12019: Re: 12936: 12923: The "Elite" who does this refer to? posted by Josiane Hudicourt-Barnes (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Racine125@aol.com

My gosh!  The Creole proverb "Mwen blese malinn ou", I hurt your sore, seems to apply to the recent posts on the "Elite of Haiti".

Dorce was excruciatingly accurate when she writes:

"The only people who don't seem to know to whom 'Haitian elite' refers, seems to be the elite themselves."

Josiane Hudicort-Barnes, for example, is so offended by my comments that she refers to me impolitely as "Ms. Mambo", when she knows perfectly well that my name is Mambo Racine Sans Bout, or Kathy S. Grey.  "Ms. Manbo is a bit confused...", she asserts.  I don't mean to attack Ms. Hudicourt-Barnes personally, I am sure she is a very nice person, but this is just one more example of the "meprise", the scornful sneering, the deliberate rudeness, that characterizes the members of the social class about which we are talking.

Regarding my anecdote about my colleagues and their advice to me regarding my household help, she writes:

<<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.>>

That's right!  That's what happens, the upper middle class, striving to become the upper class, ape all the worst and most salient characteristics of that class - again, the "meprise", the scornfulness, the lack of respect for others.

<<Why would the "Elite"  women need that U$500/month that Union School pays to Haitian hired teachers if they are so rich?>>

Just a note:  I believe all of us were paid over $1000 US per month, since all those teachers were nominally recruited in the USA, even though they may have been of Haitian origin.

<<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?>>

I would say so - and I am sure THEY would too!

<<Is a person whose parents and grand-parents had a high school diploma part of the Elite?>>

No, if they have no money.  If they have money and power but no diploma, yes.

The various and numerous hypothetical situations that Hudicourt-Barnes posits are simply red herrings.  When we talk about the elite class, or the ruling class, we know exactly what we mean, after all.  And it is that class, through it's proxy murderers the Haitian Army and FRAPH, who plunged Haiti into three years of misery from 1991 - 1994.  Such was their level of hypocrisy that they claimed to be horrified by the embargo - conveniently overlooking the fact that the reasons for that embargo included a UN monitored Presidential election and a violent, bloody coup d'etat!

Hudicourt-Barnes writes:

<<In the US, there is a traditional Elite.  It is usually defined by old money and attendance to private boarding schools... I have met enough people in New England to know that there are some decadent "blue-bloods" or brahmins(?)>>

Have you seen them gunning down liberal Democrats or Socialists (or dissident Republicans for that matter)?  Do they pay their household help a pittance and sexually abuse them in the bargin, as a matter of course and with impunity?  Do they loan their private vehicles to the Army so that the Army can go spray pro-Democrat slums with automatic weapons fire?  Are bodies of anti-Kennedy supporters piling up in the streets of Boston?

COME ON!  It's time for people to start to take responsibility, and face facts, after all.

Peace and love,

Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen

"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
     Haitian Proverb

The VODOU Page - http://members.aol.com/racine125/index.html

(Posting from Jacmel, Haiti)