Video and transcript from my guest appearance on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC Thursday January 14th, talking about the relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti and how the January 12 earthquake plays in to that dynamic.
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I saw you today at MSNBC and really enjoyed the talk. I didn’t have a chance to take down the name of the book about haiti and dominican republic. Please let me know the name and the price of the book and where I can get it easily. Thank you,
Kettelye
Knowledge is wonderful, zeal admirable, understanding essential; but wisdom is the chief thing. I have ordered Why the Cocks Fight after hearing you comment on the Dominican Republic and Haiti. It is the hope for future advancement of predominantly Black societies that the new generation of “first world” analyst-experts will not impose their partially informed interpretations of third and fourth world current and historical experiences, proposing remedies which compound and extend the “oppression by proxy” of Black people, as did their analyst predecessors who fueled policies which deconstructed community-building efforts of colonized people.
The inconvenient politics melanin, the child of centuries of racialism, dominates intra-societal and inter-societal relations in the Caribbean and South America. Political correctness and illusions of a post-racial America create inadvertent or opportunistic blindness to issues along the continuum of color as well as to class and group loyalties which have outlived slavery and decolonization or mimic first world societies.
Haitians are grateful for mercy shown by all of the international community and would hope that their neighbor will be duly reimbursed for the financial strain it has incurred in aiding Haiti in this time of its extreme need. However, the leaders and the people of the two countries are the ones to decide how their relationship will be healed. Haitians would not wish to have modern rebuilding to accommodate 21st Century socio-economic oppression or political manipulation by proxy.
It is unlikely our policy analysts would suggest in time of human crisis and humanitarian response by India to Pakistan’s needs that India take a dominant role in Pakistan’s rebuilding or that Vietnam become active in developing Cambodia after some human crisis.
Illusions of a post-racial America creates inadvertent or opportunistic blindness to issues along continuum of color class and group loyalties which plague superficial third world
cohesion. Any appearance of imposing the American nurtured advantages of the Dominican Republic upon Haiti is setting the stage for the next generation of unrest. Those are two separate (Spanish-American-Caribbean, and French-African-Caribbean) cultures though some of the people look alike. Despite shared borders, each country has a fierce desire to be independently and separately respected on the world stage as do Israel and Palestine. If there is healing let it come from the grass-roots of the societies involved not from seemingly manipulative or manipulated American policy sweetened by economic advantages. Let it come from the people involved.
If America is committed to aiding Haiti and leading the world community in efforts towards Haiti’s collective-self-respecting rebuilding, a shared border and African heritage unacknowledged and acknowledged, have not been and should not now be grounds enough for external actors to pressure false and untimely accord.