9671: U.S> and Haiti as democracies

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MHeinl@aol.com
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M. Saint-Vil says that because of white supremacy in the U.S., the U.S. 
should not be considered as having been a democracy for most of its
history. 
Even the Athenians, considered to be the originators of Democracy, owned 
slaves and restricted suffrage. 

Applying his logic to Haiti, which has been under one form of dictatorship
or 
another for most of its history and whose governments have systematically 
denied the franchise to either Mulatre or Noir segments of the population 
based on color, Haiti should be considered the newest (if it can be 
considered such at the moment) democracy in the Western Hemisphere, not
the 
oldest.