23733: (reply) Simidor re 23701: Stephenson: Re: 23688: Simidor re 23666:Esser on Aristide and Dessalines (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel Simidor <karioka9@mail.arczip.com>

Dear Mr. Stephenson,

Thank you for informing me that “Wilberforce and many others in England” were not “Noirists.”  May I point out in return something that may not be so obvious?

Noirism and Mulatrism, sometimes under different guises (“Nouveaux Libres” v. “Affranchis,” Parti National vs. Parti Liberal), are the twin ideologies of the two wings of a national elite whose struggle for hegemony has been such a curse on our country’s history.

At times, this competition takes the form of a struggle between “technocrats” (les plus capables) and “democrats” (le plus grand nombre, les masses de l’arrière-pays, Lavalas OP’s).

The deportation of the “Suisses” in Nov. 1791, “la Guerre du Sud” with Toussaint and Rigaud, the civil war between Christophe and Petion, “la Guerre des Couteaux” under Soulouque, “le drame de Miragoane” under Salomon, the 1946 “revolution,” the “Vêpres de Jérémie” under Papa Doc, and the more recent Lavalas-Convergence opposition, have all been informed to varying degrees by the clash between those two competing ideologies.

Somebody, probably Esser, has surmised very brightly that it was about class, and not race or skin color, as if racism and other racial ideologies were not always driven by economic interests.

It pays to look at the variant forms of these ideologies, especially for someone like you who is not in “tete lang” with backward ideas.  “Demande l’addition” (“Ask to see the bill”), as Brecht would say, and decide for yourself if the people’s interests are truly in command, or if it’s the interest of a small clique.

Louis Joseph Janvier and the 19th century “défenseurs de la race noire” – De Vastey, Chanlatte, Jacques Nicholas Leger, Hannibal Price and Delorme – fought gallantly against the pseudo-science the Europeans invented to justify their genocidal attacks against black people.  All of then, except Firmin, were also staunch ideologues of their caste.

Hannibal Price, author of “De la Rehabilitation de la Race Noire,” called Frederic Marcelin a scoundrel because Marcelin, a mulatto, served a black government, and because “being a mulatto, I am sure that you have a horror of Negroes, just as I have”  (Nicholls, “From Dessalines to Duvalier,” p. 110).  Janvier, an Ultra-National whose adulation for President Salomon was boundless, is recognized as a “Noirist” AVANT LA LETTRE, who waged a relentless polemic against the Liberal opposition.

One thing divides into two. The truth doesn’t always conform to the simplistic formulas we are often served by the Lavalas apologists on this list.