I’ll have to break the article up into pieces because posting it wholesale wasn’t working.
As Haiti Burns, Never Forget: White People Did That
On Saturday, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti warned American citizens, volunteers and missionaries in Haiti to stay in place and hunker down after angry demonstrators attempted to get past a barricade and security guards at a Port-au-Prince hotel.
CNN reports that American Airlines, JetBlue and the Spirit Airlines (whose official slogan is: “We’re like a Greyhound bus with wings”) canceled all flights to Haiti following unrest in the country related to rising fuel prices, corruption and widespread poverty.
When comparing them side-by-side, the story of the American Revolution ain’t got shit on the history of Haiti. For black people, Haiti represents the most beautiful story of strength, resistance and freedom that has ever been told. It is the story of a people who thrust off the chains of bondage and took their liberty from the hands of their oppressors.
For others, Haiti is a tragedy. There are some, whose names do not deserve mention, who even refer to it as a “shithole country.” But when discussing anything having to do with the country of Haiti, we should never forget that every bit of struggle in Haiti is related to the legacy of slavery, capitalism and American hypocrisy.
As unrest envelops Haiti once again, it is important for us to remember that Haiti suffers from a worldwide collusion between America and European countries intent on making the tropical paradise suffer. To blame Haiti’s problems on white people is not a harebrained hypothesis. It is an unbelievably treacherous fact that it often sounds like a kooky conspiracy theory.
Yes, Haiti is poor. Yes, there is widespread government corruption in the country. But there is also one other unignorable fact: White people did this.
“In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
Christopher Columbus never set foot on North American soil. While there is some debate about where he first landed in the Caribbean (partly because he was a terrible navigator), we know he arrived on the island of Hispaniola on December 5, 1492.