Fields: Haitians Need To Assimilate
BY SAM FIELDS
Guest Columnist
After graduating from college in 1966, I mentioned to my grandmother that I would be taking a trip to Europe.
Without hesitation she advised me not to go. “I was there and you wouldn’t like it.
The last time she was there was 1906 when she emigrated from what is today the western Ukraine. She never once went back and never once spoke longingly for anything about the “old country.
She loved America in a way that only immigrants from oppression and poverty can appreciate.
I bring this up because a Herald piece by Michael Putney mentions here that among the slush fund expenditures by Dade County Commissioner Audrey Edmondson was $5000 for Haitian Flag Day.
Apparently there is a portion of the Miami Haitian community that believes there is still something about Haiti worth celebrating.
Let me make it clear—-Haiti is a shithole that will never change for the better.
It obtained independence from France in 1804. It had been two hundred years of rape.
Raping the economy, raping the environment, raping freedom not to mention raping women. Next to refugees, it’s biggest export is AIDS.
It will never get better because it is a Medieval, feudal, Roman Catholic culture overlaid by voodoo.
National culture is everything. It says more about the fate of nation than anything including natural resources and geography.
Is there anything about Haiti worth celebrating?
Yes. Getting the hell out and never going back.
So let’s consider replacing Haitian Flag Day with Wipe Your Ass With And Burn The Haitian Flag Day.
I might contribute to that.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
People leave their nations of birth and come live in America for many reasons.
Some come here simply to seek a better opportunity to earn a living and raise their families. Some are refugees — they seek refuge or asylum from racial, ethnic or religious persecution. Some look forward to a new life and others come here because they have no choice other than to leave. The latter tend to regret that circumstance won’t allow them to live in their country of birth, the former tend to care less about the country they left behind.
Some embrace the opportunity to assimilate, others assimilate to lesser degrees, and some choose not to assimilate at all. In America they are free to do as they want. Some that come here want to forget their country of birth. Others can never forget or don’t want to forget it.
Some come here with the thought that they will live here forever. Others imagine that their stay here will be short-lived and that some day they will be able to return to their nation of origin.
Whatever the motivation, whatever the mindset, as they have kids that grow up here, those kids tend is to assimilate to a greater degree than their parents, yet they also preserve their heritage.
As successive generations go by, the ties to the old country are less and less strong and the association with the new country becomes stronger. Such has always been the case with American immigration. When the Irish came here in avoidance of the potato famine, they did so because they had to, not so much because they wanted to, and generally they lamented not being able to live out their lives in Ireland.
Jews, seeking asylum during the 1930’s, came here gladly to save their lives but also with a sense of regret that they could not live in peace in the nations where they were born.
Others, like the Eastern Europeans, who had suffered great political injustice and poverty, were only too happy to close that terrible chapter in their lives and open a new one without looking back.
I hate to break it to you Sam but there is not, and never has been any one recipe for how to be an American immigrant. This melting pot theory, however attractive to some here, has never been what America is all about. America is more of a stew — a uniform taste, but you can see the individual pieces in the pot. It does not today and has never melted together into any homogenious whole.
Haitians are no exception. They have a history that is both sad and proud. Haiti is a profoundly impovershed and challenged nation that has never found the ability to lift themselves out of their government corruption and misery. Their condition is not because they are bad people. It is not because they don’t want to be a greater people. It’s because they need help. That nation has cried out to the advanced world for help so that they can become a better nation. We must find ways to help the Haitian people develop Haiti so that it can enjoy greater economic and social prosperity.
As America adopts a greater understanding of the world; as we make a greater effort to become world citizens and not just citizens of this country, we will gain a greater understanding of what the world truly is. We will learn what we can do to help make it better, and in so doing help make ourselves better also.
Suggestions such as those made by the guest columnist are insensitive and crass, vulgar and thoughtless, utterly unsophisticated, ignorant and intollerant. It is also unavoidably racist, even if unintentionally, since the majority of Haitians are black. Thinking like that takes us further from the goal and is a shameful throw back to days that need to disappear into history.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Thank you for proving that racism (and historical myopia) is alive and well in 2009.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
For a little perspective on this, Mr. Fields, you may want to check what the Dilligham Commission, created by the U.S. Congress in 1907, had to say about immigrants such as your grandmother.
It concluded that the immigrants from southern and eastern Europe posed a serious threat to American (Anglo-Saxon) society, that they disproportionately contributed to crime in our urban area, and that they had little allegiance to the United States and were not assimilating into the mainstream of American life.
June 3rd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
The difference between the Haitians and the Irish, Jews and other East Europeans is that they were generally oppressed by a foreign occupier that directly or constructively evicted them from their own country.
Haitians have self governed for over 200 years. After the United States, Haiti was the second nation in the Western Hemisphere to obtain independence.
While the United States occasionally invaded to bring stability–a stupid, doomed effort—overwhelmingly Haitians have brought this tragedy on themselves.
This is not a racist analysis. If it were racial I would also be attacking the rest of the Black Caribbean nations which number over a dozen. By any reasonable world standard they are ok.
Haiti sucks. That’s why people are “dieing‖literally and figuratively–to get out of to get out of there.
Back in the 1970’s I had a Haitian girlfriend and she would have been the first one to say that Haiti was a great place to be from…far from.
Stop the name calling and apologizing for Haiti because they are Black. That is the real racism. On the other hand given a choice of an island vacation some of you might actually prefer Haiti to Jamaica or Tortola. Not me.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Hay Sam, I hate to be the one to break it to you but if not for Haiti we wouldn’t have “DO DO THAT VOODOO THAT YOU DO SO WELL.”
that if not for Hati we would not have “do do that vodoo that you do so well.”
June 4th, 2009 at 7:18 am
did grandma have a pony in the old country?
June 5th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
or – The Man With The Voodoo Who Do You Do
November 11th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Great post, Haiti is a terrible place – don’t you just feel sorry for a country that kills itself (literally).
January 16th, 2010 at 6:24 am
France is at least partly to blame for the situation in Haiti, not just the Haitians themselves.
After the Napoleonic wars had ended, the French imposed a huge, multi-million dollar debt on Haiti to compensate for both French colonialists who had been killed, and also French land and property that had been seized. It took Haiti over 120 years to pay it off.
There was the implicit threat that if Haiti refused to repay it, then the French would first embargo, then reinvade and recolonize the country.
January 16th, 2010 at 7:16 am
Yes it’s true that the French continued to negatively impact Haiti after 1804.
And the British burned our capital in 1812.
Every country has a history of outsiders causing trouble. In the 1820’s Haiti invaded and occupied the Dominican Republic for twenty years.
Everybody has a sad story. The problem arises when it becomes the volksgeist of a country.
Haiti ranks 168 out of 180 nations on the corruption scale. You want to blame that on Paris?
Haiti has a culture incompatible with modernity.
Five years from now the place will still be shithole and Haitians will be pointing the finger at the a heartless world.
But, as my sixth grade teacher used to say, when you point a finger a someone else there are three pointing back at you.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:37 am
Why is it when someone says anything negative about Blacks or a Black Country, it’s racist? Haiti IS a shithole that was run for a long time by greedy dictators who put every cent into their own pockets and the pockets of close friends. I live in the Atlanta area and the media is so afraid of being politically incorrect that they can’t even mention the race of an offender when reporting violent crime. We all remember before this censorship and at least 90% of violent crime was commited by Blacks. Haiti should have crumbled to pieces and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
January 26th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Not everything is misrepresented or misunderstood. Fields is right. Haiti is a shithole. A disease infested shithole, a corrupt disease infested shithole, a ….you get the idea.
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:23 pm
WRONG! The last thing America needs is for Haitians to assimilate!! Why would we want these morons coming over here and assimilating?!?!
It’s not the geography that is a shithole, it’s the people and we have enough a$$holes here already thank you.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Yes I will contribute to that also.
I think sinking the dammed place would be a blessing to the rest of the world. Missionaries for Gods sake, put in jail for trying to save thier maggot ridden kids. Give it up as a lost cause all you
WARM HEARTED CHRISTIANS AND HELP THE PEOPLE WHO NEED right here in the USA. THERE ARE PLENTY TO CHOOSE FROM. KEEP YOUR ASSES AT HOME AND DO YOUR GOOD WORKS.
February 6th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
I agree 110% with Mr. Fields and with Alex’s posting of February 4. One of these missionaries who is accused of “child trafficking” is a firefighter from my hometown here in Kansas. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE??? And what is NOBama doing about it? Probably nothing – same as he’s doing about the horrid US economy. I felt badly when the earthquake hit there but now I say the hell with them. To have the nerve to pull this stunt with our people whose only “crime” was trying to help these people’s kids. They’re lucky I’m not in the White House; I’d kick the crap out of those corrupt politicians and that terrorist/police force down there and then bring all of our people home and give them absolutely NOTHING ever again. The people who run that country have only run it into the ground – literally. As a person here in the US who is desperately needing a job, I’m offended in the first place at the billions that are given in foreign aid – especially with this little craphole country which has done absolutely nothing but turn around and slap us in the face. And, like I say, NOBama isn’t doing anything because I guess dat he don’t wanna offend da broddas. Before anyone accuses me of racism, I voted for the guy so don’t even go there.
May 18th, 2013 at 3:58 pm
Mr. Fields, you are DISGUSTING.