by michael hureaux perez
African Americans who want to help Haiti – and improve Black people's condition worldwide – “need to reclaim our own independent black agency and move accordingly.” Our own unique perspective on the world should enable us “to see that what delays the rescue effort in Haiti is the same bloody business-centered indifference that was visited upon tens of thousands of our people in New Orleans five years ago.
Eshu's blues: Pat Robertson, the U.S. Ruling Class and Haiti
by michael hureaux perez
“If the whole thing seems like Katrina writ large, it’s because it is.”
The Christian Fundamentalist Pastor Pat Robinson was in rare form this week when he announced to his national audience of born again twits that the Haitian earthquake is the latest manifestation of a curse directed against the Haitian people by Almighty God. At the time of this writing, this disaster is currently believed to have taken the lives of as many as 500,000 people. Robertson will be asked to apologize for his public episode of racist dementia, and that will put paid to the situation in the minds of most people for now.
But the real problem at hand isn’t Pat Robertson per se, the problem is the ongoing know-nothing culture of the United States, and the ongoing certainty that Robertson’s sort of religious delirium doesn’t really count for much, so long as an act of public contrition comes into play. But underneath the sociopathic bile of the Reverend – and the tortured silence of the black woman who quietly indulged his ravings on camera – is the usual ahistoric crap which guides public consciousness in the United States, alongside the indifference of late capitalist consumer culture to any episode of black life or history which doesn’t fit into the “pragmatic” U.S. citizen’s categorization of black experience in the Americas.
It should surprise no one that Robertson felt such icy cool in his generalizations about the mass death of close to half a million black people, or in making such an idiotic statement about a chapter of Pan-African history that remains one of the most significant events of the 19th century, the formation of this world’s first independent black republic. Nor should it shock anyone that so few people in this country understand that the Haitian slave revolt forced the French government to sell off the massive North American territorial holdings called the Louisiana Purchase, which in large part made possible the emergence of the United States as a major player on the global scene.
The discourse of the postmodern U.S. “intelligentsia,” alongside a massive obsession with wondrous technical doodads, has virtually blotted out any understanding of our present political struggles in most quarters, much less any focus on events which transpired two centuries ago. It has always been easier to weave folktales about devils and vampires or focus on magic crystals than it has been to build a vibrant political discourse that dismantles the commodity cult that drives this “civilization.”
“The Haitian slave revolt forced the French government to sell off the massive North American territorial holdings called the Louisiana Purchase.”
I’m not just talking about white folks here. As the continuing Obamian cult among black people over the last year has demonstrated, we have more often than not chosen to fall back into the “man on horseback” fetish that has long been a hallmark of Eurocentric political culture over any active reference to the long struggle of independent African American politics which made possible Obama’s very emergence as a major political figure. And, at the end of the day, the Obamian cultists – or the “progressive” wing of the “democratic” party – find themselves co-opted by the most backwards elements in the “democratic” party, bark and howl to the contrary all they may. Running dogs are running dogs.
There has been much evidence of this accelerated renegade development in black politics in the United States since the ascension of Obama to power, a lot of it well documented at this site by journalists and commentators far more eloquent than me. But I have to say that at no point should this trend have been more heartbreakingly evident than it was a few weeks ago in Oslo, when President Barack Obama informed the world that the Imperial Presidency and its firepower is a boon to humankind. The breast thumping among black misleadership and “educators” over Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize has yet to fade. The entire scene is a theater of fools, but since the unspoken goal of petty boojwah black nationalism all these decades has been to demonstrate that the professional black classes can be as arrogant, grasping and vicious as the Eurocentrics among us, I suppose the point has been proven.
But the black working class in the United States must take an entirely different perspective on how to assist Haiti, and to learn and to build among our own in these terrible days. In addition to every form of material or personal donation of time we can lend to the people of Haiti, we need to reclaim our own independent black agency and move accordingly. If we are to find our way back to ourselves as an independent black political agency in the United States, if we are to probe any of these questions as a people committed to revolutionary democratic discourse and contingency, if we are really going to move forward to support the Haitian masses during this calamity, which is in reality the crisis of black people globally, then we might have to talk about and move against the imperial legacy that worked with the Duvaliers' decades long rule of U.S. endorsed thuggery; or the glorious Clintonian sweatshops that have continued to eviscerate Haiti’s economy for the last 20 years, or the gangsterism of the Bush dynasty on both sides of the Clinton years, or the focus even now on military subordination of the Haitian people ahead of the rescue effort.
“If we are really going to move forward to support the Haitian masses during this calamity, then we might have to talk about and move against the imperial legacy.”
We ought to be able to see that what delays the rescue effort in Haiti is the same bloody business-centered indifference that was visited upon tens of thousands of our people in New Orleans five years ago. It may be tweaked a bit here or there in Haiti while the network cameras are on, but at the end of the day, it’s the same old shit. And my evidence for this claim is the appointment of the sweatshop baron Bill Clinton and the unapologetic international state terrorist (and kidnapper of Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide) George W. Bush to the U.S. delegation that will “assist” Haitian “reconstruction,” even as the elected head of the nation is not allowed to return home from South African exile.
We are told that the infrastructural lack in Haiti – the quality of roads, public utilities, transport – has impeded the rescue effort, as though there has always existed in that island country some quiet desire for self-immolation and a refusal to adapt to the technical needs of the the working world. The mainstream press speaks of Haitian poverty as though there had never been western interference in the region, or an IMP imposed austerity. In all the ghoulish coverage of the quake disaster, one can encounter nothing but the same quiet and patronizing arrogance. Occasionally a Randall Robinson will step forward to speak the truth, as that noted scholar did on Democracy Now in his interview with Amy Goodman a few days ago, but for the most part, we are treated to the usual dismissals of Haiti as a nation of people inescapably bound in savagery. If the whole thing seems like Katrina writ large, it’s because it is.
“The mainstream press speaks of Haitian poverty as though there had never been western interference in the region, or an IMP imposed austerity.”
Those who don’t see the cynical qualities of the empire even in the face of this terrible tragedy will understand this in due time, when Haiti is turned more completely into a servitor nation for the casino classes and gamblers. There are solid reasons why old jackasses like Pat Robertson can go on national television and blithely suggest that the Haitian tragedy could be a “blessing in disguise,” and that it could be an opportunity to “rebuild the country.” Let us from now on trust what the experience of New Orleans taught us about such “charity and benevolence” from the U.S. ruling classes, and proceed to rebuild those independent political values that can actually transform our own country and our international values.
We have to find the L’ouvertures and Dessalines among ourselves, a sensibility once aptly chronicled by the great Haitian poet Rene Depestre when he wrote:
“I am Ogou-Ferraile
I am come to say that fire
Has not a single spark of patience left
At the bottom of his incandescent soul
The fire child is weary
Of crying
Of playing
With dead leaves!”
It is long past time a new struggle for independent black working class leadership came forward to leave the road of dead leaves and high time we see the crocodile tears of the U.S. Empire in Haiti and everyplace else for the deadly farce they are.
BAR columnist michael hureaux perez is a writer, musician and teacher who lives in southwest Seattle, Washington. He is a longtime contributor to small and alternative presses around the country and performs his work frequently. Email to: [email protected].