21831: Laleau: Re: 21800: Dorce: Re: 21780: Kathleen: Re: 21768:

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: NLaleau@aol.com
----------------------------------------

Class or Caste in Haiti? I wonder if anthropologists or sociologists have
looked at Haiti in terms of a Caste society rather than simply a society
with
rigid social class stratification. >From what I saw of the old "Haitian
bourgeoisie," it was virtually impossible either to enter it or leave it.
If
you were born into it, and you could walk down the Petionville Road in a
dress
with a lampshade on your head and you still wouldn't be thrown out of it.
If
you were dark skinned, you might leverage your hard work into a
substantial
fortune, but unless your last name was among the pre-ordained, you were
not
part of the serious bourgeoisie. There were new bourgeois classes created
during Duvalier's years and since, but I think the old Elite has been as
impermeable as the Brahmins of India.