22401: Justin: Haiti and Rape (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Justin <justins@alacrityisp.net>

I tried to comment on this earlier but Bob refused to post what I said, so
below is a censored version attempting to give the gist of what I meant
originally.

I hope that more Haitian women on this list will respond to the comments
that were made about rape.  I am not by any means an expert on Haitian
cultural morays, but when I read Racine's remarks I had a sick feeling in
the pit of my stomach.  It's the same feeling I get when one of my white
acquiantences makes a comment about how blacks in America are so violent, or
oversexed, or unintelligent, and expects me to nod my head in agreement.

In America black men are stereotyped as aggressive sexual predators, and
black women are stereotyped as hyper-sensual and oversexed.  I was very
taken aback by the way Racine's characterization of Haitian society
reflected these same stereotypes.  Let's assume that everything she says is
true.  Haiti is just a big festering cauldron of rape (in reality, rape is a
problem in lots of places, including here).  Even if that were the case, it
is inappropriate to say Haitians are "sick" people.

Haitians are just like any other people--they are a product of their
environment.  You have to look at the external causes that give rise to
deviant behavior, not simply look at the behavior in a causal vacuum.  Go
through the poor areas of the U.S. and you'll see plenty of deviant
behavior, ranging from prostitution to drug use to criminality.  These
conditions don't exist because the people living in those areas are "sick."
They exist because poverty, racism, and colonialism has destroyed the social
fabric of those communities.

Racine has tried to gloss over the racist nature of her remarks by saying
"This does not mean that Haitian men are *genetically* more prone to rape
than any other men, there is a difference between a person's genetic
background and their cultural training."  Shifting the blame from genes to
culture doesn't change anything.  It still places the blame squarely on the
victim rather than the roots of the problem.

In America, when people realized it was no longer acceptable to say that
blacks are inherently inferior to whites, they started saying that it was
actually "black culture" that was to blame.  In America "black culture" is
said to be anti-intellectual, violent, degenerate, and sexually deviant.
This position is as just as much nonsense as the old one.  But we (white
people) like these kinds of explanations because they absolve us from any
responsibility for all the bad things that are happening to these people.