14228: RE: 14226: Dreyfuss offer a condensed version of Manigat's Wise Solution (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Joel Dreyfuss <jdreyfuss@attglobal.net>

Manigat may not be anyone's favorite politician (he's said himself he's
not good at it) but he's an excellent scholar of Haiti and his piece is
a very good exposition of the dimensions of Haiti's race problem and how
it can be solved.(He's optimistic). My summary is really a set of
headlines; I urge others to read it. Personally, I'm happy to read
something rooted in scholarship and research after all the thumb-sucking
we've had here in recent days.

1. Manigat goes over the history of Haiti's "color problem." He traces
it back to the historic alliance of black slaves and free mulattos in
freeing the country -- and the hostilities engendered by the
assassination of Dessalines, which he calls our "first coup d'état." He
defines it as a social problem that is often used politically.
2. He sayts the issue of color has risen and fallen in Haiti's history.
One of his pivot points is 1946, the Estimé era, when a noiriste
movement emerged in reaction to the exclusionary mulatto elite
government of Lescot and its predecessors--  the mulatto-controlled,
black-fronted "doublure" governments of the 19th century.
3. He argues that Haiti has struggled with a race issue that is rooted
in colonialsm and is ultimately supremacist but that it is weakening as
Haiti faces pressures for modernization. He acknowledges that wealth and
power are still color-coded, but that the lines have blurred with the
emergence of black élite classes through the political process over the
last fifty years and the widening of political participation. Being an
old noiriste himself, Manigat argues that the demands for black power in
Haiti emerged as a reaction to mulatiste racism and are essentially
progressive.
4. He says that race has become far less important in Haiti; that
significant segments of both the traditional elite and the emeging black
middle class, having seen the failures of the old racial tactics, want
to do politics in in a new way. He offers no quick solution, but argues
that the color problem requires wise leaders, democratic progress,
education and a process of social integration that is already under way.

Joel Dreyfuss
jdreyfuss@attglobal.net