a766: Uncle Tom saint - not Haitian? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Jean Saint-Vil <jafrikayiti@hotmail.com>

It baffles me how Pierre Toussaint can be referred to by serious-sounding
people as a Haitian  or African-American «saint».

1) The man was an African enslaved, tortured and brainwashed in Ayiti and in
the U.S. by white supremacists. Yes,he ended up loving his torturers more
than he loved his own people. Is that supposed to make him a saint? Do you
see a certain similarity here with the case of one mister Walker, the
American Taliban? There is nothing miraculous about neither Walker, Pierre
Toussaint, or Uncle Tom. Frantz Fanon's body of work is a good scholarly
reference which explains pefectly how such simingly «miraculous» damage can,
has been and continue to be accomplished in the brains of many people. It is
no miracle folks!

2) Pierre Toussaint himself, as a very dead negro (ki mouri pou de twou je
li!)has not accomplished any miracle. Like most church-sanctioned
«miracles», it is only a matter of time before the hoax is uncovered.
Otherwise, I hereby nominate pastors Oral Roberts, Some guy named Popov who
uses cordless phones to create instant fortune telling sensation and amass
heaps of dough in Africa these days, Jim Baker and Haiti's very own Pastè
Ajimal to the Vatican Hall of Fame for «saints» and «saints-in-the-making».

3) There are plenty of home-made Haitian saints to choose from, if one can
bring oneself to value Haitian myths at least as much as Vatican myths. Such
saints can be named: Sen Makandal (he apparently turned into a mosquito and
disappeared when the axis of evil tried to murder him - back in the 1700s),
Sent Lamatinyè (she beat a whole bunch of male soldiers in Napoleon's evil
slave-making army, in the late 1700s, at a time when both women and black
folks were yet to be «discovered» and told to be fully human in Europe and
in democratic America). As I prayed to these 2 wonderful Haitian saints last
week, the headache I felt after reading the latest propaganda coming out of
the Associated Press, Le Monde et. al.  suddenly disappeared. And so, I let
3 drops of water and said Ayibobo pou zanj yo!

Mèsi pou ou tou, 3 fwa sen, Papa Dessalines  ;o)!

Jafrikayiti
«Pa kwè m riiii i. Lè m ri ou pa wè anndan m...»


----Original Message Follows----
From: Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>
To: Haiti mailing list <haiti@lists.webster.edu>
Subject: a763:  Haitian saint? (fwd)
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 09:25:16 -0600 (CST)


From: JRAuguste1@aol.com

Former Slave, future saint?

By Leonard Greene

New York Post, 2/13/02
nypost.com

If anyone deserves to be canonized by the Catholic Church, Norman Darden
reasons, it's Pierre Toussaint, a 19th-century entrepreneur who bought his
way out of slavery after a life of piety and community service.

Darden, a Manhattan writer who is among the leaders of a crusade to have
Toussaint sanctified by the Vatican, begins with the name. In French, the
language of Toussaint' s naitve Haiti, the name means "all saints."

"Unfortunately, he was a layman, and that is going to be a hindrance,"
admitted Darden.

But over the years, Toussaint's petitioners have won important converts.
Toussaint, who styled hair for the New York elite in the 1800s, cleared a
big
hurdle when Washington's archbishop launched an investigation into the
extraordinary recovery of a severely ill Maryland boy to see if it was a
miracle that could be attributed to Toussaint.

The boy and his parents had traveled to New York to pray at Toussaint's
tomb.
If the miracle is verified, only one more would be needed to make Toussaint
the church's first black American saint.

Some would say the second miracle already has occurred. Toussaint is
entombed
in a crypt under the high altar at St. Patrick's Cathedral, the only layman
so honored.

Toussaint's master took him form Port-au-Prince to New York in the late
1700s
to escape rebelling slaves.

Once in New York, Toussaint apprenticed under a high-society hairstylist
whose clients he later inherited. The business made him rich, and he shared
the wealth cheerfully with  the church and the poor, including his master's
wife who became destitute after her husband's death.










Jafrikayiti
«Depi nan Ginen bon nèg ap ede nèg!»
http://www.i-port.net/sd-in-j/


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