Kamoken, Thank you for your thoughts on such a serious topic...

Bernadette - September 18 2011, 10:14 PM

Kamoken, Thank you for your thoughts on such a serious topic as this one. We Haitians have a lot of work to do on this subject.

Social responsibility has always been a sore point with the wealthy.

Look, Obama had to lobby for heavier taxation for anyone making more than 1 million a year. People making more than one million a year are not paying their fair share of state and federal taxation.

I am not sure how many friends he will win with this one. Elites all over the world, as a privilege class refuse to do what they preach to others.

But, most people don't care about them when there is a proportionate middle class to carry the lion share of taxation.

This is precisely what Haiti needs: a descent size of a middle class.

The elite class, all over has always been a marginalized and a pariah class, thank goodness they are always in small numbers.

Social responsibility is a new concept even for imperialist America.

An effort is being made in kindergarten class America to young students about social responsibility, true grits, optimism, acceptance of failure, perseverance, non-judgmental, self-control, acceptance of others as skills necessary to be a person of strong character and enabling skills for a successful life, albeit the movement is in very elite communities with very young students; but hopefully the trend will continue to the most inner city public school America.

Komoken, the point is that Haiti's elite is no different than the elites around the world.

Most countries are striving to maintain a stable middle class capable of the countries administration.

The only Country close to that aim was Japan with a 90% middle class with a 4% inflation, albeit at the expense of women confined to domestic and part-time work and Koreans of many generation living in Japan...

A middle class is the backbone of any country.

Haiti needs to develop one through Agriculture and service oriented businesses.

The color card is a different issue, although most people think that they are intrinsically the same. I don't believe they are, I think it is a matter of economics.

In in all, this is not to minimize prejudice in Haiti, a prime example was Baker for last presidency, Rouzier for prime minister et als. The latter was as qualified if not more for the job than the presently elected one...Politics, politics...

The "N" word is not part of my vocabulary - to be totally honest, used it only when losing my cool on a few occasions, and most of the time it was directed toward White folks.

That word agreed by most Americans designated a person of low character and demeanor no matter what COLOR or creed he or she happened to be.
To answer your question, Kamoken, French is one of the languages that I speak but to me it is just a language.

French does not have the social connotation that this language has in Haiti for most Haitians.

Yes, when In Haiti, I prefer to speak Haitian to everybody regardless of their social standing.

Occasionally, I do get the cold shoulders because I dare to talk to them in Haitian...This is when they get my most dubious smile and body language...

Some of the elite class is also a traumatized and hardened group of people, but since they are somewhat viewed as oppressors, nobody empathized with them.
There is a division of color that exists even within family members let alone division with others.

I remember that one of my cousins, born dark skinned with straight hair and straight nose, but his younger brother born very light skinned and blue eyes. The cousin with the dark skinned was mistreated as a child to the point that Grand mother used to tie him to a tree, called him names like "monkey", that he will grow-up to be a shoe-shiner, etc, etc., This cousin grew up to have a very tragic life. That, in my personal experience, was typical of mulatto families: They are somewhat distant and demanding and often cruel of family members.

This is all the result of colonialism and its history but we can't let the past passively determine our present we must make a conscious choice to carve out our future.

The point was, we must demystify ourselves first in order to understand one another.

In order to unify ourselves, we must have compassion and understanding of one another.

By not being strangers to one another, we might find that social responsibility that we need and perhaps enabling us to foster good citizenship and economic survival for Haiti.

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