9766: Re: 9749: Re: 9739: Slavery - USA - Democracy - Haiti (A Haitian proverb for Saint-Vil (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Pierre Jean <pierrejean01@yahoo.com>

In reply to Jafrikayiti's post (I assume), Michael
Heinl wrote: 
> Chak bourik rani nan patiraj li
> 
> (Every donkey brays in its own pasture)
> Michael Heinl

I may be a little bit dense, but I don't understand
this reply too well. Maybe my grasp of Kreyol is weak.
What is supposed to be Jafrikayiti's "patiraj", and
what of Heinl's?

Also, on a related topic, I find it amazing that one
would recoil at the "barbaric" acts of former slaves
during the War of Independence (who had the audacity
after all to massacre all these whites), while
conveniently forgetting the murders, tortures, and
other heinous acts that these slaves had to suffer for
so long.

Madison Smartt Bell has a wonderful little passage in
"Master of The Crossroads" (p. 661 of the Penguin
paperback edition) that sums up what was at stake:

"The doctor stopped himself from replying. He saw that
from Riau's point of view the slaying of a few hundred
whites had been no more than a minor side-effect of
THE MOVEMENT OVER THE ROAD TOWARDS LIBERTY [my
emphasis] ... as perhaps the destruction of thousands
of Africans was only an UNPLEASANT BY-PRODUCT OF THE
MANUFACTURE OF SUGAR"[again my emphasis] ..."

Can the slaves' struggle for liberty be equated
morally to the masters' economic activity of producing
sugar in justifying the massacres that occurred? 

Dorcé and one other poster have made the exact same
argument, convincingly I might add.

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