Cynicism and American Aid to Haiti

The God who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us light. The God who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the white has made us suffer. The white man's god asks him to commit crimes. But the God within us wants to do good. Our God, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs. It's He who will direct our arms and bring us the victory. It's He who will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the white men's god who is so pitiless. Listen to the voice for liberty that speaks in all our hearts. Boukman Prayer that inspired the Haitian revolution

It is difficult right now to understand why "the God who holds up the ocean and makes the thunder roar" and inspired the most important event in the history of liberation - the Haitian revolution - decided to visit the country's capital with an earthquake. However, the earthquake has touched the depths of our humanity. For despite their suffering, the spirit of the Haitians has remained strong, as is shown in the ordinary citizens digging out their families with their own hands, adopting children who have lost their parents, leading the rescue efforts and treating the wounded. 

The earthquake has evoked a great outpouring of sympathy from the Western world, one which has led millions of ordinary citizens in those countries to send their dollars, pounds and euros to charities engaged in the rescue and relief efforts. But more importantly, many have demonstrated in online newspapers and blogs an interest in the American and French foreign policies that impoverished Haiti for the last 200 years and made the effects of the disaster disproportionately deadly.

For African peoples worldwide, the aftershocks and tremors of the earthquake penetrate our soul. Those of us who knew of the Haitian revolution as the most important milestone in modern Africana history and knew of the US's and France's 200 year sabotage of the country immediately - even before the extent of the disaster was really known - felt that the earthquake could not have come at a worse time. But we could not have imagined that the backlash against the people who have weathered so many storms was bound to get worse.

First was the stupid comment by televangelist Pat Robertson that essentially implied that black people fighting for freedom from racist tyranny is folly, if not downright evil. It suggested that the Haitian revolution did not involve conscious political choices and military superiority but some illogical belief in witchcraft. Robertson was saying what many in the West already believe, which is that it was a mistake for black slaves to be free. This ideology would be repeated to Africans in the fight for freedom who were promised that independence would be worse the colonialism because Africans could not govern themselves. In Haiti, as in Africa, the West made this a self-fulfilling prophecy through their engineering and support of decades of dictatorship, impoverishment for IMF loans, coup d'états and assassinations which they baptized as the tragedy of independence.

Africans need to be very concerned about Robertson's statement because his stupidity may not be evident to many professing African Christians. Already, he exposed his distorted mind to his black American female co-host - Kristi Watts. His program, the 700 club, is well watched in Kenya, if not in other African countries. His judgment of African liberation as being antithetical to Christianity is not surprising given that during the colonial period, African traditions were dubbed evil, leading to the split during the emergency period in Kenya between sympathizers of and fighters in Mau Mau war on one hand and Christian converts on the other.

The need to educate future generations about Haiti is urgent if we are to internalize not only the historical event of the revolution, but also the implications of that event for the moral and political life of all of African world today. A recent discussion with my students seemed to suggest that the only information they had about Haiti was the Vodou religion, which in an Kenyan Christian context is likely to look very similar to Pat Robertson's opinion. More interesting is a Trinidadian writer's suprise that even in his Carribean nation some people did not know the history of Haiti.

Robertson not only got his historical facts wrong, but also seemed to ignore the pact that Western Europe signed with the devil when it transported Africans to work in plantations under the most inhuman conditions. And given his historical illiteracy, he probably does not know that the tag of evil that he imposed on Dutty Boukman, who conducted the ceremony that formed the spiritual foundation of the Haitian revolution, is not new. Joan of Arc was also accused of being a witch and burned at the stake for responding to a divine calling to lead successful military campaigns against English domination. Her body was burned twice more after she had died, and her ashes thrown into the Seine to ensure that no legends about her having escaped emerged. Boukman suffered a similar fate when the French executed him and displayed his head in public to subvert any likelihood of people immortalizing him. (Apparently they learnt nothing from the case of Joan of Arc). In both cases, the martyrs were elevated to sainthood and national symbols. Nothing Robertson says or prays will change that memory.

The second backlash is contained in the goodwill, led by Hollywood and charities, that poured into Haiti. A-list stars like the Brangelina couple, George Clooney and Madonna opened their checkbooks with record-breaking generosity, with Clooney leading the telethon that also broke records in the amount of money raised and the extent of the broadcasting audience. The problem is not so much in their generosity, but in their failure to use their evidently wide international platform to at least mention the political and economic foundation of the Haitian earthquake disaster.

The other worrying trend is the speedy adoption of Haitian children, without any verification of whether the children have parents or families. The irony, as one blog points out, is that Haitians who have children in America will face deportation once their Temporary Protected Status is recalled at America's discretion. Discounting the horrific possibility of child-trafficking, the abductions, the so-called adoptions are morally and historically disturbing. Africans were abducted from the continent and subjected to slavery for four centuries, and the children they bore were snatched and transported to work on other plantations. It is not unlikely that some of the children will meet the same fate.

Already, the dishonesty and malice in the adoptions is beginning to show in the arrest of 10 members of an American Baptist church caught with 30 children whom they were transporting to an orphanage. Just in the case of the abduction of 103 Chadian children for adoption in France in 2007 as Darfurian refugees, some of the children had parents and had been lured with promises of education. Would it not have been cheaper to build a school for the children? Just a thought. But then the church would have had no tangible proof - in form of human flesh - that they were making a "difference."

However, what would make an even greater difference is to pair this generosity with some intelligence and to be as generous with money as with the time to understand the people they are being generous to. It would be more charitable of the poorly educated Hollywood stars to spend at most $40 and a few hours on two important books that would enlighten them on Haiti, one being the seminal work by C.L.R James "The Black Jacobins" and another by Prof Randall Robertson entitled "Unbroken Agony: Haiti from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President." The awareness of Haiti's history and pressure from the American voters on their government to change its voracious policy in Haiti would cost less and do infinitely more than the millions of dollars in aid they are sending right now.

And that mark of good citizenship would prevent the third backlash: the US military occupation of Haiti. With connivance of the Western media which is blowing reports of looting out of proportion, the Obama administration has shamelessly sent troops to Haiti, privileged the delivery of arms over that of medicine, taken over control of the main airport and slowed down the delivery of aid, with France hypocritically expressing horror at the US occupation.

We've seen this scenario before, where black people in distress are portrayed as dangerous and met with guns rather than basic necessities. In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, the Bush administration sent contracted private security thugs, otherwise known as Blackwater, to terrorize the displaced victims, while the media made the famous distinction between whites who took goods from the supermarkets and blacks who "looted." This fiasco would be followed by the creation of AFRICOM, which would supposedly be engaged in humanitarian efforts in Africa with no explanation why these activities should be carried out by the army and not by, for example, the Fulbright fellows or the Peace Corps. Or by ridding us of the World Bank and IMF programs which impoverish African countries and make them more conflict prone.

Underlying this response is the stereotype we all know - that of blacks as irrational, instinctive, violent and dangerous. More fundamentally, though, is the determination of the Western world to make a lesson of Haiti about the supposed unviability of African nationhood. But what makes this more painful is that the obsession with a military response in Haiti fueled by racism is continuing under the first black president whose entry into White House was a significant moment in history for the African peoples. To add insult to injury, he invited the two culprits of Haiti's agony over the last 2 decades - presidents Clinton and Bush - to supervise the relief efforts.

We are still enamored by Obama's political feat that we have tolerated his virtual silence on racism during his campaign except when he gave his famous pink-elephant-in-the-room speech. This silence, we said, was necessary for him to win the white vote to propel him into the White House. Since then, we have witnessed the lukewarm or neutral responses to the Joe Wilson "You lie!" outburst, the Henry Louis Gates arrest, the Senator Reid "no Negro dialect" statement and the Chris Matthew forgetting Obama was black comment. We so badly and understandably want Obama's presidency to succeed, that as much as his administration's response to the Haiti tragedy is similar to Bush's to Katrina, it is impossible to say, as Kanye West did of Bush, that the president "doesn't like black people."

All these aftershocks point to one fundamental contradiction: the same country that is so generous to the Haitian people in distress is the same one that is responsible for the structures and policies responsible for the distress in the first place. The American government's policies contradict the stated aims of the humanitarian effort. The audacity, not of hope but of brazenness, suggests that if Americans can fund both deadly political maneuvers and humanitarian efforts without shame, we Africana peoples could do the same: support not only humanitarian efforts in Haiti but also political agendas as well. African nations did it when they supported the ANC even after its leader Nelson Mandela had been condemned as a terrorist for embracing armed struggle. They offered refuge to political refugees and even contributed money to the ANC.

We should therefore consider sending contributions to the party Fanmi Lavalas, the most popular political party in Haiti which is currently excluded from vying for electoral positions. Under the short-lived Aristide presidency, its government put in place social and economic programs that improved the livelihood of Haitians but which the US government considered as undermining free enterprise. African governments should take the occupation of Haiti and the abduction and continued exile of Aristide to the United Nations as an issue of respect for national sovereignty. They should also press for France to pay reparations to Haiti for the insane and crippling debt they enforced on Haiti for 120 years. This agenda would be more useful to the pan-African world than the lofty goal of creating the United States of Africa which African presidents are bickering over. It is time for pan-Africanists to put their money where their politics is.