12936: 12923: The "Elite" who does this refer to?posted by Josiane Hudicourt-Barnes (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JHUDICOURTB@aol.com

I think Ms. Manbo is a bit confused by the word, and I think we all are.  I
think there is no such thing as a Haitian Elite,there may be several Elites.
There is no agreement on who the word refers to.  Even within Ms. Manbo's
text we don't really know.  Here is a piece of the text:

"  At Union School...it was the children of the Haitian "elite" who remained.
At lunch one day, the female teachers, mostly Haitian women from upper middle
class families, fell to complaining about their "bonnes", their maids."

Manbo says that the children were of the "Elite", and then she says the
teachers were middle class, and she criticizes them for the "Elite" attitude.


Who is the Elite?
Why would the "Elite"  women need that U$500/month that Union School pays to
Haitian hired teachers if they are so rich?
Is a person "Elite" if their parent was a big Tonton Makout and made a lot of
money and can afford to pay Union school U$10,000?
If a Haitian-born person is so rich that he can spend his whole life living
in luxury in a foreign country and never have to work, is that the Elite?
Is a person whose parents and grand-parents had a high school diploma part of
the Elite?
Do you become "Elite" by owning a factory or owning US stocks and bonds?
Is "Elite" defined by the size of your home in Haiti, its location, what it
contains?
What about the provincial bourgeoisie?
The gran-don of the small towns whose children are Doctors and Engineers in
the US, Canada, or PAP?
Does one have to attend Union School or Lycee Francais to be true "Elite"? or
does one have to go to a boarding school in the US or Europe?
Are there still some Haitian "Elite" schools? Lalue? Sacre-Coeur? Saint-Louis?
If a person comes from a college educated family but never graduates from
high school, are they still "Elite"?
If someone's parent had an accounting degree, a good job in public
administration, and the person ends up with a medical degree, are they
"Elite"?
Is the "political class" part of the "Elite"?
Is Preval "Elite"?  Is Michel Francois "Elite"?  Is Madame Max Aldolf's
daughter "elite" (she has a finishing school in Petion-Ville)?
Are middle management employees part of the "Elite"?
If a person earns an comfortable living, and can travel at least once a year,
is that "Elite"?
I think this is one of the worse ill-define terms in Haiti.  It is as if
people think that there are only two very defined classes in Haiti.  In the
US there are many groups, usually defined by history, education, and money.
In Haiti it's the same, and one can move around the groups according to
achievement.
It is true that there are people in Haiti who do not think democratically but
these thoughts cannot be attributed to one ill-defined of characteristic.
In the US, there is a traditional Elite.  It is usually defined by old money
and attendance to private boarding schools.  Those people don't have
exclusive rights and priviledges in the US elite but they do form a clique,
who know each other or know of each other.  In New England they meet as
teenagers at sports matches, they go to Ivy League schools if their parents
have a lot of money (like Bush) or/and if they have good grades (like the
Clintons-he became part of the club because he was so smart and married a
Wellesley girl) .  I have met enough people in New England to know that there
are some decadent "blue-bloods" or brahmins(?) here as there are in Haiti,
George Bush and Joe Kennedy are part of that  club.  Yet, last week in the
New York times  there were pictures of Americans who were vacationing in St
Tropez, there was Jenna Bush, Puff Daddy, and Giorgio Armani.  Maybe Michelle
B. Duvalier was there too.  Is that the "Elite"?  Elite in what sense?