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Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:
One of the cruelest ironies of the discourse surrounding Haiti is that Haiti's poverty and misery were created by the immorality and racial prejudices of the First World yet is blamed on the moral values of Haitians and Haitian culture in particular or blackness in general. Yet concomitant with the recognition that Haiti was made poor by the First World is the recognition that the First World was made wealthy by Haiti and other Third World countries. While the First World likes to attribute it's wealth to positive qualities it supposedly possesses, the fact is the First World has profited from the plunder of other nations. What's framed as Third World debt is really First World welfare. Furthermore, while First World countries recoil in horror at the idea of taking resources from the wealthy for the benefit of the poor, calling it socialism, they deem it appropriate to take resources from poor nations to redistribute them to wealthy nations.
Kreyol pale, kreyol komprann - Speak plainly, don't try to deceive.
In the face of all the dishonest discourse surrounding Haiti and other Third World countries, we need new language that accurately reflects historical and contemporary realties – perhaps a language that recognizes the Third World/developing world and the First World/developed world as the Plundered Nations and Plundering Nations. Perhaps we should call "aid" what it is – debt bondage. Debt forgiveness could be more accurately termed "cessation of extortion." We will also need a word parallel to anti-Semitism to describe anti-voodoo prejudice and misrepresentation. We should employ "Maafa," the Swahili word used to describe the holocaust that entailed slavery, colonization, and the deaths of tens of millions of black peoples, when we speak of Haitian slavery. The Council of Europe criminalizes "denial, gross minimisation, approval or justification of genocide or crimes against humanity."[ix] We should use the Council's definition of inappropriate behavior as a guideline for discourse on Haiti, and slavery and colonization worldwide and punish those who violate that guideline with the special opprobrium directed at Holocaust deniers. While racists will claim that our new language reflects revisionist history, we must recognize that the current terms are euphemisms at best and lies at worse, that they hide innocence, guilt, and agency.
The Anatomy of a Crime as a Synecdoche for Global Poverty and Injustice
"…we need new language that accurately reflects historical and contemporary realties – perhaps a language that recognizes the Third World/developing world and the First World/developed world as the Plundered Nations and Plundering Nations."
this whole piece- and others in this same spirit - build that language. speak it up, speak it up, speak it up. not too many (have the opportunity to) hear it, though.
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