by Èzili Dantò of HLLN
“The slave-raids of today...white invaders and aggressors are joined by treacherous African petty bourgeoisie parasites, such as Obama, Kagame, Museveni, Kabila and others whose main demands have been integration into the command and leadership of the white capitalist parasitic political economy.” – Down with Kagame, Museveni and Kabila! The imperialist war against Congo continues unabated! ; Youtube – Congo 20million dead the role US and its allies played .
Django, white saviors, false benevolence and the Haiti earthquake: Media Portrayal Problematic
Human rights attorney Ezili Dantò of Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network discusses on Uhuru Radio with Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali of Diasporic Music: Haiti three years after the earthquake, the role women played in the Haitian Revolution and the way forward. January 20, 2013, (Download – Zili_UhuruRadioJan20_2013).
Zili_Django-Feb 3, 2013Ezili Dantò discusses the liberal white savior, his exceptional Black sidekick, a trusted colonial blueprint, its racism and imperial indoctrination, Uhuru Radio.)
The third anniversary of the earthquake came and went in the same manner as the first in terms of the international news media’s coverage.
Each year, the white saviors (from the Left and Right, play their good cop/bad cop white supremacist games) lay out the stark statistics of how much international aid failed Haiti, talk about Haiti’s weak government and the NGO’s lack of coordination with Haitians. It’s beyond boring to watch them these days.
Everyone who has been following Èzili Dantò’s work knows that international monies were never meant to help Haiti’s domestic economy, growth or reconstruction. Yet, these repugnant folks write on and on about what aid has not done in Haiti as if it was supposed to have lifted up Haiti’s domestic economy and African-centered community development. The subtext is that Haiti, that perennially failed state of uncivilized savages, can’t absorb the white settlers’ epic generosity and compassion.
In the interviews, I could not give legitimacy after a while by answering the same old narrative: What happened to the aid monies sent to Haiti?
Hello? Most of it never left Washington, Paris or Toronto. Besides, if the collaborating Haiti experts or journalists insist on not focusing on the NGOs, the UN, the US officials’ real mission in Haiti, but only asking the racist coded questions, it is not our job to be so imposed upon.
As I said in the last interviews, I’d like to take this opportunity and platform to remember that on January 12, 2010, over 300,000 human beings lost their lives in 33 seconds.
Isn’t that a HUGE story in and of itself? Who where they? Who saved Haitians in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake as the majority waited and waited for skilled crisis rescuers but got Obama’s twenty thousand troops and the airport shut down? Let’s remember the neighbors who rushed from house to house, lifting steel, and concrete with their bare hands. The Haitians from the South of Haiti, the North of Haiti, all over Haiti who walked, ran and got there by any means necessary to help lift up tons of concrete off crushed limbs with bleeding hands. Where are their stories? Did we recognize them, give gave them awards? Yes, we should remember the heroic street youths who rushed from place to place, even to the Parliament building and dug out the living entombed under the rubble. I’d like to use this time to send strength and courage to the survivors, their families, those left behind. Some 400,000 still under tarps and tents while the Clintons and Ban Ki Moons speak of progress in Haiti because there are more foreigners there than since the first US occupation, owning more lands, making more monies, poisoning and imprisoning more poor Haitians than the anti-democratic Haiti oligarchs ever considered.
This is what the Europeans and white settler stakeholders in Haiti consider development.
The foreign Haiti “experts” from the so-called “Left,” desperate to show some success with their fake lawsuit against the UN for importing cholera, even went so far as to write that the puppet Martelly government asked the UN for $2 billion for the cholera victims (“Recently the Haitian government likewise demanded over $2 billion from the international community to address the scourge of cholera” written at Counterpunch and UK Guardian articles.) As if the Martelly government was legitimate. Wasn’t just a token put at the Ban Ki Moon announcement ceremony as a Haitian face told to rubber stamp the US/UN/WHO/Paul Farmer re-hashed cholera cover-up. Playing arsonist and firemen, the UN announced it will raise $ 2.2 billion. It’s fake aid for eradicating cholera plainly another attempt to keep the US/UN in Haiti for another ten years while attempting to privatize Haiti water, raise more funds to pay themselves, fund Farmer’s foul pharmaceuticals, grease the palms of their various Haiti collaborators, pay more World Bank administrative fees.
Let us repeat the ONLY sustainable and direct aid to Haiti, that has no anti-democratic strings attached, is the $2.5 billion yearly in diaspora remittances. Haiti doesn’t need false charity or the cannibalistic, imperialistic North’s false benevolence. Haitians do not need US-style development. Haitians need for Haiti to be free.
When Haitians like us at HLLN say it, it usually has no effect. So here is a US
| The Western vs the Real Narrative on Haiti and No other national group anywhere in the world sends money home in higher proportion than Haitians living abroad ; Economic proposals that make sense for the reality of Haiti- The Western economic model doesn’t fit an independent Black nation and Creating New Paradigms – Why it’s critical to re-create and adapt the Ancestors’ Vodun Psychology.) |
university saying it:
“Haiti is…poor but it has unique features that mitigate the poverty found there. For example, while in most other poor countries poverty means
landlessness, many of Haiti’s poor are land owners..Land is a source of pride, and provides subsistence for extended families despite their poverty. It also allows them to participate in the so called “informal sector” economy – that is, the portion of the economy that isn’t taxed, regulated, or measured by the government. The oft-cited ranking of Haiti as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere is based on its Gross Domestic Product, a measurement that excludes the “informal sector” economy. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that the informal labor market in Haiti accounts for roughly 90 percent of the country’s total labor market – in other words, most of the economic activity in the country isn’t counted in the measurement most commonly cited when calling it the poorest in the hemisphere…” (Media Portrayal of Haiti Problematic, Says UConn Researcher By Tom Breen, January 11, 2013 – http://bit.ly/10mcqp1 ; HLLN 2008- Does the Western economic model and calculation of economic wealth fit Haiti, fit Dessalines’ idea of wealth? No!)
The point Èzili HLLN makes is that Haiti won’t be “developed” or its domestic economy counted, or growth measured, until the Clintons, Bushes and Obama-ilks have put up US businesses and sweatshops to take entrepreneurial Haitians off their lands and transformed them into wage earners without lands or have used the momentum given to them by the fake progressives to finance Farmer’s pèpè hospitals, pèpè vaccines,pèpè education and the US occupation’spèpè university in the North with the Dominican Republic to keep the mental colonization going. Then, Haiti shall be declared developed like the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Bahamas, Rwanda, et al. When foreigners own more Haitian lands and the people are backdrops for Northern tourists and are easy semen receptacles for Paul Farmer’s colleagues, like the pedophile Douglas Perlitz. Then Haiti shall be “developed” for these perverts and disgusting power elites.
Recently I came across one of the best commentaries about the latest Quentin Tarantino bloody cinematic feast at the Son of Baldwin blog. Part of what I found resonant is the author’s clarity when he notes that racism is not something practiced by obviously mentally deranged white peoples. This is something Haitians know too well. The genocide in Haiti and in Africa, is being conducted by pasty-looking, Harvard grounded Paul Farmer-ilks and otherwise average, normal, well-intentioned, nice, loving white people. In the context of the Django Unchained movie, the blogger basically says that writer-director Quentin Tarantino made the movie on slavery fun for white folks to watch and fun for Black establishment folks to watch because they don’t relate to the monsters portrayed in the movie.
Disassociating allows for the anarchic humor of the gallows, for the public to accept cheap trashy thrills and gratuitous violence that wasn’t about ending the US system of slavery. (10 Things You Should Know About Slavery and Won”t Learn at ”Django”.)
More serious movies about slavery, such as Oprah’s Beloved and Spielberg’s Amistad, though also problematic in their attempts at diluting Black resistance in certain ways, were not box office successes. But Django Unchained is because Quentin Tarantino brilliantly made the intricate movie fun so white folks could watch it and Black folks got some revenge at the end so they wouldn’t be too offended.
That’s why we know the answer to these questions: “Why isn’t Django allowed to obtain his own autonomy without the help of the white savior? Why are all the racists portrayed as cartoonishly, ridiculously, over-the-top super-evil monsters when actual racism is mostly committed by average, normal, well- intentioned, nice, loving white people? Why does Samuel L. Jackson, an already dark-skinned black man, have to appear in blackface to play his role of House Negro?” (To be Unchained – Son of Baldwin blog).
Notwithstanding the factual errors and disturbing misuse of slavery as backdrop to sell entertainment, Tarantino’s movie is worthy for the international dialogue on race it’s engendered. It’s a must see for the depiction of the Uncle Tom character alone, played
brilliantly by Samuel Jackson and his symbiotic and complex relationship with the plantation master character played by actor, Leonardo Dicaprio.
But I am a human rights lawyer from a lineage of struggle against European slavery. A cultural activist performer concerned with promoting empathy, ethics, justice and debunking the seductive lies that block movement towards a more equitable world. And though I can watch Django Unchained, appreciate the skillful work of all the actors involved. See Tarantino’s clinical, soulless, commerce-driven choices in awe. Shudder, cringe and close my eyes during the extremely pitiless violent scenes only to hear the gruesome gore more sharply and curse. Though I even laughed at his Uncle Tom character’s antics, I know too much history, too much about our current reality. The past is not just lingering, the past is not even the past. The minorities still rule the world. The owners of our neo-feudalistic world system still control the purse strings.
Here’s where the Haiti white savior and black collaborator parallels also come in. When I write I name names so that folks won’t dissociate from their evil in Haiti. The truth is offensive. It is.
“The slave-raids of today...white invaders and aggressors are joined by treacherous African petty bourgeoisie parasites, such as Obama, Kagame, Museveni, Kabila and others whose main demands have been integration into the command and leadership of the white capitalist parasitic political economy.” -Excerpted from Down with Kagame, Museveni and Kabila! The imperialist war against Congo continues unabated!, Uhuru News ; Youtube – Congo 20million dead the role US and its allies played.
Is it a coincidence or a reflection of our times that famed film director Tarantino approvingly crafts a blockbuster fictional Black hero – Django, the Jamie Fox character – as a Black slave trader? Aren’t we living at a time, in a political climate, where Black collaborators of the white capitalist parasitic political economy (Susan Rice, Condi Rice, Cheryl Mills, Colin Powell, et al, arguably the modern day slave traders or in-house consultant archetypes) have been integrated, are sharing leadership and command?
Is it such a wonder that in the time of the Obama presidency that Hollywood feels comfortable making a fun movie about slavery – a time when Liberals or the Left eschew tension, sacrifice and real agitation for justice to make as many convenient alliances as they please with the far right and the Wall Street corporatocracy to the detriment of Main Street, ethics and justice?
Although her character has little to say in the movie, obviously talented actor Kerry Washington plays Django’s wife and the reason for the rescue plot. Did director Tarantino choose Kerry Washington in a vacuum unrelated to the character she is associated with in Scandals on ABC and what the BIG house insider black woman that character is associated with or loosely based on? Maybe its just a triviality that Kerry Washington also stars in an ongoing TV serial playing the part loosely based on either Condi Rice to some minds, or on the real life of Judy Smith, a consultant and former White House Press secretary under President George H.W. Bush? But its noteworthy to mention.
What’s telling is that even in the era of the Obama presidency, Black directors in Hollywood are not allowed the requisite budget to make an epic movie on slavery but Tarantino is and like Paul Farmer in Haiti, he feels uhmm “Black enough” and cool enough to go beyond fiction-making, – as Farmer goes beyond scamming for the US occupation to making decisions about Haiti reconstruction – to LECTURE Black society -“give Black American males a Western hero, a cool folklorique hero?”
Tarantino and his crew still ignores the truth with white savior drivel as if Black men like Bass Reeves, a 6’2, Black man, born a slave who punched out his master before escaping to freedom, never existed. Reeves, who spoke 5 “Indian” languages became a legendary wild west cowboy and U.S. marshall. He was arrested 3,000 felons, killed 14 men, and was never shot himself. He was the inspiration for the Lone Ranger character. Tarantino couldn’t or just wouldn’t find the hidden origin of the cowboy legend?
Black males, like Bass Reeves, originated the Western cowboy hero archetype, didn’t they? But maybe this is just an ignorant off-hand comment. But, in saying this, Tarantino also boils our epic and honorable struggle, its many faces and stories, to telling young Black males what’s cathartic, how to struggle, roundly nixing Harriet Tubman or the historical resistance of the enslaved African from jump? What would the Black autochtones, Black aboriginals who were in America before Columbus landed say, David Walker of David Walker’s Appeal or even John Brown say? (See, for instance Hidden Colors is a documentary about the real and untold history of the African and aboriginal peoples; Official Trailer: Hidden Colors, part 1 and Hidden Colors 2: The Triumph Of Melanin-Official Trailer .)
(T)he greatest fiction of all however, the big lie…is the backdrop to all of Django’s exploits-the contented, happy domestic and well-dressed field workers who occupy the plantations and the vast vacuous spaces of Tarantino’s mind. On Tarantino’s plantations simple minded enslaved African women contentedly play on a swing as one of their sisters is about to be whipped by a brute of an overseer…Tarantino’s depictions of contented slave life could easily have been copied from the depictions on 19th Century confederate money that showed happy go lucky Blacks chopping cotton. It’s all a lie and Tarantino, not a stupid person, knows it. In fact, the antebellum South was one of the most militarized regions on the planet whose progeny, the right wing gun rights movement,is with us to this day. It was militarized in order to keep often rebellious enslaved Africans under lock and key.” — Jean Damu, Django Unchained: the pornication of Black history
White arrogance allows Tarantino to elevate his film but dismiss the TV drama Roots as “inauthentic?” In trying to sell his movie, Tarantino comes out of the fiction realm and say he’s telling Black history, the reality of the lives of the enslaved in the Antebellum South? He’s owning our very suffering? Racism and colonialism allows these white saviors the budget and power to do so and be heroes to other wanna-be young white “philanthropists,” saviors.
There are Haitian heroes all over Haiti. But the racists Establishment opines the world will not consume authentic heroes with Black skin unless there’s a white savior animating their success. Is this just the ruling elite’s fear or is empathy for the non-white so ingrained? Nonetheless, white journalists of the Nicholas Kristoff mindset simply cannot find the Haitian heroes littering the streets of Haiti or Africa, or Asia. These self-serving media hacks, who cannot lose access, must have a white “bridge character” at the ready in order to help sell their articles, their books, their documentaries, their controversial films to the corporate distributors they serve.
In his unique voice, flushed within the white dude prism, eccentric yet establishment Tarantino with his penchant for gory sex and vivid violent scenes, duly captures in Django Unchained the US/Euro genocidal group thirst for blood and violence as entertainment. And, like the old white plantation owner,Tarantino actually has the modern day power as said director to hire, fire, promote. He has the power to meter out power, put Blacks in roles of power or abject humiliation in his film. He can script in the overly-dark-skinned Uncle Tom or token producer (slave trader) or field negro or sex vessel humiliation on his fictional plantation set, while Black directors and veteran actors like Danny Glover cannot get a film of the Haiti Revolution done whatsoever.
There’s no white savior in that narrative where the purpose was to end European enslavement.
The violent and tyrannical white culture Tarantino has mastered would not associate with and laugh if presented with a film on the white settlers and European enslavers from the Haitian warrior perspective.
| Son of Baldwin: “I think I understand the desire to defend the things we enjoy, but how can we ignore the set-up of this film? The enslaved black man isn”t his own agent of freedom. He’s saved from slavery by a white drifter who then goes on to teach him how to be a “real man” (which is simply film-code for “civilizing the savage”) so that he can go on ahead and save his “wife” from the brutality of other white men. There are many white supremacist implications JUST in that narrative. Simply because characters have depth and a story is compelling doesn”t absolve it of white supremacist propaganda ”even in a story where a few black folks win. The White Savior is a product of racism. There’s no way to escape that.And how can we look at this film in a vacuum? How can we not look at it in the context of the fact that Hollywood told Danny Glover flat out that he couldn”t make a film about a REAL black historical hero, but Quentin Tarantino got the, not green light, but AQUAMARINE light, to create a film about a fictitious black figure in a fictitious story…”
*** |
In 1804, Haitians won their freedom, ended slavery, the savage triangular trade, forced assimilation and direct colonization by beating, in combat, at the height of the Maafa, the greatest armies of France, Britain, Spain, US mercenaries and a formal US embargo.
There are ordinary whites, of course, such as the brave Polish and Germans who chose the moral high ground during the Haiti revolution and went against their own nations, went against Napoleon Bonaparte and Thomas Jefferson, for instance, and fought alongside the African warriors on their terms – loading the warriors guns, to end slavery. But the tyrannical group mentality is stronger than the individual unwashed brain. As Dr. Martin Luther King once observed:
“(I)t is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but…groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
It’s been a long struggle against Euro-development in Haiti. That struggle continues, even as the largest US embassy in the Western Hemisphere, located in tiny Haiti, works out multiple scenarios to attain Haiti’s submission.
Nou pap bay legen.
As for the white saviors speaking for Haiti, especially from the Left of Washington’s duopoly, who continually give legitimacy to the US occupation or to US and UN humanitarian aid as if Haiti is not under US occupation behind a UN front, most of them have NO LEGITIMACY and are as exposed today as the Obama branding of US imperialism across the world.
“Everybody is talking about aid, and at the end of the day, we find out that
it is actually loans; and our tax money is used to pay it back, at a higher
interest rate,” says Pierre Laborissiere, co-founder of the Haitian Action
Committee. “The word must go out that these donor entities are keeping the
Haitian people under control by destroying the grassroots economy.”(Shameless
shell games hurting Haiti? By Saeed Shabazz , Final Call, http://bit.ly/WZXuVg ;
Nouvelles du 11 janvier 2013 L’aide humanitaire à Haiti représente avant tout
des occasions d’affaires pour les entreprises des pays donateurs, selon un
sociogue québécois d’origine haïtienne. )
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” So, next time you have the misfortune to be presented with the establishment Blacks or white Haiti saviors on CNN, Aljazeera, NYT, Counterpunch, cepr.net, et al, ignore every word that comes out of their outlets. US aid, US presence in Haiti, NGO aid, UN aid is ALL about debt, domination, dependency, Black deaths, white supremacy and destroying the informal Haiti economy in the long term. That’s a period, no comma.
“I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection..” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963 ( Youtube ) – (Text)
Ezili Dantò of HLLN
Li led li la
January, 2013
“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” — Lily Watson
MORE BACKGROUND LINKS:
“Frankly, it is up to each and every Haitian capable to make a way out of no way for Haiti to beat its great powerful enemies at their own game, but on our own battlefields, upholding Dessalines law and ideals with our own and very substantial and indomitable inner and outer sources. The Haitian government may help. But, in my experience any initiative they take that denies BIG BUSINESS their umpteenth profit, will be used against Haiti and Haitians, living at home and abroad. ” – Ezili Dantò 2007 from “Does the Western economic model and calculation of economic wealth fit Haiti, fit Dessalines’ idea of wealth distribution? NO!“
Video: CrossTalk – on first anniversary of earthquake
10 Things You Should Know About Slavery and Won”t Learn at ”Django”
Django Unchained: the pornication of Black history by Jean Damu
Feb 3, 2013 – Discussion on the film Django Unchained continues with human rights attorney Ezili Dantò. Dantò is also a writer, performance poet, and founder and President of Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN). Zili interviewed on Uhuru Radio for Diaspora Music with producer/host Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali about Quentin Tarantino’s film, Django Unchained, discussing the liberal white savior his “exceptional black” colonial blueprint model, its racism and imperial indoctrination in film for the masses
Felipe Luciano/WBAI interviews Ezili Dantò of HLLN on Haiti, three years after the earthquake. Broadcast on Jan 11, 2012
Civil Alert interview (177:03min): Ezili Dantò of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) speak on Haitian Revolution, current events and Haiti’s hidden history, January 3, 2013, Civil Alert/BlogTalkRadio.
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UN Capitalizing on its imported cholera to privatize clean water in poverty-stricken Haiti
The Haitian struggle – the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this planet http://bit.ly/2vqDXL
Janjak Desalin (Jean Jacques Dessalines) – The women who influenced him, his ideals and legacy remembered http://bit.ly/76fkOZ
The truth not so easily buried, will rise Aljazeera video & our own Yves Point Du Jour speaking the Haiti non-colonial narrative – http://bit.ly/12EQiU7
Red, Black & Moonlight (RBM) Video Reel
RBM series are written and performed by Ezili Dantò
Documents the often tragic journey of Haitians in the US and abroad for human justice, the monologues cover Vodun cosmology, Haitian history, culture and US humanitarian imperialism in Haiti, written 1998
Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism
by Kwame Nkrumah
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Down with Kagame, Museveni and Kabila! The imperialist war against Congo continues unabated!
Petty bourgeoisie parasites Paul Kagame (L), Yoweri Museveni and Joseph Kabila (R)
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