so-to-speak, see ourselves and automatically stigmatize our own. As I write, further on, in this post, long ago, in his book, “The Miseducation of the Negro,” Carter Woodson was perhaps the first to point out, In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. if there is no back door to enter, Blacks will themselves carve one out for their own special benefit. (See, Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-education of the Negro (Washington, D.C.: The Associated Publishers, 1933)

******
Part 2 –In this second post, I will examine the caste system “Blacks” have been fitted into by analyzing a bit of US legal history.

l. KEEPING UP WITH THE JONES / HAVING THE MATERIAL ASPECTS OF EQUALITY DOES NOT MEAN BLACK IS EQUAL TO WHITE.

Today, Tues. July 8, 2003, I was watching the news. There was a report that in Oaklyn, New Jersey, three white teenagers where apprehended Sunday morning, with a cache of guns, swords and 2000 rounds of ammunition, and, they were allegedly on their way to a Columbine-like killing spree. The CNN talking heads invited a teen crisis specialist in “marginalized teenage behavior” to discuss what went wrong with these otherwise “good kids” ARMED to the teeth. Now, Black male teens, in the US, just don’t get such tender treatment from the US corporate media.

Which brings me to a remark I just heard another CNN reporter just make, during the same news report, different segment. This time it was the remark of a well-known Black CNN anchor that caught my attention. It was about his first visit to Goree Island, West Africa, on the occasion of Baby Bush’s venture to that same site.

Now, of course I’m interested. I turn up the volume, slide to the edge of my seat. I want to know WHAT Baby Bush and wife are doing at Goree Island? What kind of despoliation is this, what is the nature of this pre-election propaganda, this desecration? - I am thinking, remembering Baby Bushes treatment, current imprisonment, indefinite detention of Haitian toddlers behind arm US guards, in hot, humid hotel pits in Miami, USA; remembering Sr. Bush role in the repatriation of Haitian asylum seekers willy nilly, bypassing all INS laws, and his “I will never apologize for the United States of America – I don’t care what the facts are.” This, on the occasion of the US shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane killing 290 passengers, but there are many others, such the first Gulf war, his sons second Gulf War and continued bombing of the Iraqi children. So, what further insults must we bear here with this maniac now on motherland soil? - supposedly bringing “aid” to suffering Black HIV victims? This man who can forgive the German Chancellor Schroeder and kiss French President Chirac but won’t meet Mandela, whose more than an ex-President in Africa and to the worldwide peace movement. This is how much the Bushes respect their own African-American constituents, not to mention the African struggle against racism and apartheid which Mandela epitomized during his 27 years of unjust incarceration on Robben Island.

Now, knowing this Texas-oil mindset, its conceits and what US “aid” brings to Haiti and Africa, I am thinking: What sort of political game this, this Bush on another Island that used to imprison Africans?

What is he doing, swapping respects – visiting Goree Island to show respect for long ago, dead Africans when he can’t deign to show even, a swarthy political respect for Mandela, who is very much alive? And, what? We are not supposed to notice. Act like CNN and don’t mention the vanity, disrespect and utter arrogance? Is that it?

Not to mention I am also remembering my own trip to Goree Island years and years ago when I first got out of school. Remembering how the European slave traders used to torture the African male captives by raping their children, wives and sisters over and over and over again, in front of them, while the African men had to watch; were forced to watch, remaining body shackled and hunched over hand iron-chained to foot.

I remember my rage, my hurt, my soul tearing apart for these African peoples whom the Europeans never connected to as human beings.

I remember actually hearing wailing voices, a depthless wailing voice that’s never left me, and which accounts for the subtext of much of my plays and poems.

So, I lean in closer, put up the TV volume.

And there it is that same hot, airless, dark dungeons at Goree Island, where hundreds of African peoples were thrown, for breaking like one breaks a horse and for storage purposes, as the European slave-makers waited for the time to put them on their slave ships.

These, my suffering ancestors, were forced to live in utterly inhumane conditions; forced to fight over the scraps of food and drips of water thrown at them from above, forced to eat, drink, vomit, defecate, sleep, die and urinate death together. No one who has been there can forget this sort of vivid reminder of European oppression.

And so, I am now watching, on the edge of my seat. Knowing I won’t feel satisfied because of the Bush charade, knowing I won’t feel whole when this segment is over, but picked over; knowing there won’t be a coverage that would respect the solemnest, sacredness of this place as a memorial to the suffering of the African peoples. And so, I am also stealing myself not to feel no matter what salt is poured into our open wounds. I just don’t know what other form the put down will take, but from the surrounding Mandela one, from the laughable idea of Europeans bringing a god zillion million aid package to Black nations, I know a disappointment is coming our way.

******.
I apology in advance, Guy, but just as I was stealing myself for the blow I knew would come, the announcer made a comment equivalent to your “Remember Rice and Powell” remark.

You see I was watching CNN, fascinated, as the US president un-elect Bush and his wife waved to the cameras from their perch on the Goree Island castle stairs. Then the cameras cut to a pre-recorded segment, showing a tearful Black CNN anchor, in casual clothes, within the Goree Island tunnels, looking out from the narrow passageway that leads to the ocean.

As Wolf Blizer, the CNN correspondent, who was announcing this segment, interviewed the Black anchor, on his reaction to the former slave castle at Goree Island. Bottom line, was that, said Black CNN anchor, now in his CNN suit and tie behind his CNN mask or is it behind his CNN desk, man-fully choked-off his emotions, and tells Blitzer how the experience of visiting the old slave holding pens of yesteryear, was utterly devastation, gave him goose bumps. BUT, he continues, when he was in the Goree tunnels, as he looked out the last slit the African peoples past through who were kept in that dungeon and tortured before they were packed on the slave ships, as he looked out through that slit of no return, he consoled himself with the knowledge that it wasn’t about White against Black, even then.

I am not making this up. The pointing to white responsibility and the Euro/American heinous slave-making legacy, however direct or implied, always, automatically engenders a DIRECT response about Black failings, specifically from certain materially successful Black people.

This is so common, it’s become stereotypical. Perhaps, it’s just that the world has been so unfair to us, we bend over backwards and break our heads to not be “exclusionary.” And, I knew it would come. So when the African-American anchor said it wasn’t about White vs. Black, I expelled my breath so the blow wouldn’t reach my solar plexus. I write about this today, at the beginning of my next post installment, in order to remind myself, although it’s a difficult subject, our discussions are very current, important and connected Guy. It falls within a continuum integrally related to the conflicted Haiti situation.

For, that assimilated, integrated, Black CNN anchor, who works and lives with whites, in a white environment in the US of A, who has achieved relative equality in terms of material acquisitions with his co-workers; but whose livelihood is dependent on their approval, beneficence and good will, was, to me very conflicted.

Conflicted, because, like many other post Civil Rights professionals in America I believe he was taught to act like he is color-bind; that the only color that counts is green; that he, in fact, lives in a color-bind world.

This I base on the fact that, at first, he expressed surprised that Wolf Blitzer, a white senior anchor, wanted his honest, personal opinion about the experience in Africa, as a Black man. He was surprised the rules of the game had briefly changed. I though: Doesn’t he see why the exception was made; how his grief was just commercialized to sanitize, authenticate and sell the Bush charade? No, it didn’t appear so. He said, that as an African-American man, he felt a profound connection to those who suffered there under the harsh European oppressors, but he didn’t say that, that was me thinking aloud. What the Black CNN anchor said was that he felt a profound connection to those who suffered there, felt he was returning home, but he was CONSOLED because there were Africans there at Goree Island WHILE he was visiting, who had come to Goree Island to pay their respects and to atone for their AFRICAN ANCESTORS selling African captives into the European Transatlantic Slave Trade.

He was consoled because it wasn’t about white Europeans enslaving African peoples - it wasn’t about the Nazi’s cooking the Jews; it wasn’t about Nazi’s vs. Jews, oops, I am digressing, he said, and I quote “it wasn’t about white vs. Black.”

I was reminded such remarks are worthy of venomous Black conservatives, like Ward Cornerlly and Armstrong Williams, (see, www.armstrongwilliams.com) in the US, who, whenever presented with the genocidal record of the white race, especially with reference to slavery, will DEFEND the so-called white ruling race and structure by saying, something to the effect of: “Remember the Black Overseers involve in slavery.” Remember the few Black slave owners. Don’t forget that some Africans sold their own citizens into slavery, participated in slave raids so as to solidify their own local rule, don’t forget that!”

And though I know you Guy understand, based on your responding post to me dated June 9, 2003 above, I was still, again, reminded of the “look at Powell and Rice” remark.

For, I had already written this post when I watched that CNN Black anchor consol himself, Guy, with the knowledge his ancestors where also EQUALLY bad, equally accountable, equally responsible for the massive Maafa - the Middle Passage and what followed - that unparalleled, in the annals of human history, that unparalleled system of death and destruction, beyond human comprehension and convention.

For, said African enslavement trade, according to Dubois, is responsible for the killing of somewhere in the range of 100 million innocent African human beings. Today, its legacy, stigmatization and repercussions continues, albeit, more covertly, as exemplified by the current Bush charade in Africa and by “aid” to developing nations that buries them in debt and “free trade,” “globalization” that fleeces African labor forces and abscond with African oil, diamond, cobalt, all our natural resources to be used solely to benefit the Euro/American elites and to make more comfortable their societies in general.

I had already written that with reference to the “integrated,” colonized and assimilated Armstrong Williams’s of this world, the dollars spent on their affirmative-action educations were wasted. Now, I add that Black CNN anchor to my list and have just sent him a personal copy of the Willie Lynch pamphlets showing how mental colonization refuels itself many generations removed.

What is wrong with us African people that we can’t even own our grief without feeling guilty for displaying it in front of white people; without feeling it might offend/accuse white people?

Imagine the Jews holding back their grief, after visiting Auschwitz or Dachau concentration camps; holding in their pain about the senseless loss of six million Jewish life, in the most inhuman of ways, because a few Jews were actually responsible for selling out some of the Jewish prisoners to the German Nazis for their own selfish purposes? It’s not conceivable. Jewish self-esteem would not allow it. But to revisit Africa, and the legacy of slavery, which dehumanized both Blacks and whites alike, there are some who feel they must “be fair” and not indict the whole white race, to use their words of defense. However, we all know the Jews know the Germans who helped them escaped are not offended by their hatred for the Nazi Germans killings.

What white paranoia makes it impossible for white people, as a group, who today, are supposedly “fair and democratic” from having a similar understanding when a Black expresses his opinions about the past or current conditions of people of color in the Americas and globally. Or, am I being obtuse? Is it because there has never been an authentic worldwide European "white" purging of white privileges? Can that be why there is this projected Black paranoia and guilt. Is it that the mythic
al goody-two shoes white self-image of purity and godliness requires Blacks to deny self to safely survive, to not be isolated and marginalized; to not be forced into poverty?

I agree with Omari L. Winbush, who writes: “What needed to be bussed (or, integrated into US public schools) in the early 1970s were dollars, not Black students. (See, the book entitled, “Should America Pay? Slavery and the raging debate on reparations, edited by Raymond A. Winbush, PH.D., at page 156, 155.)

For while we African peoples focused only on the material aspects of equality, i.e., keeping up with the Joneses, we lost complete sight of the problem of African peoples in the US, or elsewhere, for that matter. We lost sight of the fact that African-Americans and African peoples in America suffer from being second, third class citizens in US society. We suffer from post-traumatic slave syndrome. We suffer for being categorized “Black” in a white society, so much so that we live for their approval. On one end of the pendulum, there are, for instance, successful CNN Black anchors and the like, going to all sorts of lengths, denying self, trying to prove we can be “fair and reasonable,” and color-blind. And on the other extreme, you have, for instance, that, at first, disenfranchised Hip Hop “bad boy” artist/celebrity feeling into the racial stereotype he has been caste into, selling his propped-up, commercialized, gang totting, gang banging, violent, and ever so Mandingo, sexual image to make that almighty buck. Then when he’s got the green and can’t fit into the stereotype, he twists around unbearably, afraid of getting “soft,” afraid his “cross-over appeal” with lose him his market. The whole thing is ugly and goes back to mental colonization, a lack of Black self-love, self-esteem; a failure of education. We don’t see to act on the fact that no matter how much material assets, either the Black professional or the Black celebrity acquires, he will suffer from being “Black” in this white society.

We don’t act as if we know although, the Brown vs. Board of education case supposedly reversed the “separate buy equal” racist, discriminatory laws of Plessy v. Ferguson, ( http://www2.law.cornell.edu ) it didn’t acknowledge Blacks people are equal to whites. For, as Winbush astutely points out, it addressed more the “separate” part than the “equal” part. So while whites in the USA, said ok, after the Civil Rights Movement, you Black people can move into the cities, go to white schools there, white cinemas, sit anywhere in a public transport vehicle. They won’t advertise whites were fleeing into to the suburbs and into private schools. While this was going on in the 1960s and 1970s, in America, no one paid attention to the fact that white people use the word “Black” to mean not just a fictional race designation but to identify a caste system.

That is, “whites” have a place in society and Blacks have a place. And no matter how much money or education a Black person gets in America, no matter how much a celebrity, they cannot erase their caste, their place in the white man’s society.

Black people in America, Black intellectual in America are just beginning to realize this error of focusing on integrating schools, buses, trains, even housing areas, while not giving the same equal focus to erasing “Black” and “White” as a caste system.

As Winbush states “”Black people found themselves more concerned with fictional moves to equality than with realizing their inherent right to exist freely as human beings. (See also, Derrick Bell’s book “Faces at the Bottom of the Well” that also thoroughly analyzes this point.)

Now, how do I relate this to the Haitian situation? Well traditionally Black people have always viewed equality from the standpoint of what white people have. This perpetuates the slave-instilled mentality that somehow what white people have IS better than what Black people have. I am pl
eased and honor to say this analysis does not fit the traditional Ginen view of history. And that is the single most revolutionary thing that Haitians have stood for, since day one.

I will explain further, later. Suffice it, for now that I quickly say, that the traditional Haitian or more precisely Ginen way of looking at the Black and white question is to see “blan” not necessarily as a race issue, but a character issue. We Haitians don’t see ourselves as good or bad in relation to white. We see white as “strange”, “foreign”, “enemy”, “outsider” not necessarily because of their skin color but because of their culture of greed and profit by any means necessary.

But before I go into this deeper, I will, in the next post, review, a few snippets of what I have stood for and written about on this Forum.

Ezili Danto

[jafrikayiti*]

Onè-respè kanmarad and much respect to you Guy and Ezili for offering us this exchange.

This discussion is indeed very stimulating as it addresses core issues surrounding our individual and collective struggles as people who are committed to, and effectively engaged in “the fight against inequity in this world we temporarily live in, to create a better tomorrow for those who will come after us.”

Rather than follow the natural temptation to highlight the areas of agreement and/or of disagreement I find with each of Guy and Ezili’s positions, I will primarily add my own to the mix, while encouraging others to join this most interesting and important exchange.

THE NATURE OF OUR STRUGGLE

To me, there is no denying that, at this moment in our world’s history, this inequity known as THE MAAFA which transformed and maintained all Afrikan populations into the most vulnerable, disempowered, poverty and
disease-stricken people on every continent of earth represents THE GREATEST injustice known to our kind – and at once THE MOST unaddressed, shoved under the carpet, masked over of all known injustices since 1492. In view of the fact that, decade after decade, this inequity instead of finding new fighters confronting it, is continuously breeding for itself whole generations of apologists, one must acknowledge the value of Ezili’s statement that, as members of these Afrikan peoples, “our dignified survival demands an end to racism, and it’s economic underdevelopment, a change in the US/Euro White vs. Black dynamics by having open discussions about it, by changing the profit-over-people dynamics which started this war back in 1492”. And yes, war indeed is what it is!

But....

IS THIS WAR LITERALLY OPPOSING US (BLACKS) AGAINST THEM (WHITES) ?

On this specific issue, sister Ezili presents her position to be categorically opposed to that of brother Guy, who states that the enemy faced has no
color or nationality (Lenmi nou pa gen koulè, li pa gen nasyonalite, paske li san fwa ni lwa). “Yes, the enemy has a color and a race He has constructed. He has identifies himself as “white.” I din’t make up that designation. The white power structure did, a long time ago” counters Ezili.

For my part, I would say THE enemy faced in our struggle (to reverse the damages caused by the MAFAA) does bear a color. The unmistakable color of WHITE SUPREMACY. However, one must be very careful not to fall for the illusion that a total correlation exists between “white supremacy” and “white human beings”. If it is true that, as a collective, “white human beings” have reaped and continue to reap the material benefits of globally applied white supremacy, it does not at all follow that the agents working for the advancement of “white supremacy” have been nor are exclusively “white human beings”. Thus, from a historical stand point, there is no wonder in the fact that today Colin Powell, a “black human being”, seems by all evidence to be working in favor of white supremacy, while Dr. Kendall Clark (see www.whiteprivilege.com), a “white human being” seems to be fighting against the beast. It is equally important to underline that these historically logical peculiarities only represent noise in the system, for the targeted outcome remains unchanged “lamizè pa chanje katye”. White Supremacy is designed to and benefits white human beings - whether they personally wish so or not. As, Ezili puts it somewhere in her texts “It’s the same people running USAID and the offshore export assembly sweatshops which reminds one that African labor, in the new world, is still the property of the few white ruling elites.”.

So, regardless of the fact that a given rapist “Direktè” in any given sweatshop might be black of skin or that a given human rights militant genuinely engaged in the fight to defend our exploited sisters, may be as white as can be of skin. It remains, that WHITE SUPREMACY is the overall beneficiary of that stolen Afrikan labor – in Port-au-Prince, Johannesburg or the U.S. Industrial Prison complex. So, the enemy is not a collective known as “white people” – but it is nonetheless unmistakably white. White Supremacy is the name of the beast. An ideology designed to secure privileges for “white” human beings to the detriment mainly, but not exclusively, of African peoples – WS is historically-rooted, politically organized, intellectually machinated, carefully nurtured and cleverly protected for perpetuation through religion, among other things.

In a subsequent post, I will provide further clarification for my point of view by addressing these other issues raised by Guy and Ezili, especially pertaining to WHO SHOULD AND SHOULDN'T BE OUR ALLIES, where, when and how; The Black Opportunists, The White Progressists etc....including this very poignant statement made by sister Ezili:

It’s too “automatic” for us to constantly point at Black failings. It feeds a psychological need that has been inculcated in African people, by the fostering of fear, distrust and envy for control purposes, as expressed in “The Willie Lynch Letter
( http://matah.com/Lynch1.ihtml?mtcnbc=:mtcnbc ) and the “Let’s Make a Slave” pamphlet and the like. ( http://matah.com/mthlyn.ihtml ). If we want to understand what happened to the Haitian warring elites, after the 1804 Revolution, after the assassination of Dessaline. Then Haitians and all Africans should read these two pamphlets in order to get further insights into Black self-hatred and Black on Black, or Haitian on Haitian crimes. Then, we would know and understand why we automatically trust and defend “white” more than we do our own, on every occasion.

Meanwhile, as we all digest the subconsciously transmitted news headlines of our times - such as “Lord Bush Treks Africa After Mugabe’s Scalp While Seeking Escape With Impunity for His Liberian Boy Charles Taylor”, why don't I leave you with this very telling statement by a British “Lord” :

In my experience, the African people are immensely forgiving. They have forgiven the indignities that they suffered in recent times. To encourage the kind of attitude of fervent desire for reparation suggested here would go against the grain, certainly among Africans, because it is not in their nature.

The Viscount of Falkland

http://www.arm.arc.co.uk/LordsHansard.html

Oh, thank you ma Lord !

Jafrikayiti

[Ezili Danto*]

One et respe to all:

********
EZILI DEFINES EZILI’S VIEW ON HUMAN HISTORY – RESPONDING TO THE GLOBAL WHITE SUPREMACY VIEWPOINT LABELLING:
********

I do this because, in his post to Ezili Danto, dated June 23, 2003 Guy writes, that there are three ways of viewing the world. The way he looks at the world is that one class, I assume not race, but one class “emerges and fights tooth and nail not only to preserve the privileges it has acquired but is bent on exploiting the less privileged or broad "sub-classes" of people (without intent of extermination, as this would not at all be in their interest, but with intent of disenfranchisement... There lies perhaps a subtle but distinct difference from the Global White Supremacy view, which often speaks of the clear intent to eliminate rather than forever exploit).” (See, Guy to Ezili Danto, under General Issue: Pwoblèm Ayiti: responsabilite yon grenn k
rityen vivan? P. 1 “ Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2003 9:59 am, post subject: “A few points in response to Ezili's post” . http://www.haitiforever.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=272 (NOTE: Readers must stroll down to the post dated at June 23, 2003.)

The other way of looking at the world, according to Guy is that of the : “Dominance of a few nations, people or civilizations over a much greater number of nations, people or civilizations. Another way to look at the world, that I believe is closer to Pitit Ginen's approach than that of the struggle against the Global White Supremacy.”

And, finally, the Global White Supremacy view is the third labeling, the third way of looking at the world. And Guy wrote he believes Ezili looks at the world from this “Global White Supremacy view.” He says, specifically that the way Ezili Danto looks at the world is that of a :

“Dominance of a race, seeking to impose itself as a super-race and bent on destroying other races: The Global White Supremacy view that Jafrikay
iti and yourself have championed on this forum for a long time already, with solid argumentation. No, you are far from being the only Haitian-Americans to view the world in that manner. You have a lot more company than you think. Yet you would be mistaken, in my view, if you became so ideologically rigid to think that yours is the only view with validity. We still have much to learn from the philosophical overtones of Einstein's Theory of Relativity (though it specifically addresses the relativism of our physical universe).”

If I’ve correctly read and interpreted the lines above within the context of the entire June 23, 2003 post, taken in the altogether, the implications are fairly incorrect. The writing assumes I don’t understand that race is a fiction. It assumes I don’t know how Dessaline defined the white people who fought on the side of the African warriors in Haiti. If that is so, it seems to me, all that I have written has gone out to cyber-land and landing out of mind. For, if, as Guy says, I
have simply “championed” this one view, AS IT IS DEFINED BY GUY, of the world, “on this forum for a long time already, with solid argumentation” then I’ve thoroughly failed and been misunderstood.

That being said, I quickly add that I recognize that Guy also says that though he doesn’t subscribe to “my view” of the world or the “nation vs. nation view”, he nonetheless “…. always keep in mind that no matter how we differ in our views, the realities will still be the same and they are punishing indeed.” True that Guy. True that.

But, it is necessary to begin my answer by reviewing what I have said, what I have, in fact championed, on this forum, in order to move our discussion to the deeper, more salient, points I am interested in learning and sharing.

Again, my intention is not to be contrary for the sake of being contrary. My intention is to lay out the issues, bare and unfettered, so perhaps interested Readers may have some tools to use for a Ginen resistance agenda.

Guy, I only
write towards that goal, and I am only using your post, as I once did with a Pitit Ginen post, as a reference to say what I believe is important for progressive Haitians to know, to give information that may be useful to have in our arsenal of Ginen tools for resisting financial colonialism, imperialism and white dependency policies in Haiti.

Therefore, I am going to start, by saying, yet again, that with reference to the Haiti situation, the question, as I frame, understand it and answer it, in another post on this Forum, is for me, this:

How do Haitians….of all hues and classes, move forward while simultaneously, publicly exploring, and addressing our national divisions, weaknesses, pathologies (i.e. corruption, in Haiti, and our lack of a political history with civic duty) without continuing to make it easier for the powers-that-be to take advantage and exploit our situation? I think by starting to do a better job at looking outwards together. That’s my opinion. (See, http://www.haitiforever
.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=272 Under General Topic “Post subject: Pwoblèm Ayiti: responsabilite yon grenn krityen vivan? P. 1” NOTE: Scroll down to Ezili Danto post, dated Sun Jun 08, 2003.)

In that post I outlined the profit-over-people goals of the powers-that-be and how it all begin in Haiti back in 1503 when that first White European slave-maker brought African captives to the West in shackles, chains and even locked-jaw horse-type contraptions, fastened to their mouths, so they would not talk and incite resistance.

In that post, I outlined not only the manifestation of white capitalism with the profit-over-people results of the policies of the Breton Woods organizations and how financial colonialism/imperialism works in Haiti, but how it has morphed and now manifests the same old, same old exploitation. I did this by briefly reviewing the history of Euro-globalizations under that racist, we all know, by the name of Professor Milton Friedman, who defined the same old same economic policies
as “neoliberalism” in the early 1970s at the University of Chicago, tested it in Chile.

Then, under the World Bank and IMF, owned by the US Treasury and especially today, with the help of NAFTA and WTO and modern technology, US stockpiled weapons and the mainstream media, all these Euro/US-backed white structures, have taken their perverted financial colonialism and their outright imperialistic practices and gone global with it. Creating this world we live in, based on violence and subjugation, hate and fear.

I add now, that, in Haiti, said policy, said “Chicago boys” were represented by the policies of the US-sponsored Marc Bazin candidacy and especially the pro-assembly industry policies of the 1987 CNG, Finance Minister Leslie Delatour, who first bought neoliberalism or a sort of Structural Adjustment to Haiti after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship.

There’s no time to go into the complications, suffice it to say, obviously with the fall of the Duvalier regime, there was then a
thug-of-war with the old Duvalierist living off state graft, kickbacks, corruption and this new regime intent on making financial reforms to benefit another elite segment of Haitian society - the new export assembly industry sector and their lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects, not to mention the mixed mindsets and viewpoints of the newly returned, formerly exiled Diaspora Haitians members, who had waited around or planned for over three decades, for this chance at the wheel of power in Haiti, et cetera. It was this crack, this wedge, that the Haitian people’s movement pushed wide open with Aristide’s popular election in 1990.

But, in that June 8, 2003 post, I didn’t go into the details of the Haitian infighting between the merchant and other elite classes, including the returning Diaspora. I pointed out, in that post, how the neoliberalism, Structural Adjustment policies of World Bank, IMF and their financial institutions’ and now today, how their NAFTA, WTOs are NOT about trade, development, the
free market or democracy at all. Their mumbo jumbo, I said, is nothing more than a clever and cunning way to wipe away restrictions on business and industry, foreign and local. It’s just the current mechanism the former slave owners and colonists and their local Black agents are using to exploit the resources of the world’s peoples.

All this, I wrote, in order to explain the all encompassing, far-reaching significance of globalization. To discuss, with my fellow concerned Haitians the nature of the beast. And, this with a view that, if we all had the necessary information, we could together decide how best to built our own Haitian agenda, our own Haitianist/Ginen resistance strategies to the system that, as I wrote, that “VIES FOR THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS.”

Now, those who have read W.E.B Dubois, that great African-American intellectual of Haitian descent, would know I am always paraphrasing his “Souls of Black Folk” and therefore, might have labeled my view of world history as not the Global W
hite Supremacy view but a view in line with Dubois’s color-line analysis. For, I have consistently alluded to “the color-line” problem which Dubois identified as the great problem of the 20th century and astute others say remains the same problem in this 21st century.


GLOBAL WHITE SUPREMACY -
DEFINING EZILI DANTO’S WAY OF LOOKING AT THE ROLE OF RACE AND RACISM IN HISTORY AND SOCIETY.

The phrase, “Global White Supremacy”, when used alone, without context, or, AS DEEFINED BY GUY in his post, smacks of someone who preaches hatred for the whites, or, perhaps someone who spends time thinking of the “supremacy” of the white Establishment and power structure. I don’t.

On the physical level, the Biological Fatalists’ anti-Black ideology represents a sign of innate fear, fear of the strength of Black blood. It’s also that altogether human fear of the body’s finiteness. In addition, for the White ideologue it’s also the fear of the dark, unstructured collective unconscious, which they can’
t really give a storyline to and permanently capture.

On the metaphysical sphere, the Biological Fatalists’ anti-Black ideology evidences a fear of the spinning into nothingness, of dying; lost of ego, personal stories. Black people subconsciously represent, to them, lost of light, that black primordial space where personhood ceases.

Therefore, besides the economic benefits of rendering a “race” of people subhuman, the better to rob and exploit them, it is the white ideologues fear of the finite that has cause their rulers to built all sorts of race-fictions, paint God in their white image and re-design the afterlife with a white Jesus and God, cherubic white babies and angels and a Black Satan. And, to try, in the corporeal world, to capture immortality by creating artificial legal entities, such as multinational corporations to systemize and eternalize their corporeal existence and remain forever dominant, even after physical death. For, death, is for such a Westerner, black, ugly, and darkn
ess - all that they believe about the African. So, we are the scapegoats for all evil. But this is for another discussion. What I want to really stress here is that my way of looking at world history is wider than how you have categorize and define that category Guy.

******
LONG HISTORY OF GLOBAL WHITE SUPREMACY OUTLOOK…..ON THIS VERY FORUM???????

I’VE WRITTEN “The current situation in Haiti is not hurting US interests – it feeds it. Our blood nourishes their industries and always has. The corporate capitalist must marginalize the population, both in Haiti and in the US, because people are basically decent, so you must, keep them passive and quiescent, whether it’s through fear (as in the US with in the last 40 years of the Communist red threat, and now, it’s with terrorist - Qqadafi, Al Queda, Hussein, threat of the uses of weapons of mass destruction, Homeland Security’s red, blue, yellow fear alerts, etc.) or through Coup D’etat and its attendant oppressions in Haiti. “(See, Ezili Danto to
Gilfrans posted Tue Jun 03, 2003 10:51 am under General Issue: “Does Haiti Still Matter.” ( http://www.haitiforever.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=201 )

How does one ONLY get “Global white supremacy,” as define by Guy, from that?

I’ve also referred to the white ruling authorities that vie for the souls of Black folks as, variously, THE STATUS QUO, THE BIOLOGICAL FATALISTS, THE WESTERN NUCLEAR POWERS, THE POWES-THAT-BE, THE WHITE POWER STRUCTURE, THE WHITE SETTLERS. I’ve never, ever used the phrase “the Global White Supremacist. If I have, point it out, please. There is a reason, why, as a writer, as an image-maker, I am very cognizant of my own semantics and vocabulary, and the power of the words and images I evoke.

And Guy ,when I write about or refer to the status quo, or the Washington oligarchy, or the Pentagon System, or the mega, multinational corporations/stockholders, I include all three of the categories of “ways of looking at the world” which you mention, in your post, and much
more. Not just, as you put, “The Global White Supremacy view.”

Yes, Euro/American societies and peoples are racists and arrogant in their constructed, but fraudulent, goody-two-shoes, self-images. I don’t apologize for knowing that and stating it as often as I feel necessary. It’s a historical and very current fact.

But, I don’t think they only oppress Black people as you seem to indicate. Nor, do I believe they are only about genocide and not exploitation. They do both, simultaneously and systematically. Fact is, the White settlers and their governments have gone unpunished for committing the most heinous of crimes and destruction beyond human comprehension and convention, and, for the longest genocides in human history against peoples of color after the Transatlantic Slave Trade and, now after the formal end of their colonization period. But they oppress their own also. They keep the majority of the US population, for instance, in ignorance, fear and distracted while big business accumulates
more rights and entitlements than human beings.

THE RACE FICTION:

I also add, that the most racist-with-power knows what he is doing. The biological fatalistic worldview they own, or Global White Supremacy, to use your words, is, in my view, a cunning strategy, to unite the Euros who immigrated to the new World, first against the native Americans, then the Africans and later, the East Indians and Asians, etc.

It is a fiction. For we are only “Black” in relation to the White man and he is only White in relation to our Blackness. (To agree with you on the relativity issue.)

It’s a ruse. A diabolical but ingenious political, economic, and, religious strategy, the good old boys and their “Think Tanks”, who, have enough knowledge of world history to know better, use to prolong economic inequality and injustice in the world, in order that they might profit, exploit and justify their imposition of their culture and values on the planet.

Fact is, their experts know African societie
s and nations were so developed before the European got there, (even while the Arab were there creating havoc), many African societies where so developed, that for these African societies war had become a game! And I mean that literally.

Blood wasn’t shed. That was for barbarians. African men would get dressed up, with all their weapons and meet each other on the battlefield. The one most decorated, most athletic, most imaginative and creative won.

The very notion that WAR and violence is an acceptable governmental solution to countering social problems, like drugs, poverty, or, even to counter terrorism, and imprisonment, tell you the uncivilized mindset the world has to deal with in these White powers-that-be, with nuclear arsenals at the ready. Is this neoliberalism mindset, which refuse to make social spending on health and education, while treating peaceful resistance contempt very civilized, educated, and humane? More civilized than some of the great African societies, before the Mayflow
er, where war was simply a game?

Tell me that Black Fratricide, in its current form is not driven by the introduction of the Euro/American into our affairs. I don’t believe Blacks are anymore violent than Europeans and Americans. I do find, to understate the thing, that the Euros are an unwarranted intrusion in African and Haitian affairs, let say for more than 500 years now?

*******
In my June 8, 2003 post, I also humbly asked Forum Readers to kindly consider and give some thought to these two statements:

1. “Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is DIVERTED from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in the decision making.” (Emphasis added.)

2. The classical neoliberalist say that:
“Profit-making is the essence of democracy, any government that pursues anti-market policies is being antidemocratic, no matter how much informed popular support they might enjoy.” (See, the intr
oduction by Robert W. McChesney to Noam Chomsky’s book Profit Over People, at pg. 9)

I also said then that “ I cannot thoroughly address all I think this means to the Haitian situation, but I can say, unequivocally, that it means no matter whether the Haitian government is democratically elected by the majority or put in by force (i.e. sponsored by the Whites, the Euros), the powers-that-be will do the same thing - exploit the majority of our people and keep us underdeveloped.”

Today, I would like, in this post, to address some of the other things, I think the two statements above give meaning to, with reference to the Haitian situation. I’d like to do this in the context of the Guy post to Ezili Danto, under the same General Topic “Post subject: Pwoblèm Ayiti: responsabilite yon grenn krityen vivan? P 1, posted: Mon Jun 23, 2003 9:59 am, post subject: A few points in response to Ezili's post. NOTE: Scroll down to Guy’s post June 23, 2003 to Ezili Danto.)

I may be wrong, but it seems
to me that when I spoke of the institutional White structures in Haiti (i.e. US Embassy, USAID, World Bank, IDB) that vies for the soul of Black folk, Guy wasn’t very concerned. Yet when Pitit Ginen talked of the White people in the Bush administration who are murdering the Iraqi people and devastating the Iraqi country, Guy was compelled to say: Don’t forget Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice.

I may be wrong, but I make these connections because we oftentimes miss our connections, the corollaries and how issues are connected. So, it’s ok to blame the white power structure, in general, it’s easy to do that. There is, to use Guy’s words, all that documentation for it. But we can’t touch the run of the mill white person, is that it? Said individuals are not culpable, don’t enjoy the white skin privileges their Government obtain for them at the expense of the pain of people of color and their resources, worldwide? Is that it?

Faceless, nameless structures and transnational corporations merit condem
nation? But when we start saying “white people” it sticks in our Eurocentric-educated craw, doesn’t it? (And, I am putting myself under that Eurocentric educated label.) Is that why it’s perhaps not ok to blanketed-ly say, “White people are responsible for most of the suffering in the world in the last 511 years?”

What I want to say is that, if one took Guy’s logic to its natural conclusion, back in the day, when Boukmann said it’s time to get rid of these white people in Haiti, he would have responded, as he responded to Pitit Ginen and by refusing to see the bigger picture. Perhaps he might have answered Boukmann with: Don’t forget the role of the Black overseers, the role of the black slave traders.

Today he may just simply say, in the same mindset, don’t forget the role of the tragic Black Haitian elite, the African elite, the Brazilian elite, South American elite, East Indian elite, or, to sum up the thing, the role of sellouts and opportunists, such as Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell.


This factoring in, of the culpability of the Black overseer, the Black opportunists, the Black sell-outs, on an EQUAL footing is as detrimental as the factoring of the work of the so-called progressive whites, the abolitionists, for instance, on the same level as the maniacal oppression of their white rulers. I acknowledge the good work of say, teachers like Prudence Crandall, back in the day. But, it doesn’t add up to the consistent, day-to-day work of the African mother in nurturing and teaching her own children how to survive white oppression.

I acknowledge the work of the William Lord Garrisons of this world, but I can’t find it comparable with Harriet Tubman’s work with the underground railroad. They didn’t face the same dangers just as the Black overseers never had the institutional-backed powers to commit Black genocide without impunity, which the white propertied classes had at their disposable.

I say, the Black opportunist’s personal failures, is an unmerited attack on the authen
tic African-American, or African, or Haitian community, which itself sees these unethical, opportunistic Blacks, as outsiders, as “house Negroes”, as “blan yo,” as the mentally enslaved and assimilated agents of imperial power.

This unmerited attack, on the Black community, through these, sell-outs, equals a defense, a denial of total white ownership of their own tyranny and its consequences.

It unwittingly gives weight to a white-person-in-black-skin, who is using, commercializing and selling skin color, in the services of the good old boys. It uses our own immutable skin characteristics, our own black skin, against us. Again, point is, the educated tragic Black elite, who has chosen the opportunist paths, are diminishing, squandering the exalted and noble African heritage of struggle, resistance and overcoming, which used to carry some worldwide currency, ever since the Haitian Revolution.

The factoring in, of the culpability of the Black opportunists, on an equal footing is as detrime
ntal as the factoring of the work of the so-called “progressive whites,” for instance, the work of the white abolitionists, on the same level as the work of, say, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. The maniacal oppression of the white elites towards peoples of color, does not touch the white progressives, struggling against the consequences of capitalism and racism, in the same lethal and every day casualness, it affects the existence of Black people.

For instance, fact is, the regular white “Joe” has benefited from capitalism and racism from day one. For under slavery, racism was legally sanctioned in statutes vis a vis the white indentured servants who were also forced to work on plantations in the US in the 1700s. These preferential-treatment-to-non-propertied-classes- of-whites, prohibited public beatings of white indentured servants, while Blacks where deemed subhuman, lower than an animal. The Homestead Act transferred, even free-Black lands to newly arriving white/European immi
grants.

We could go on, outlining, for today, not the obvious racial injustices, but all the subtleties that prohibit African peoples, of all nationalities and persuasions, from getting a cab in New York, driving without incident in a white neighborhood or on a major US highway, or simply walking through, let say a Western airport, a US mall, a US Court building, with the same ease and privileges that most white Joes and Josephines' daily and unthinkingly enjoy.

Thus, the oppressions, cruelties and inhumanities visited on Africans rarely add up to the same oppression of their own, just as the magnitude of white societal failures cannot be equated with the individual greed of the lone Black person or persons, acting under white sponsorship and mostly outside the sanction of the Black community

For, as Carter G. Woodson stated:

“When you control a man’s thinking you don’t have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here and go yonder. He will find his
proper place and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.” (See further, Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-education of the Negro, Trenton, N.J, :Africa World Press, p. 84. See, also, Marimba Ani, Yurugu, Trenton, N.J., Africa World Press, 1994. p. 294, which talks of the long career of the Euro-American media and said mainstream media as one of the most effective weapons used “to ensure the exploitation and dependency of people of African descent.”)

Besides, having assimilated a European consciousness, a post-traumatic slave syndrome, or perhaps, due to a lack of understanding of non-apparent forms of oppression, of psychological oppression, so deeply entrenched as to be virtually invisible, even to their victims, why else would anyone defend, excuse or gloss over the societal failures of white responsibility or the role of the individual, regula
r white “Joe” and “Josephine”, simply “doing their jobs” whatever that may be, within this system that vies for the soul of Black folks, in Haiti, or in the US.?

Many of us Haitians, who have had this “put-your-people-first, your African-ness and African-race first” sensibility from day one, consistently get reprimanded for refusing to accept, or give benefit of doubt to, ANY white/European person, who is working in Haiti bringing to us dependency; any “Brian;” any so-called good intentioned, progressive white person who is in complete denial about the role of US foreign policy in Haiti; who will tell Haitians to their face and with a straight face: “look, at what WE whites have done for you!, Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” and actually believe their own White press releases and mainstream media hype, wholesale and without questions. (See, a Jaf letter posted by Guy, on June 25, 2003 12:35 am under General Issues topic: Whose Government is this anyway ( http://www.haitiforever.com/forum/viewtopi
c.php?t=307 )

I call that, as JAF has said, in reference to the ineffectual USAID programs in Haiti, (See, JAF’s post under the guysanto, Grassroots International article, posted: Sat Jun 21, 2003 2:46 pm, under General Issue: Dependency, Democracy, and USAID Policies in Haiti, (http://www.haitiforever.com/forum/viewt ... highlight= posted Sat Jun 21, 2003 10:37 pm, post subject: They do know what they are doing...! ) I call that FAKE INNOCENCE. The chameleon may change its laws, its institutions, its “aid” packages to Africa, to Haiti to the developing nations, globally. But it forever brings white death warmed over in its systemic profit-over-people actions, if not, in its stated values.

Shout on then, I am anti-this-white-death. But I am in some very good white peoples’ company too. I gladly enter the anti-this-white-death, the anti-people-over-profit company of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ed Herman, Amy Goodman, Greg Palast, Michael
Albert, et cetera.

If I am too concerned about Black, then I am also in the company of John Henrik Clarke, Malcolm X, CLR James, Dubois, Garvey, Dessaline, who all, lived within this marginalization, just as the majority of the Haitian people are relegated to the edges of this earth’s bounties. But it is better be so marginalized; it is far, far, far better to own a point of view that shakes up the failure of white responsibility than to be put in a “frozen psychological state” or be broken by the atrocities, degradations and centuries of oppression African people see continuing all around us, both in the US and in Haiti. (http://matah.coH/mthlyn.ihtml)
I keep my passions in order to resist oppression and be of service to my communities – all of them, African-American, Haitian and my various white compatriots also in this struggle against globalization, financial colonialism, racism, caste systems and all forms of injustices.

Ezili Danto

“Dje blan-yo mande krim. Bon Dje ki nan nou
-an vle byen fe.” (Boukmann at Bwa Kayiman, August 14, 1791)

[guysanto*]

<blockquote>
<p>Sister, I am genuinely sorry I have misrepresented your views and I am glad you have taken the opportunity to set me straight. I add that if in my response to Pitit Ginen, I have similarly misrepresented his views and those of Jafrikayiti, I sincerely apologize to them as well. The upside is that I will be much more careful from now on...

<p>I am glad to see you in the illustrious "company of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ed Herman, Amy Goodman, Greg Palast, Michael Albert, et cetera", and though I have personally never accused you of being "too concerned about Black", I am also gratified to count you among "John Henrik Clarke, Malcolm X, CLR James, Dubois, Garvey, and Dessaline."

<p>Having read and listened to Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn (that is, his seminal "People's History of the United States") and CLR James, Greg Palast (various investigative reports), and Amy Goodman (going back too many years that I can remember, and certainly my all-time favorite radio personality) and pledging some familiarity to - and a lot of respect for - the legacy of Dubois, Garvey, and Dessaline, I compliment you for the company that you keep, spiritually and perhaps on a more personal basis in some cases. "Dis-moi qui tu fréquentes et je te dirai qui tu es..." I do not find this at all surprising, having been exposed to a fair bit of your thinking over the years.<p>As for your passions, which you keep, as you say, in order to resist oppression and be of service to your communities – all of them, African-American, Haitian and your various white compatriots also in this struggle against globalization, financial colonialism, racism, caste systems and all forms of injustices, that's exactly what I have found to be most remarkable about you. Though I have remarked to you on a few occasions about this white-hot incandescence you radiate in your writing and in your live performances, I hope that you did not get the idea that I was reproaching you such passion. Speaking honestly from this current experience, I can tell you that this passion can also be quite abrasive (and which passion isn't?), but by all means keep your passions, because the service to your defined communities far exceeds in relevance the bruised feelings you may leave in your wake.<p>"Abrasive?," you might inquire. Well, yes, I feel saddened and alienated by your unwarranted extrapolations and I certainly do not recognize myself, in thought and feel, in this picture of "Black fratricide" that you have so elaborately weaved.<p>Much of this was in response to my saying "Do not forget Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice" in response to Pitit Ginen when he wrote: "Apre chen anraje-yo (yon pakèt blan ki te met ansanm) antre nan peyi sa-a, apre yo fin bay yon bann manti santi, san sans nan radyo ak televizyon."

<p>The truth is, my dear Ezili, that after having carefully read your last three posts, I feel entitled to say again and again and again:

DO NOT FORGET COLIN POWELL AND CONDOLEEZZA RICE!!!

and I will say it one more time:

DO NOT FORGET COLIN POWELL AND CONDOLEEZZA RICE!!!

in the context of my response to the above quote from Pitit Ginen, and should I incur the wrath of Dessaline, Garvey, Dubois, Malcom X, and all of our black heroes for honestly stating what I think in the precise instance that I have done so, LET ME SUFFER THEN FROM ETERNAL DAMNATION!

When you say:

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that when I spoke of the institutional White structures in Haiti (i.e. US Embassy, USAID, World Bank, IDB) that vies for the soul of Black folk, Guy wasn’t very concerned. Yet when Pitit Ginen talked of the White people in the Bush administration who are murdering the Iraqi people and devastating the Iraqi country, Guy was compelled to say: Don’t forget Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice.

I may be wrong, but I make these connections because we oftentimes miss our connections, the corollaries and how issues are connected. So, it’s ok to blame the white power structure, in general, it’s easy to do that. There is, to use Guy’s words, all that documentation for it. But we can’t touch the run of the mill white person, is that it? Said individuals are not culpable, don’t enjoy the white skin privileges their Government obtain for them at the expense of the pain of people of color and their resources, worldwide? Is that it?

Faceless, nameless structures and transnational corporations merit condemnation? But when we start saying “white people” it sticks in our Eurocentric-educated craw, doesn’t it? (And, I am putting myself under that Eurocentric educated label.) Is that why it’s perhaps not ok to blanketed-ly say, “White people are responsible for most of the suffering in the world in the last 511 years?”

What I want to say is that, if one took Guy’s logic to its natural conclusion, back in the day, when Boukmann said it’s time to get rid of these white people in Haiti, he would have responded, as he responded to Pitit Ginen and by refusing to see the bigger picture. Perhaps he might have answered Boukmann with: Don’t forget the role of the Black overseers, the role of the black slave traders.

Today he may just simply say, in the same mindset, don’t forget the role of the tragic Black Haitian elite, the African elite, the Brazilian elite, South American elite, East Indian elite, or, to sum up the thing, the role of sellouts and opportunists, such as Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell.

<p>I respond: Easy on the pedal, sister... for I am not what you make of me. I may have misrepresented and miscategorized you thinking when attempting to summarize my perceptions of how various people see the history of major conflicts in this world (and I duly apologize for that), but do you properly have a license to so extrapolate my remark about Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice (and I still stand by that remark) to make of me an apologist for the perpetrators of slavery? Easy...

<p>When I read "Apre chen anraje-yo (yon pakèt blan ki te met ansanm) antre nan peyi sa-a, apre yo fin bay yon bann manti santi, san sans nan radyo ak televizyon," my sense of logic and honesty compels me to counter that it was not JUST "yon pakèt blan", but a murderous political machine which includes AS WELL a few very influential Black leaders, named Powell and Rice in this occurrence. If this compulsion makes me a traitor to the Black race and the bloodline of Boukman and Dessaline, then so be it, for God's sake.

<p>I have not backed down in this forum, both in its current form and its previous one, from condemning the illegal, murderous, sanguinary, and selfish political decisions taken by Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George Bush II and his cohorts, including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and yes, Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell too. And I keep Ashcroft in particular disdain, the reasons for which you are eminently familiar with.

<p>You have a sense of history, spirituality, and logic, and practicality that makes you express certain truths, as you see them, in a uniquely gifted manner. But so do I, sister, and I will continue to express my thoughts very honestly WITHOUT... "representing what both you and I want to destroy and entrenching (myself) in the Black fratricide ghetto" you have so squarely placed me in.

<p>Keep on serving your communities, sister. I support you and commend you. There is much to digest from your historical exposes, though it may surprise you to learn that I am much more familiar and agreeable to them overall than you suppose. If I do not share your particular brand of rhetoric, does it make me less worthy or a traitor to the disenfranchised? No need to answer that question, because whatever you might think, I have already answered it for myself. May we find common ground in the struggles ahead...

Guy S. Antoine
</blockquote>

[jafrikayiti*]

Onè dear and beloved kanmarad !

You guys simply refuse to let me sleep !

Having read the last two posts (one each from Ezili and Guy), I am ever more convinced that paraphrasing, interpreting or even translating each others words might cause us more grief than good in this exchange. For this reason, I will continue to contribute from my own personal stand point on the issues as opposed to opposing them item after item to my interpretation of Guy's or Ezili's own positions. I find it absolutely productive how the 'no-nonsense but respectfull approach' used so far forces one to revise, correct, check and-or improve one's choice of words - this, in my view, certainly helps elevate the educational value of the debate.

So, nou pati...

OF DEFENDING ‘WHITE’ MORE THAN WE DO OUR OWN

As, I write these lines, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and others are working overtime to accomplish their assigned official du
ties in the defence of white supremacy’s past, current as well as future crimes. While Powell’s face and skin feels up TV screens to utter idiocies such as Baby Bush is currently in Africa because ‘Africa is an important country or rather an important continent with many important countries’, Condoleezza is busy explaining that her master-president did nothing wrong by lying to the whole world when he repeatedly pointed to an impoverished African nation called Niger as the source of Saddam Hussein’s elusive uranium imported for the purpose of blowing up our world. These are only from today’s set of news. If we look at last week’s news we shall no doubt find a myriad of other examples where ‘we’ are ever so happy to defend ‘white’ no matter what.

“No, I don't think there was a necessity for the United States to apologize. The United States, when we came into being as a nation, slavery was there.”

H.N. Colin Powell
(from Powell: Bush demonstrating his commitment to Africa, CNN, Friday, Ju
ly 11, 2003)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/07 ... index.html


Indeed this desire to “defend white no matter what” is something systemic. Something taught very early on in life. The other day, I witnessed the following in my hometown:

1) 25 to 30 (obviously BLACK) Haitians sitting in a room to plan the celebration of the 200th anniversary of our victorious revolution against the MAAFA (RACIAL, anti-Black, white supremacist slave trade).
2) A proposal was made to specifically reach out to other (non-Haitian) African peoples who also struggled against the MAAFA, for the purpose of ensuring their active participation in a symbolic ‘breaking of chains’ ceremony on January 1, 2004.
3) A symphony of passionate lectures against “exclusionism”, “isolationism”, and other evils such as the risk of “hurting the feelings of white progressives, mixed-couples etc….” immediately came down like hail fire over those who made the suggestion.

Very unnatural indeed are these
sorts of manifestations of the modern African’s FEAR of self-affirmation, of celebrating or honouring even his greatest contributions to humanity without first seeking “white blessing” through “white symbolic participation”.

This pathological FEAR is something acquired through careful conditioning, not by nature. Contrary to the interested suggestion by the British Lord that there is something virtuous about “the African people” whom he found by experience to be “immensely forgiving” for “they have forgiven the indignities that they suffered in recent times”, the historical record tells us that ingrained FEAR, not virtue, is at the root of this can-always-bet-your-money-on-it willingness to “forgive” whites much more readily than blacks. A fear that, in the same manner as white supremacy, is “historically-rooted, politically organized, intellectually machinated, carefully nurtured and cleverly protected for perpetuation through religion, among other things”.

Although it should be pointed out t
hat the historicity of the infamous Willie Lynch documents referenced by Ezili continues to be argued among researchers, the historical record is replete with sermons, catechisms, laws and all sorts of other tools that were used to inculcate to generations upon generations of Africans “til Kingdom Come” this Ever –present NEED to defend “white”, to the point of self-neglect, self-hatred and self-destruction.

I am here reminded of this inscription seen on a U.S. slave tombstone which speaks so powerfully to the effectiveness of the slave-making, spirit-breaking methodologies that gave us the lingering post-traumatic slave syndrome being discussed in this thread: “I who was born a pagan and a slave, now sweetly sleep a Christian in my grave. What tho’ my hue was dark my saviour’s sight shall change this darkness into radiant light. Such grace to me my Lord on earth has given to recommend me to my Lord in heaven whose glorious second coming here I wait with saints and angels Him to celebrate”


n
OF THE WHITE ‘PROGRESSIVE’

I am very grateful to sister Ezili for her post of Friday July 11, 2003 in this very same thread where she provides a detailed outline of her “view of human history”. In that post, among so many other important statements, Ezili acknowledges the existence and valuable contribution of the white progressives. I can also register that “I gladly enter the anti-this-white-death, the anti-people-over-profit company of Noam Chomsky et. al…”. But, honestly speaking, until very recently, whenever I fall upon the term “white progressive”, the image that first came to mind is that of this young white university girl rushing up the stairs after brother Malcom to offer him her help in the struggle. Likewise, the first word that comes to mind associated with White Progressive– up to this very moment – is LIMITATIONS. That is to say, in certain areas, the contribution of the white progressive can become at best limited and at worst detrimental to the cause.

For instance, I
know very few white progressives who will cross the limit of “debt cancellation – Jubilee 2000” activism to embrace the reparations cause. We remember the fuss made in Barbados, a year or so ago. Just like, in the days of racial slavery, it was easier to find white advocates of a more “humane treatment of the negro slaves” than you’d find John Brown-type freedom fighters.

And, when you do find the white progressive who is willing to go “steady” and “all the way” with the cause - even to the point of forgoing crucial white privileges, the temptation that he/she automatically assumes or gets nominated “village king”, “spokesperson”, “Council President” is often so great, that he runs the risk of becoming, in no time at all, an unwilling accessory to white supremacy.

Case in point: BONO

"Vous direz peut-être que je débloque, mais moi je pense que l'administration Bush est la plus audacieuse, la plus positive pour l'Afrique depuis Kennedy", a dit Bono dans une interview récente en Gra
nde-Bretagne.
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/gabarits/ar ... shfeuqirf0

"I believe the president is sincere in his conviction to put America up front and in a way that hasn't been done before," Bono said during a teleconference as Bush prepared a visit to five African countries.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030707/323/e3vbq.html

Non Bono, c'est pas Bon !

Who will listen to me when the village king - great defender of our cause on our behalf has already spoken ?

OF THE BLACK OPPORTUNISTS

Obviously, in most instances, one would rather accept the help of a genuine white progressive - even a misguided one like Bono - than to expose oneself to the sad tricks of a black opportunist who is well aware that he is helping to mess up his own people (Powell is our current poster boy). However, the decision to accept or refuse such help should always factor in context as well as timing. Wolves in sheep's clothing come in many sizes and colors. And, w
e, African peoples, have always paid very dearly our bad decisions to dance with wolves.

OH SI, ILS NOUS FONT TANT DE 'FAVEURS' !!!!!

According to former Haitian government officials, the CIA has trained senior officers in the new PNH and recruited a number of leading police officials, particularly those in the so-called specialized units like CIMO, SWAT, and presidential security. Other U.S. intelligence agencies, including the DIA and the NSA, are also reportedly active in Haiti. Moreover, trainers say that Canadian and French intelligence have also infiltrated the PNH. Many of the trainees are so-called sleepers, recruited and "tagged" today for use sometime in the future, sources say.

Haiti-Progrès, Legal Times
http://www.us.net/cip/icitap.htm

The C.I.A. has placed agents within the rebuilt Haitian National Police, where, according to the transition chief for president-elect Rene Preval, they operate outside the control of
the legal Haitian government. In an interview nine days before Preval's scheduled inauguration, the transition chief, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, told The Nation: "The C.I.A. is present within the police. It is present in all parts. But what their plan is-I don't have it.

(from HAITI UNDER CLOAK by Alan Nairn, The Nation magazine, February 26, 1996)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Globa ... Nairn.html

[Ezili Danto*]

One e Respe to all;

Ohhhhhh Guy, how you INSPIRE me!


Guy writes:

“….Easy on the pedal, sister... for I am not what you make of me. I may have misrepresented and miscategorized your thinking when attempting to summarize my perceptions of how various people see the history of major conflicts in this world (and I duly apologize for that), but do you properly have a license to so extrapolate my remark about Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice (and I still stand by that remark) to make of me an apologist for the perpetrators of slavery? Easy...”

Guy writes:

Speaking honestly from this current experience, I can tell you that this passion can also be quite abrasive (and which passion isn't?), but by all means keep your passions, because the service to your defined communities far exceeds in relevance the bruised feelings you may leave in your wake.

Guy writes:

“….I feel saddened and alienated by your unwarranted extrapolations and I certainly do not recognize myself, in thought and feel, in this picture of "Black fratricide" that you have so elaborately weaved."

I understand, accept and respect, Guy, that you may not recognize yourself. Perhaps this exchange might help another who can and is ready to see. Would you consider there might be some thing there - that there is a small, tiny, tiny possibility that you’re too close to see for yourself? Just a thought. I don’t expect or need an answer.

What I want you to know and not twist around Guy because of perhaps bruised feelings, is that I did not PLAN to either leave bruised feelings behind, make sad, alienate, nor to UNDULY make connections where they are NOT logically present. Do you accept that? Can you accept I never wished to cause pain and duly apologize for scrapping you so.

As I said in my second post in this series, I’ve been an advocate for sometime now, and perhaps much more adept at recognizing the various issues and corollaries presented in a given scenario, especially the particular one we now address.

But, remember also, as I’ve written elsewhere, on this very Forum, last year around December 2002:
“…..There is no way on this God’s earth I want to open a door with my work where Haitian disunity reigns. Nor do I wish to avoid…. yes fratricide exist and is suffocating my children’s future. Put them first, please. In all that we do, never avoiding conflict, what is it do we leave behind? Do we empower or disembowel. Do we leave behind only disempowerment in our dialogue and work? Haiti needs the strength of vision. A vision, which refuses to inhabit and extend the appearances/realities of disunity….. Can we see beyond the division? Own the solutions. That’s the psychology needed in Haiti today. “There are roots beyond the bare layers” of disunity and division we see. Keep our eye on that, support, support, support each other. Forget what others do, the question is:
“Do I have the strength of vision to carry forth a new reality? Will, I, individually consecrate myself, my service to that no matter what feedback I get? Change is up to each and every one of us. Pwen, no virgul” (Posted At 17:23:22 12/02/2002)

I still mean that. I haven’t changed, even though you might think I’ve suddenly sprouted horns. I still feel we Black people must look outwards together. That’s the ONLY reason I’ve attempted to explain the mental colonization which makes us automatically bring up Black accountability when White failures, as a grouping or individually sometimes, are brought up, in order to be “fair,” “non-exclusionary,” “reasonable,” “objective,” et cetera.

But when I first read your June 23 post I didn’t think, oh how arrogant, mistaken, wrong, rigid, abrasive……. I took it as an opportunity to visit and logically explain my differing views. It would have been nice for you to return the compliment. For, to be exact, what I honestly thought was, “Damn, the man is giving me WORK.” I am sad if I, have in any way, somehow dis-empowered you. Hold on tight Guy, the bumpy ride is almost over. But seriously, I do want to know if my arguments are not factual or logically. I want to know that.

But in the meanwhile;

Guess what?
Come on, put that MUSIC LOUDER. Let’s bounce now. Side to side now. Sure enough!

Guess what?
Today is a good Saturday to be a BLACK WOMAN. Sure enough!

Come on, get into the groove with me.

So, so sooooo sorry honey. I’ve been working so hard to take care of what needs attending to, that…

Guess what?
My hands got chapped, got as rough as a porcupine's back - scratching you like coarse Brillo pads. Sure enough!

Guess what?
I’ll try.
Really I will. To get it softer, smoother - in my next post. I won’t RUB ON YOU so hard with my working hands Guy. Sure enough!

Guess what? Ladies, ladies, ladies, tell me can you feel me. Sure enough!

Honestly beloved, I never meant to scratch you so.
Or, leave ABRASIVE marks behind. That’s just putting our business on the streets. That’s not me. True that!

Guess what?
I thought to myself: “If he can dish it. He can take it.”
If you reprimand, I’ll give you my best. SSSSSScratch..

Actually, the song lyrics, say: "Guess what?...Wanna play the boss, you’ve gotta pay the cost…. Wanna be treated like a king, you gotta wear the crown. Sure enough!

But….

I need you to understand…… I got needs to.

But….

Perhaps I overestimated, forgot how the Petwo fires can burn. Don’t worry so, Guy. You’re hanging out with a friend. Rada will come your way soon. Count on it. True that!

But guess what?
I’ve taken a moment. I’ve just put, on these embarrassingly abrasive working hands, some very expensive, manufactured-in-gay-Paris lotion. I did. Damn people, I’m feeling distinctively Freda…. Sure enough!

Guy, may I touch you now?

*******
Oh how you inspire me!

Guy, you should take the writings as the compliment to you that they are. Cause I only DO WORK when it’s necessary, and, I feel it’s worthy.

Guess what?
I respond well to reasoned arguments not at all to irrationality. Sure enough!

Guess what?
Don’t back down.
It’s more than ok. I understand. Never asked you to.
Sure enough!

Guess what?
I know you thought you were “Hanging out with your friends.” You’re are, really. I will defend you any day, just ask and you’ll get my very best. But ok, you don’t want to pay the bill.
Sure enough!

Alright y’all, I am having way, way, WAY too much fun here. But Guy, you just inspired me so!

Ok, let’s swing on into this next post. Come on Guy, it’s not ALL THAT! Relax. You do not have a conflict with standing by your own views, do you? So, whatever I may say on our various “automatic responses” is pretty irrelevant, right? Sure enough!

Guess what?
Let’s let bygones be bygones – THAT IS, when I’m finished with these posts. Then, the next Barbancourt, or whatever your poison is, it’s on me. Sure enough!


Ezili Danto


PS. Jaf, I so appreciate your observations and statements, in particular, the connections you've pointed to about white progressives who inevitably become OUR spokespersons. The BONO example on Africa is so correct. It gets even worst with Vodun and Haitian Ginen culture and the various white progressive who are OUR spokespersons internationally on our own spirituality! I can't even begin to go into this. Thank you for your courage in speaking out. Some of us do feel alienated and isolated when we stand up and speak for OURSELVES, our own people, exposing these integrally related issues. No matter the feedback, our very accountability depends on continuing to make our points.

Guy, STOP distrating me, I can't afford to be bouncing and dancing and singing and such, let me get on with this work!

[Ezili Danto*]

One e Respe to all;

In this post, I was going to talk about the traditional meaning of “blan yo” as I said, in my very first post about the topics of these installments.

To that end, I was only going to examine what I believe to be the three unwritten Haitianist Constitutional ideals; what I believe are significant about the meaning of “Ayisyen”, “blan yo” and “inevitability.” How, we Haitians should be proud to have these cherished Haitian gifts to bequeath to the sufferings peoples of the world, suffering under this new brazen Euro/US-imperialism. But I just read part of the Discours de Brian Dean Curran, l'ambassadeur americain en Haïti, le 9 juillet 2003.”
http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=333 ) and, it sidetracked me to go ahead and incorporate into this post a bit of advice to these meddlesome hypocrites as well as to respond, on behalf of people, whose voices, perhaps, cannot be heard. It compels me to describe the indomitable spirit Ayisyens possess. So, this now (two-part) post is not exactly as factual as the others. It describes what I think are psychological gifts. It talks of my hopes, of “living libraries.” The second part, examines some of what being a US citizen is to me - that is my Haitian-African-American public self, and finally, it contains a dream.

I begin with my initial topic…

IDEOLOGICALLY RIGID:
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it, even if that makes me, as you might say Guy, “ideologically rigid,” and now, perhaps abrasive too, I say that the role of the Black tragic elite, historically and currently is peripheral to the crimes of the slave-makers’ and their systems. I will try explaining, with more legal facts, later on, in the next post, why I say the Black opportunist may be rehabilitated.

Oh my God some may be thinking, get that “Global Supremacist ideologue” out of here? That Farrakhan adherent, that Malcolm X paranoia is too Reverend Al Sharpton for words!

Ok then, maybe I won’t say there was a time when I walked down the street as a child of ……, as in, “Gade, sa, se pitit entel…” I won’t say my consciousness is where it is at today; because, I was a person in Haiti under Haitian society no matter its flaws. But, in white America, in the USA, I learned inextricably that I am simply and indelibly identified as “Black.”

Not only that, but I was taught, to be “Black” in the US, is to be RESPONSIBLE for every BAD thing some nameless, faceless “Black” person had done or was imagined to have done. Other than my athletic ability, no good things were attributed to me individually because of my Black grouping, only the violent, backwards, brutal, venal stuff. And I, like most individual Blacks, at a very youthful age, I was requested, by white society to shoulder this, no matter my individual innocence, or the “unfairness” of it all. For, instance, I remember one particular partner in the firm I was working in bringing the daily newspaper every morning to my office to ask me if I knew whatever local black thief who was in the paper, or, criminal who had murdered some defenseless person. That was his honest way of relating! He taught I personally knew every Black person. But, ok, since it’s not about White vs. Black. Since we don’t seem to want to know this. I won’t go into it further. I’ve got smoother hands now, remember?

I will, instead speak, in general, of the White-Biological-Fatalistic-structure that vies for the lives and souls of Black folk and therefore, stay within parameters of agreement - point to another post of mines, under the same General Issue topic: Pwoblèm Ayiti: responsabilite yon grenn krityen vivan? P. 1, posted: Tue Jun 17, 2003 8:13 am, post subject: US Foreign aid and globalization brings Eurocentric results.

There, I described the sum effect of white US-governmental people in Haiti, especially as represented by US Embassy and by USAID and their NGO’s and other so-called “charitable” organization. I described how, for most of these white people, commercializing and exploiting Black pain, is the way they make their living, gain their social mobility and exercise their whiteness entitlements – it’s simply their “job.”
(See, http://www.annpale/viewtopic.php?t=272 Under General Topic “ Pwoblèm Ayiti: responsabilite yon grenn krityen vivan? P. 1” NOTE: Scroll down to Ezili Danto post Tue Jun 17, 2003 8:13 am, post subject: US Foreign aid and globalization brings Eurocentric results.)
********

HAITIAN MEANING OF BLAN-YO, THE WORD “AYISYEN” MEANS LOVERS OF LIBERTY – THIS IS OUR UNWRITTEN CONSTITUTION, THE IDEAL WHICH THE AMALGAMATED AFRICAN TRIBES, WHO CREATED US KREYOL AND GINEN, LEFT US AS LEGACY TO LIVE UP TO:

I once went to Haiti, looking to find my source and found I came with it. All of us Haitians are the living libraries of an ideal. It’s time to tap into it.

We were left a multi-faceted and glorious legacy by our African forefathers and fore-mothers. But for me, we were left with three concrete gifts, amongst others, which, each of us must try to expand upon - with our determination, our will, our art, our work, our music, our various, multi-faceted perfect self-expressions, our very souls - as we face these ludicrous Euro/US government reps, their multinational corporations and international trade and finance tentacles - these empire seeker, who, make no bones about ruling the world by force, terror, bombings, chemical warfare and say they will not tolerate competitors!

These White entities living off the powers they earned and accumulated, from the monies, stocks and bonds they culled from the labor and death of our enslaved African fore-mothers and fathers, from our very breath today, are, now doing us the FAVOR of re-borrowing to us-Haitians these profits they made from the sweat of our Black bodies - borrowing us their ill-gotten wealth to bury us under their debts, keeping us further enslaved. It’s hysterical really, if it wasn’t so damn real.

As we face this old enemy, in all his new brazen 21st century arrogance, I hope we will learn from our Haitian history, sharpen our memory, continue to expose the white structure with not one shred of respect for the dignity and value of our Black lives. I hope we will continue to make his stark whiteness-privilege-immoralities our market talk, our telediol, our street talk.

I hope we will continue to re-invent disobedience; and most crucial of all, I wish us to turn to our unwritten constitution, because, as the African warrior General Jean Jacque Dessaline, has astutely pointed out to us, the white man’s written words are always broken, so his PAPER IDEALS are fit for use only as toilet tissue paper. Perhaps, someone should remind Aristide, and those to follow him of this, as he endlessly negotiates with the international’s financial institutions and their thoroughly lying, Machiavellian representatives, keeping him in a “too busy” mode for getting anything done on a Haitian agenda of our own. Their hypocrisy takes ones breath away. (See, General Issue: L Les Chimères de Washington.., posted by Guysanto, on Fri Jul 11, 2003 12:05 am, entitled “Discours de Brian Dean Curran, l'ambassadeur americain en Haïti, le 9 juillet 2003.” ( http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=333 )

Whoever the next Haitian leader is, based on our experiences from the 1990s to date, it is crucial he/she understands, not only how we must better MANAGE these internationals and their meddling into Haitian affairs, but he/she must recognized that Haitians have empowered themselves to move the nation FORWARD; to close the distance between the international decision makers who make policies IMPOSED, on both, our various, either our repressive or unresponsive governments. In Haiti, one of our goals is to close the distance between those who make the decisions in our Haitian society and those who suffer them.

This, we must do by emphatically, relentlessly pushing so that our Haitian agenda is no longer sidetracked, as it is now under the chaos, impasse, and anarchy of manufactured US-sponsored oppositions, embargoes and US-sponsored dollar kickbacks and CIA infiltration and brainwashing of the newly constituted Haitian police, and the kept-“too-busy”-with-the-international-white-power-structure-agenda currently elected Haitian government.

Every Haitian, must be made aware that, change is up to each and every one of us. That empowerment should be street talk.


And, IF, the Haitian political system is too obsolete for making change because the Euro/US-sponsored interference and divide and conquer and our own successful, moneyed-Haitians’-personal-greed, then we the Haitian people, must make another door to walk change through.

Move on, letting the dead bury the dead.

For, what the world needs globalize is not US-sponsored pretend “aid” organizations, not their pretend justice, their pretend constitutional ideals, not their pretend free trade, not their pretend democracy, and certainly not their export assembly industry or agribusinesses dependent on US-laboratory-produced-seeds. No, the world does not need the Euro/US monies globalize because that’s just plain white tyranny globalized. No, the world does not need more patents and copyrights to be owned by the descendants of the same feudal lords Dessaline faced - not goods and services globalize. What we Haitians, must push to globalize is the free movement of people, an end to racism, sexism and a respect for African life.

And, if we have to globalize this, on our own, without any Haitian government support, than let it be.

For, let’s understand, Haitians are Ginen and with a greater territory, beyond the waters of their understanding, nan Ginen. We actually do live everywhere now. And, we have something living in our collective
memory, three swords: three unwritten constitutional ideals. The first is that Ayisyen is not an exclusionary word. It means “lovers of liberty.” It includes any of the ethnic European tribes as Dessaline defined as “Haitians” those select Germans, Polish and French, there, in Haiti, who fought on the side of the African warrior heroes and sheroes against the European slave-makers, their governments and corporations.

Second, the traditional Haitian meaning of “blan” in Haiti lacks the racial overtone it has in English, or any of the European languages.

For, in the beginning, not only did the African warrior, General Jean-Jacques Dessaline define the German, Polish, French, and perhaps, even the isolated White American, who was in Haiti, who fought on the side of the African liberators, in Ayiti, as Ayisyen, meaning “lovers of liberty,” but, I’ve dramatized, in other writings, how even before Dessaline took the reigns to form our nation, the African warrior, Boukmann, at Bwa Kayiman, had instructed the cocktail of multi-lingual, multi-cultural African peoples in attendance, on that clay red hilltop forest clearing, about what would happen ahead of time.

In my Bwa Kayiman writing, Dede Magrit, the mambo who inherited the peristyle at Bwa Kayiman, her family’s demanbreman, narrates for us what happened. Manbo Dede Magrit, tells us Haitians that, after Bwa Kayiman, “..on the eighth day when Agaou’s thunder next clapped, the cosmic sea opened again. Africa’s sacred abstractions, all the Lwa-yo from Rada to Petwo had come to be with the African warriors going into spiritual combat against the Europeans. That day, a new AFRICAN called “Ayisyen” was formed, a connected-to-the-umbilical-chord-African with a vibration reaching back to the cosmic center – that nexus between the spheres of the living and dead. Then, the Haitian Revolution came, beating back Napoleon’s forces, then the English, Spanish and French again, twice.” (Quoted from, Ezili Danto’s “Bwa Kayiman” writings.)

So, my people, we are that new African, holding within our collective memory and very veins, the traditional Haitian meaning of “blan yo” in Haiti, as foreigner, outsider - a nonracial meaning, a non-caste-like meaning.

This evidences that, at one point, and even sprinkled today throughout our devastated Haitian communities, we Haitians have the tattering threads, to gift the world a different “white/black” philosophy.

We own, this liberation-loving African ideal. We were made Ayisyen. We are pan-Africanism personified. We are this liberation-loving African, whose mental colonization was seared off, at Bwa Kayiman. We have this agenda to reclaim, a way of seeing world history, a way sometime down the road, when we have consolidated our Black nation, a way to work towards more peaceful co-existence in the world.

We bring an ideological gift, a psychology, a true understanding of the race fiction. For, when we say “blan yo” in a negative context, it could mean the person’s skin is white or black. When we say “blan yo” in a positive context, the person’s skin could be white or black. That’s a very Haitian tradition.

I do not examine whether those were the reference points from which Pitit Ginen issued when he spoke of “blan yo” in the post wherein Guy responded. Don’t forget Rice and Powell.

I am merely reminding us all that an Aysyen’s traditional way of identifying white people does not always have to have a racial component to it. This, of course, is extraordinary considering a white person NEVER has had such a political, cultural or social vocabulary to use about “Black people.”

It’s more than extraordinary. It is REVOLUTIONARY.

It’s a uniquely Haitian understanding, culled from an African-based, orally past-on from parent-to-child education. An understanding that should not, CANNOT ever get lost.

I point this out, not because I am saying Guy post doesn’t say this, but his response to Pitit Ginen doesn’t recognize this.

I point this out because I don’t want us to lose our traditional vocabulary, and the meanings generations of Haitians have given things, based on their life experiences and not, as the US/Euros, who live by ideological fictions (i.e., race categories, constitutional ideals rarely put into practice except for their rich) and assumptions, as they have institutionalized in their psyche, in their Machiavellian politics, economics, social structures, media, education and very breathing. Haitians are not like the US/Euros who live by racial fictions and assumptions whose very existence and privileges depend on said fiction – for instance, who cannot be white unless we are “Black.”

In Haiti, “blan yo” are outsiders to the Haitian/Ginen principles, community ideals and family. They have outsider with profit-over-people values – their US government reps are not community orientated, are disturbing, strange, foreign, weak, ungrounded, un-educated in African values and own a Pepe educational systems fairly useless to the Ginen family. ( http://www.annpale.com/viewtopic.php?t=296 )

I dare say, if one where to ask an old time Ginen in Haiti, he/she may tell you, straight-up, the only good use of a blan is to feed the tourist industry at the local market places and maybe get a ti-malere to eat for one more day. Other than that, they are outsiders.

Haitians then, have a traditional way of referring and identifying white exploitation in Haiti, a way of referring to white while simultaneously living under their slave-making, their neo-colonialism, their US occupations, their financial colonialism – ever while defined by the imperialist, the traditional Haitian does not define himself as opposed to White people, as in, as opposed to the European slave-makers and the White nations their descendants’ rule.

The traditional Haitian is so utterly opposed to the stranger whose values are so casually de-humanizing, so much so that when one of their own, when some Gwo Neg or even a Ti malere, takes on these values, the old time Ginen, calls him a “blan” too, even if his skin color is jet black.

I’m writing this post also because I see we Haitians are on a continuum of another forgotten old Haitian tradition, the one of defining self and not simply spending our lives reacting “in relation to” what the white power structure has thrown out for us to go and fetch.

We Haitians have never bought, wholesale and without questions, what the white man says is “inevitable.” That too is our third, unwritten constitutional ideal. We defeated the European powers, in combat, at the height of their slave-making endeavors, when both the Europeans and the US, thought their white domination had become “inevitable.” When the Euro/US nations thought they had all the financial powers and then weapons of mass destructions at their disposal to decimate all competitors.

But, Haiti, a small Island, filled with poor Black peasants, fought and won their independence from this white tyranny, which told the world their terrorizing slave-making rule was endowed by God! We give that gift to the world, as communities and developing nations everywhere on this earth face the TERROR Haitians have faced since day one, and yes, we still exist to win and fight on, another day.

Ezili Danto.

“Grenadye a la so. Sa ki mouri za fe yayo. Nan pren manman, nen pren papa. Sa ki mouri za fe yayo. Grenadye a la so…..(Haitian Revolution Freedom Song.)

[jafrikayiti*]

Onè ankò Kanmarad,

About the exchange itself, I truly hope we will manage to keep our eyes on the prize and develop the so VERY VERY important concepts being discussed here.

I understand that sometimes it is near-impossible to avoid confrontation of thoughts that lead to bruises to our Haitian, African, human 'bonnanj'. but please my very dear beloved brother and sister, remember that as we are losing sleep writing these texts...Baby Bush is out there working....further confusing and demobilizing our peoples, creating illusions to keep things in their current state of disorder.

Minutes ago, I was watching in the news how a set of white men calling themselves ironically leaders of PROGRESSIVE GOVERNANCE, specifically labelled to the CENTRE-LEFT are studying a 'progressive' plan to justify their intervention in the affairs of sovereign states deemed unable to protect their citizens.... sounds familiar?
r

Well, yes, lo and behold, another born again, newly found great white champion of our people Jean Chretien, Prime minister of Canada was leading that pack (perhaps seeking not to be out starred by Baby Bush and BONO).

Anyways, my point is Guy, Ezili, we can't afford not to keep our eyes on the prize.

These guys are working overtime and time is on their side.

Kontinye frape bon zouti.

respè

Jaf

[Ezili Danto*]

One e Respe to all;

HAITIAN-AFRICAN-AMERICA

I’ve written elsewhere, in my first post to Guy, that I am a Haitian American. When I had that label repeated to me by Guy, within the context we were debating, it jolted me herein, to retract - make this correction and clarification.

I am more than Haitian-American. Among other things, and within the context of the Haiti situation issue, I am Haitian-African-American. There is a big difference.

Now that I’ve establish this more clearly, one might readily realize, why, I take NO RESPONSIBILTY for what white America and sell-outs like Rice and Powell are doing in Iraq. Or, for that matter, what they are doing in Haiti, right now with their various racist pronouncements and fascist’s economic policies.

(Oh, wow, I can’t reach my lotion bottle right now as I write the rest of this post. Darn it Danto why can’t you stop. Sorry y’all she just bugs me.
Here goes that abrasive woman again:)

Guy may relate, as he writes:
“….mwen pa gen dwa pale de Etazini tankou se yon peyi moun san moral k ap viv ladan l nonplis. Mwen pa kapab ap milite kont tèt mwen. Si se pou sa, pito mwen ta pe bouch mwen ajamè. ………Dayè mwen gen dwa di ou ke si nou pa chache fè solidarite ak eleman pwogresis nan popilasyon meriken an, batay la ap pi long toujou, e nou gen dwa pa janm genyen li.

(See, Guysanto post to Pitit Ginen, under General Issue: Dife nan wèl sanginè-yo, dated) But I don’t relate in this way.

DISCLAIMER: I will try not to “extrapolate here” as you say Guy. I’m beginning to see perhaps I should write without quoting your words in contrast. But, be clear what I’m saying below is my own. Your words brought them to mind, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you opposed my views because what you said brought something else to my mind. I am NOT saying below that you don’t share these views. (No matter, you can speak for yourself, I’m sure.) You making me protective that’s all.

Anyway, what I point out is, who wouldn’t struggle against imperialist fascism, from the day they awoke to its pretensions? Last February 15, 2003 was a remarkable day, when in the US, many of those who so struggle, took part and participated, along with 10 million people, across five continents, marching in solidarity against the Bush war on Iraq. It was, to tell the truth, at time when many of us felt hopeful and took heart from said solidarity, feeling connected and somewhat empowered.

However, our efforts did not stop the casual decimation of a 7000-year-old Iraqi civilization. A Mesopotamian civilization, part of the which grew along the riverbanks of the Tigris and Euphrates, (Aside: this always makes me think of Langston Hughes poem “I’ve known Rivers”..) An ancient civilization that gave the world its earliest attempt at law and rules to govern social behavior. The Hammurabi Code, an early attempt at democracy.

Yet, here is the world’s most powerful “democracy” decimating this ancient civilization in Iraq. Which, once upon a time, way back when, with King Hammurabi of the city-state of Babylon, under the Code of Hammurabi code, gave certain rights to women, prostitutes and EVEN animals.

No, our efforts did not stop the “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq, which decimated their National museum and ancient archives while protecting the oil fields! But our solidarity made us feel connected, not so alienated and isolated in US society, even though we had never seen such a big showing for the concerns of Black woman about the imprisonment of black men, women and children or about Haitian “indefinite detentions” in the US, or about racism, or, as JAF point out about white privileged and reparations. Still, there was a sort of solidarity. For we Black woman, knew our US Black youths would be on the front lines, education and health would be cut down to better afford oil contracts for Halliburton and Pentagon subsidies to various US weapons manufacturers. Yes, we Black people could relate to the pains of the powerless Iraqi women, watching their children lives and innocents be destroyed, decimated.

Now, this fight against tyranny, with its racism, sexism and globalization/neoliberalism, amongst other things, does sometimes take away ones serenity, and most time, one doesn’t really relish the confrontation.

But I voice an opinion on the above statement you make Guy, because there is another view, to be thrown into the mix. Fact of the matter is, (though I am feeling really bad and abrasive about this!) I do say, unlike what I believe Guy statement shares, that when I speak truth to power, I don’t think I am “a militant against self” simply because I live in the US. I just don’t.

The ancestors before me also so struggled and suffered, and I claim their noble legacy as my own. I don’t feel responsible for the Bushes War on Iraq because I am a US citizen, only ashamed and fairly helpless that a country, which has espoused publicly the opposite of what they practice, does this. A country I was raised in. A country I was raise to believe in, which convinced me of their goodness and made me expect they would act better! Yes, the US is at an all time low on the morality scale. Its populace is fed incorrect information and is marginalized, as evidence by the fact their vote no longer counts.

I am horrified that the world’s riches and supposedly most advance country has the highest numbers of prisoners in the world, a disproportionate number of whom are Black males.

Simply stated, US capitalism has made a commodity of everything. Even the US Congress, Courts and free press have been reduced to commodities available for sale to the highest bidder. Thus, after President un-elect Bush bought himself his election in Florida with the outrageous disenfranchisement of Black voters (who we all know are criminals, including my elderly, dutiful-US-citizen-mother, who never had the opportunity to vote in Haiti, so takes her voting rights here very seriously. She too, was turned away at the Florida polls to her utter Haitian indignation!). Well after he manufactured himself his Florida votes, Baby Bush then had it ratified by his very own Supreme Court, while the public stared and mostly remained “in a psychologically frozen state.” (See, for real interesting info. Michael Moore’s book “Stupid White Men.” See, also “Jim Crow in Cyberspace: The Unreported Story of How They Fixed the Vote in Florida, in Greg Palast’s book “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” at, pgs. 1 to 43.)

I find, those who are, or should be informed, those educated talking heads on CNN, those educated experts and politicians running the US, are not acting very moral or ethical at all, and never have, if one just look at their history of cruelty to Haitians, the Haitian nation and the racism and Jim Crow issue within US borders alone. Guy agrees I am sure.

But, Guy writes: “mwen pa gen dwa pale de Etazini tankou se yon peyi moun san moral k ap viv ladan l nonplis.”

I suppose that’s prudent. But most of the people in the US think all Haitians are backwards, brutal, violent. They identify us as Black, brutal, poor and innately inferior. Amongst other things, how do you explain their silence when Haitian toddlers are imprisoned and called terrorist? For, the majority in the US ONLY identify us-Haitians with their US-backed homicidal Duvalier dictatorships, their Tonton Macoutes and FRAPH, or, on the other extreme, patronizingly as those “other good Blacks” “those hard working domestics who are not uppity,” unlike African-Americans who, we know are all “lazy, loud, uncouth and on welfare.”

Yet, we Blacks must ALWAYS “be fair” and not see them as their government, not see them as their ignorance demands, is that it? I suppose, it’s in that sense, within this context, I don’t see much of a problem in saying the US is a country with a bunch of immoral people living in it. Yes alright, reason demands I agree that the majority of US-citizens are not their government. That’s true. And there is a movement, in the US, today gathering momentum, because 9/11 lifted the US foreign policy secret, blew it wide open. More and more US citizens are learning why the US is so hated worldwide. And so, yes, it’s not that people in the US are innately immoral. They are not. But, they have bought their own stellar press and that makes, even their passiveness, VERY dangerous.

For, the majority of the people in the US have bought the capitalist storyline that every commoner has the ability to become a brilliant godzillionaire, overnight.

They cling to this hope until they reach retirement age and then spend the rest of the time at gambling houses in Atlantic City to win that lottery, or, some, even move to Haiti to do “charity work.” Or, better yet, Costa Rica, where white godzillionaire privileges can be had for just a few social security dollars.

Yes, upon reflection, I do say the majority of people in the US are about that almighty dollar; they have been taught that success is more important that values. So yes that does make them somewhat immoral, though it’s not innate. It is, though, a lack of self-education. Yet, there are libraries at every corner in the US. Anyone can take out, Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men;” any Noam Chomsky book, Arundhati Roy’s “War Talk,” “Power Politics,” “Cost of Living” or Greg Palast’s “The Best Democracy Money Can By and other books, to name a few.

As a Haitian woman, my take is this: To those much is given, much should be expected, higher standards should be expected, that’s what I say.

Guy writes: I find it strange when people hold on to a rather sentimental view of Powell which they absolutely will not accord to others. ….. However, I do hold Colin Powell to the same rigorous set of moral criteria, and I find him particularly lacking.

Guy was writing to me when he said that. Talk about abrasive. But I’m not offended, that’s not my point here. My point is I am not sentimental about white people. As a Haitian woman, whose country is used to casually represent the lowest of the hemispheres lowest and worst standards, I actually hold the US white majority to a rigorous set of moral criteria, and find them particularly lacking, historically.

God knows how many times we-Haitians have heard to cower under the embarrassment that “the US needs to send in human rights observers, voting observers to watch Haitian elections.” Although we know their political chicanery. I think now what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. It’s time the Haitian government, on behalf of the disenfranchise US-majority ask the US to step in. Sent Carter to Jeb Bush country, pronto! Send in human rights observers to investigate exactly why the disparity in white and black sentencing terms, in the use of prosecutorial “discretion,” Come on Haiti, we, the US majority over here, we need you to bring our case to the UN, cause our oppressors are too strong for us to fight alone!

I’m serious as a heart attack. We Blacks in the US must be 200% times better than the regular white Joe and Josephine to even get any recognitions in the US. So yeah, I hold the White US majority to their press clippings, and guess what, the majority of US citizens don’t live up to it. Sure enough!

As I’ve said, there are libraries everywhere in the US. But, yet and still, the US population, as a whole, has no clue, as to how their societies’ riches comes about or is maintained. Most are about suburban denial and enjoying their white privilege windfalls - their SUVs, big screen TV and phony “survivor shows,” while our African Americans children are being imprisoned left and right; while Haitian toddlers are in “indefinite detentions” and labeled as ‘terrorist” by Ashcroft.

I am a US citizen but I am not responsible for these injustices, I work to end them. Fact is, today, the US, under the Bushes, is the greatest threat the world has ever faced. Who, but a psychopath would decimate an ancient civilization, bomb people to save them from dictatorship? The US is a menace to itself and mankind.

We Haitians, who suffered the Duvaliers because the US sanctioned and protected their killings in order to save us from ideological corruption can more than sympathize with the Iraqi people and all peoples under attack in the developing world by a US empire intent on plundering their resources and telling them they are inferior. Who amongst us condones the stockpiling of weapons to protect the obscene accumulation of white power?

I know too, as Guy has said, when the elephant falls, Haiti and African-Americans will be the first ones affected, as always.

Many of us, have, at this very moment, close relatives, dear Haitian-African-American young men, or some young, poor white guy we know, who have been placed in dangers way by Baby Bush - a man who never served his time in the US military, like most of the sons of the scions of American industry.

And, like many other young men, in the US, who don’t deserve to die for oil, they are out there in Baghdad, putting their young lives in danger, because they were forced to protect us from Sadam Hussein, or so says the Bushes; forced, as Haki R. Madhubuti has said “to go into battle to maim or kill other whites and non-whites for the benefit of whites….”

That’s why our struggle to change the powers-that-be in the US and their Black sell-outs policies, both as it is expressed in Haiti and in the US, continues. That’s why we write.

Because this struggle, these “wars” in this world, affect People of Color; in particular affects my people, Africans, Haitians and African-Americans in disproportionately LETHAL ways. We are very clear on this.

Just as we are sure that if and when the elephant-with-no-moral-clothing’s falls, we and ours, may be the first to be crushed, as we are, for instance, always the last hired and first fired, et cetera.

But, I am just as positive that a great number in White institutional America sees no part of Black (except our music and sports) as “American.”

For them, we are not part of “American.” I know I was told that directly by the then USAID Mission director to Haiti. I know, I was once made very much aware of the fact that unless I am a sell-out, US-governmental employee in Haiti, they would see no part of me as “American.”

So frankly, just as Black Americans have been at war with White America from day one. I learned, in Haiti, I too am at war with the White Establishment there, sucking the breath out of my children. So no, as a Haitian-African-American, I have no problem telling the people of Iraq, I know their pain because we Africans in the US and in Haiti, have been struggling to survive their bombs, in the form of, first slavery, then Jim Crow, then in the US, lynching replaced by jailing along with their “wars on drugs,” wars on poverty and now, wars on terrorism. We, over here, are always the boogeyman - the scapegoats for all that white America cannot tolerate or want to exploit.

For instance, a white boy bombs over 200 people in an Oklahoma Federal building and the media distracts us with the OJ trial, et cetera. Because they must keep their white unity in tact, and give no room for people to think beyond their race-fictions, to gathering together beyond race, gender and class. Their massive communication apparatus won’t allow this to go forward. So, how can I make alliances with those SO-CALLED White progressives who tell me they don’t see their white entitlements and COUNT on that to save Haiti?

I have written much about how we should handle Black Haitian Fratricide, in this very Forum. In one of the December 2002 post, I quoted last, I said I never wish my work to be used to give space to one Haitian tearing down another, for whatever the reasons. I would like us to keep our eye on the ball and continue empowering each other, for the mountain is high and full of mimes planted there, strewn all over our paths


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I end this post by underlying, once again, that I write on Guy’s Forum because of my respect for him, the work of this site and our fundamental points of agreement. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother.

Guy and I have different ways off seeing the world. I like him so I will continue to try to convince him to take on my visor once in a great while. As I said in laughter in my last post, I’ve got my needs to…… And, self-denial is not one of my strong suites. But, though we have different styles, what I am wholly undivided about is that we don’t EVER have to reconcile our differences in views, to, as Guy says, make alliances with each other “to create a better tomorrow for those who will come after us.”
*****

Last night, I watched a speech made by Nelson Mandela, recorded by Democracy Now.

Something of what he said struck a chord in me because of these postings and our conversations here. I came back to this post, which I had already finished and sign-off on and wrote the following:

Mandela said, he had to REPRESS his rage, to alter the course of the ANC, so to sit down, at the table with his oppressors. This made me aspire to repress, my thoughts and convictions, for a brief moment Guy.

For, you know you do influence me. I am feeling you sometimes. Cause, you are so much more restrained and temperate than I could ever be. It’s not me, but I can, sometimes, admire it, in others. I’ve told you this before.

Thing is though, I don’t own such an emotional, or mental fabric. I am unapologetically Pagan. Comfort is for the religious or those going through life on Prozac, of all forms.

Thing is, I personally have already worked within the system in Haiti. I don’t see how I might repress myself after THAT, and sit within USAID/US hypocrisy’s piss, and pretend I don’t know what these white people stand for.

I, and others like me, don’t have that sort of stomach because we know, our windows of opportunity for pushing change come after lengthy and very bloody struggles with many African lives lost.

Then, it is only, after said outrageous numbers of Black lives have been lost and a mirror is shoved-up the White man’s face for him to see himself in all his splendid grotesqueness, it is only then, that He pulls out his good cop face, his Mr. Hide persona, and negotiates or makes concessions. But even then, it’s always about buying time for when He might resume his homicidal tyranny again, unfettered. That’s common history, if you look at the African independence movements, the Belgians/Euros “leaving” the Congo, the white minority in South African “conceding” to the ANC in South Africa!

Our purpose on this earth, according to their “white” race constructs is to provide a means for European unification and for Euro/Americans to recover their economies after their various Euro/tribal wars and two World Wars, and whatever other Euro/American balance of power war they may yet think up. This, their political, social and economic chicanery is a historical fact.

So, African sovereignty and independence is always temporary, except when we Haitians didn’t negotiate but defeated them in physical combat in Haiti.

Even then, their united Euro/American economic and trade strangulation on Haiti, with a one hundred year embargo against Haiti, with bars against Haitian peoples’ free movement from the Island to other nations; not to mention, with France’s 1833 indemnity, and, our warring elites reasonable thirst for contact and travel, all this, helped keep our Haitian society from progressing further than it did, when, in 1915, the US’s long threat finally arrived in Haiti - under the arbitrary rule of the US Marines - to massacre Haitian, men, women and children and virtually decimate the Haitian society with their left-behind, trained-in-Fort-Benning/Georgia-Haitian-army.

This, the shattered but wiry Haitian society they left behind, whose corpse US/USAID is still picking over for select, left-over meat, is the society we Haitians are now trying to re-built - today on the eve of 2004.

If we don’t look outwards together to remove the vultures, many more Haitian lives will be lost.

And thus, I am a child of Dessaline, not Toussaint. I hold, in my hands, the knowledge nothing in indomitable. We Haitians beat their most powerful once, and know, however distant it is, that day will come, when Ayisyen will prove, yet once again, White domination is not inevitable.

This is not a wishful thinking. There are some concrete victories we can hold on to, or point to, which I may go into, in my last post. Suffice it for now to know this:

Last night I had a dream. In it, I thought I heard told: “Toussaint’s time has come and will go with Aristide’s fate. Other Dessalinians will follow to complete what Toussaint started.”

I would heed that warning if I were the US “aid” organizations and US Embassy in Haiti and their local imperial agents. That’s how I look at it. For, we Haitians can no longer forgive and forget. It’s time for the White Power structure in Haiti to take on my visor and if they did, they would see how MORALLY REPULSIVE, DISGUSTING, UGLY and HIDEOUS their white hoarding is and has been. If they could do that, not just for a pressing moment, but for real, I may re-read this “repressing my rage” thing of Mandela, in order to push at cracks and fissures within the structures’ armor. But they need to remember too, I’m not Freda, I am –

Ezili Danto.

“Grenadye alaso. Sa ki mouri zafè a yo. Nan pwen manman, nan pwen papa. Sa ki mouri zafè a yo. Grenadye alaso…..(Haitian Revolution Freedom Song.)