CHAPTER I :
WESTERN POLICY VERSUS THE BLACKS

As indicated in our introduction, the mistrust existing between the West and the Negro world is to be encountered at all levels, especially the political level, and thus also the economic level. Westerners have been dominant and Blacks have been subject to their domination. This relationship is manifested in the case of Haiti, which we use as an example. In this context, we introduce an analysis of the political evolution of Haiti in relation to the West, plus a letter that was sent to the country’s leader, Jean Bertrand Aristide.

HAITI AT THE DAWN OF THE “STAR PEACE”

“Something must change here,” Pope John Paul II stated while visiting Haiti in March 1983. Certainly, the Holy Father was referring to the state of repression in that country, but he was doubtless also alluding to something vaster and deeper, a change of attitude on the part of the West toward the Negro world.

DUVALIER OR CÉDRAS: NOTHING MORE THAN DOCILE “TOOLS”

The White House announced the fall of both President Jean-Claude Duvalier and General Raoul Cédras before they even occurred. Does that not reveal foreknowledge of their downfall? Was it not a brutal way of telling the Haitian people that, like their ancestors, their future depends on their Western masters? Through its past and present actions, has not the United States always shown itself to be the only true master of that island, with the Duvaliers and other dictators being no more than Uncle Sam’s docile “tools?”

The problem of repressive regimes like those of the Duvaliers, Cédras, etc., is actually no more than the consequences of a vaster, much deeper problem which motivates the conscious and unconscious attitudes of the so-called Christian world in relation to the Black world.

On this topic, a French scholar, Roger Bastide, wrote: “The great Christian dichotomy is the one between black and white. White is supposed to express purity and black, evil. That means the opposition of Christ and Satan, spiritual and carnal life, good and evil, which finally amounts to that. opposition between whiteness and blackness which supersedes all the others. Even for the blind person who knows nothing but night’s darkness, words uttered or heard suffice to create the dance of devils, as they do for the sighted: “a black soul”, “the blackness of an action”, “dark deeds”, “the innocent whiteness of the lily”, “the candor of a child”, “to whitewash a crime”, etc. These are not just nouns and adjectives.”

Whiteness refers to light, the ascension into lightness, to untouched, immaculate snow, to the flight of the Holy Ghost’s doves, to clear transparency, while blackness remains the landscape of Hell, the color of the devil, the bowels of the earth, infernal lava. This word-idea association functions automatically, since our thought processes are so enslaved to our language, whenever a white man is in contact with a black man. Mario de Andrade justly denounced the evil effects of that Christian symbolism found at the source of color prejudice. In America, when a Negro is accepted, people say, “He’s black all right, but he has a white soul.” [our translation] They say that in order to separate that man from the rest of his race.

Duvalier or Cédras may be gone, or on the way out, but the new Haitian regime will no doubt be just as repressive and corrupt, if it obeys a “master” who despises the black man. Only the true independence of this Caribbean country, fully assuming its identity, will allow the Haitian people to free itself from the yoke constituted by the master-slave relationship. Such an independence will not really be achieved without a fundamental change in the behavior of those who have the means of perpetuating their domination on the black world, for in our opinion, that’s where “something must change first.”

THE WEST : SLAVE OF ANTI-NEGRO PREJUDICES

Today we are very familiar with the mechanisms the so-called Christian West has used to spread and justify anti-Negro prejudices. Numerous Western scholars have had the courage to denounce such behavior. Among those scholars, let us mention again the French anthropologist Roger Bastide, who explains how Christianity entails a certain “color” symbolism which, at first sight, appears harmless. Healsoemphasizes that thereis infinitely more in anti-Black racism than the effect of that symbolism. This is particularly true of its economic roots.

Thus, he writes:

“When some Christians wanted to justify slavery by explaining that the “blackness” of the skin was a punishment inflicted by God — the curse on Cain (the murderer of his brother), the curse on Ham (Noah’s son), who uncovered his father’s nakedness — they were using the symbolism of “blackness”, but beyond that symbolism, they were inventing ethological tales destined to justify in their own eyes a system of production based on the exploitation of black workers imported from Africa.” [our translation]

The fatal consequences of the anti-Black prejudices spread by so-called Christian civilization have been clearly demonstrated on the socio-political level: slavery, racial conflict, apartheid, etc. And the harmful, and even lethal, character of those prejudices is such that even the scientific realm, which one would have believed to be immune to this contamination, does not seem to have been spared.

This fact is all the more obvious in the realm of sciences considered to be exact, such as optics. Indeed, as soon as we start studying that branch of science, which has to do with light in all its aspects, we are faced with ambiguities, with vagueness, with doubtful, fanciful and even contradictory interpretations. The concept of “color” that stems from scientific experimentation is based on the demonstration in 1665 by the well-known English scientist Isaac Newton. This experiment consists in running a visible light ray called “white light” through a prism in a dark room, breaking down that light into a continuous spectrum encompassing all the colors. It is not difficult to discover that such an experiment and its consequences are far from being scientific or conclusive.

It should not be forgotten that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the best-known German writer and a highly respected scholar, fought a determined battle against what he called “Newton’s error”. In his opinion, “That transparent lightness which shows itself in darkness is the proof of the law according to which light is nothing else than a mixture of light and darkness, assuming different degrees.” [our translation] The famous American professor Carl Sagan is in complete agreement with Goethe. According to him, the darkness of space jealously hides incredible resources which would be beneficial to science. In state-of-the-art research (in astrophysics, for instance), he finds a set of anti-Black prejudices that, in his opinion, represent brakes on the pursuit of new discoveries in the Space Age.

He said:

“After Apollo, scientists were discouraged. Do you know why they were disheartened? Because the sky above the Moon is black. That made them depressed. Do you think this is a joke? Not at all. Scientists are more fragile than they look. But the sky on Mars is rose-colored and that gave them hope.” [our translation]

Today a few scholars, who have noticed “that dark light which falls from the stars”, have suggested a redefinition of the word “light”. That is to say, we must reject Newton’s Law of Colors. It is becoming more and more evident that, on the cosmic scale as well as the terrestrial plane, blackness is an integral part of color and light.

Thus we see that the anti-Black prejudices deeply anchored in Western culture seriously hinder the natural advancement of science. They constitute a practically insurmountable handicap in the relations between the West and the Black world. The true solution to the Haitian problem has to be a long-term one. The search for “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, the source of truth and “light”, requires constant efforts.

Lucien Bonnet

The above article was published in the Montreal daily newspaper Le Devoir on February 26, 1986, in the wake of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s downfall, and sent to Time magazine on October 12, 1994.