#1103: Bellegarde comments on Bilingualism: Chamberlain comments on DeGraff

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: P D Bellegarde-Smith <pbs@csd.uwm.edu>

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>
wrote:

However, there is the inconvenient fact that whatever is said here on this
forum (by people who enjoy the command of two, three or four languages),
Haitians who only speak Creole perceive that French is "better" and decide
that this is what they want to aim for as a means of general advancement.

How do you tell someone they shouldn't have what you've already got
yourself?  Some years ago, revolutionary friends of mine in the
Anglo-Caribbean would return to their island with their foreign degrees to
their comfortably-off middle class family homes and make speeches to
the"masses" that it was sinful to aspire to the bright lights of America

Greg Chamberlain

	Mr. Chamberlain said it well, and is correct of course, but fails to take
the next step. The attitudes he describes are rooted in colonialism (as an
ideology), transmogrified into neo-colonialism. In Haiti, some of us are
still wanting "good hair," and "good features," and wishes we could all
come from a "good family." Some in the middle class have gone as far as to
marry white women (or men), in order to short circuit the process of
"improving the race."
 They hope to insure "mulatre" status for the next generation. (If may not
work). African Americans, Dominicans, Martinicans... all populations in
the Black diaspora have undergone similar conditioning. Michael Jacskon in
terms of both his children and surgeries exemplified what many of us would
do if one had money. Remember the story out of Jamaica and Haiti about
breaching one's whole body in vats of bleach? I wish Chamberlain would
write a large piece about these issues, since he has access to the press.