Haitian color caste system

[Yup]

I am new here. Been lurking the coli for 3 months but this topic made me want to reply. Haiti's problems is a mix of selfish corruption and international oppression. The only people that fix Haiti is Haitians ourselves. The problem is that many of them would rather complain then get together. Ill say this if the entire Haitian diaspora got together on a goal to fix Haiti in 10 years Haiti will turn around. The idea of another country to colonize us again is foolish at best. It will take Haitians to fix Haiti not a foreign power that probably doesny care about us.

Interesting you say this. Some posters are making it sound that international politics wad nit at play...HAiti would be peachy.

 

[ZoeGod]

Haiti's problems could be fixed its just the political leaders are so busy trying to get power and money but forgetting where they come from. Add upon this international intrigue on the island the country cant move. Like someone said earlier Haiti needs a nationalist party and a new elite. Get a bunch of nationalist Diaspora millionaires or 6 figure earning folk together and do a Koch brothers like takeover of Haiti. That means creating a venture capitalist group to buy media, buisnesses etc. Then when you do that you fund a powerful Haitian nationalist party to dictate your own agenda. The amount of wealth the Diaspora has pales in comparison what the elite in Haiti has.

It all comes down to money and not depending on white and asian nations to help us. Same with the black community in America money is one way to change things. Black nationalist in general is the solution for black nations and black people.

 

[OfTheCross]

but won't let you in on the foreign invaders and policy that turned Haiti on its head.

What were some of the policies?

Haiti had a constant shift of power between dark-skinned rulers, and light-skinned(mulatto) rulers. Petion(although he was Mulatto) still had African roots. How many heavily Black countries in the Caribbean and or Latin America have had at the very LEAST a light skinned(Mulatto) African descended leader? Haiti(like many countries) has colorism issues, but Haiti has ALWAYS had Black leaders. ALL have been dark-skinned or Afro-Euro mixed mulattos.

You can't say Haiti has always had black leaders and then say they've had mulattoes as well...

Mullatos aren't black in Haiti

Jean-Claude hapenned. Then NemPhi happenned. and so on and so forth

What's nemphi? Google didn't help

 

[intruder]

What were some of the policies?



You can't say Haiti has always had black leaders and then say they've had mulattoes as well...

Mullatos aren't black in Haiti



What's nemphi? Google didn't help

Henri Namphy

 

[BigMan]

What were some of the policies?



You can't say Haiti has always had black leaders and then say they've had mulattoes as well...

Mullatos aren't black in Haiti



What's nemphi? Google didn't help

14. All acception (sic) of colour among the children of one and the same family, of whom the chief magistrate is the father, being necessarily to cease, the Haytians shall hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of Blacks

http://www2.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/1805-const.htm

 

[OfTheCross]

Haiti: 1805 Constitution

They don't get categorized together:

Ethnic groups:
black 95%, mulatto and white 5%

Haitian embassy

That line you posted was removed from the Constitution more than 200 years ago

 

[BigMan]

They don't get categorized together:



That line you posted was removed from the Constitution more than 200 years ago

They don't get categorized together:



That line you posted was removed from the Constitution more than 200 years ago

Every ones a neg in Creole tho

 

[ZoeGod]

Most haitians have family that are light skin. My pops is from Aux Cayes and my moms is from Petit Gouave both sides have mulattos. Plus we dont call them mulattos. We call them grimo I think that is the spelling. My grandmother has family in a place call Fond de blanc.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

old thread but I've been meaning to post about this:

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I've seen many quotes like this (Liberian rulers vs Haitian rulers, of the time period) from black leaders in the 19th century all the way up to Garvey in the 20th century. The thing is, I was wondering why they kept saying this...also if it was the reason Haiti "Noir" term (translates to black) doesn't actually mean "racially black or african descent" in the ways ADOS use it---> old thread The Black Authority, The Black Channel, and The Business

What's the difference between Haitian Blackness and AA Blackness? I don't feel like reading all of that.

basically, afram "black" predates but lines up with the one drop rule and disregards phenotype as long as you have the genetic descent of africa while the code noir from france made haiti have 3 tier caste system

The Code Noir (The Black Code)

The Code Noir (The Black Code) · LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: EXPLORING THE FRENCH REVOUTION

and the one in their constitution when they became a free nation isn't actually a race-genetic based label but one signify that all the citizens regardless of race, were Haitians (Polish for example are not "black" but they were noirs in haiti)


Race and the Haitian Constitution of 1805

“Disrupting any biologistic or racialist expectations,” Sibylle Fischer argues in Modernity Disavowed, “they make ‘black’ a mere implication of being Haitian and thus a political rather than a biological category.”[4] Not only did the label erase previous racial distinctions between “black” and “white” residents, it attempted to undermine the importance of national, linguistic, and color differences within the non-white population. “This new ‘black,’” Jean Casimir argues, “encompassed the various ethnic groups that had been involved in the struggle against the Western vision of mankind. Victory in adversity gave birth to this new character, which was a synthesis not only of Ibos, Aradas, and Hausas but also of French, Germans, and Poles.”[5]

The elimination of difference was important because, as Colin Dayan notes, “the most problematic division in the new Haiti was that between anciens libres (the former freedmen, who were mostly gens de couleurs, mulattoes and their offspring) and nouveaux libres (the newly free, who were mostly black), Dessalines attempted by linguistic means and by law to defuse the color issue.”[6]

Doris Garraway highlights Dessalines’s use of what she calls “negative universalism” in the constitution—an emphasis on what Haitians were not: “it is the excluded term—whiteness—that conditions the political definition of the collectivity, seen as its opposite, the ‘black’ other that was previously reproved by white power and that now symbolizes not a biological essence but an absolute resistance to white racial supremacy

The Spanish translation now held by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries promises to fuel the continuing scholarly attention to the 1805 constitution. For example, the document capitalizes “Negro” whereas the official printed copy issued by the Haitian government keeps “noirs” in lowercase. The Haitian Kreyòl word “nèg” refers to a person, regardless of skin color where as the word “blan” (derived from the French “blanc” or “white”) generally means “foreigner.” Given that Jean-Jacques Dessalines did not speak French fluently, did the 1805 constitution intend to label all Haitian citizens as “black” or as “people”? Or, did the 1805 constitution encourage the evolution of the term “noir” or “nèg” to signify the universality of all citizens?

Race and the Haitian Constitution of 1805

Social class in Haiti

In the colonial period, the French imposed a three-tiered social structure. At the top of the social and political ladder was the white elite (grands blancs). At the bottom of the social structure were the black slaves (noirs), most of whom had been transported from Africa. Between the white elite and the slaves arose a third group, the freedmen (affranchis), most of whom were descended from unions of slave owners and slaves. Some Mulatto freedmen inherited land, became relatively wealthy, and owned slaves (perhaps as many as one-fourth of all slaves in Saint-Domingue belonged to affranchis). Nevertheless, racial codes kept the affranchis socially and politically inferior to the whites. Also between the white elite and the slaves were the poor whites (pet*ts blancs), who considered themselves socially superior to the Mulattoes, even if they sometimes found themselves economically inferior to them. Of a population of 519,000 in 1791, 87 percent were slaves, 8 percent were whites, and 5 percent were freedmen. Because of harsh living and working conditions, many slaves died, and new slaves were imported. Thus, at the time of the slave rebellion of 1791, most slaves had been born in Africa rather than in Saint-Domingue.[1]

The Haitian Revolution changed the country's social structure. The colonial ruling class, and most of the white population, was eliminated, and the plantation system was largely destroyed. The earliest black and mulatto leaders attempted to restore a plantation system that relied on an essentially free labor force, through strict military control (see Independent Haiti, ch. 6), but the system collapsed during the tenure of Alexandre Pétion (1806–18). The Haitian Revolution broke up plantations and distributed land among the former slaves. Through this process, the new Haitian upper class lost control over agricultural land and labor, which had been the economic basis of colonial control. To maintain their superior economic and social position, the new Haitian upper class turned away from agricultural pursuits in favor of more urban-based activities, particularly government.[1]

The nineteenth-century Haitian ruling class consisted of two groups: the urban elite and the military leadership. The urban elite were primarily a closed group of educated, comparatively wealthy, and French-speaking Mulattoes. Birth determined an individual's social position, and shared values and intermarriage reinforced class solidarity. The military, however, was a means of advancement for disadvantaged black Haitians. In a shifting, and often uneasy, alliance with the military, the urban elite ruled the country and kept the peasantry isolated from national affairs. The urban elite promoted French norms and models as a means of separating themselves from the peasantry. Thus, French language and manners, orthodox Roman Catholicism, and light skin were important criteria of high social position. The elite disdained manual labor, industry, and commerce in favor of the more genteel professions, such as law and medicine.[1]

A small, but politically important, middle class emerged during the twentieth century. Although social mobility increased slightly, the traditional elite retained their economic preeminence, despite countervailing efforts by François Duvalier. For the most part, the peasantry continued to be excluded from national affairs, but by the 1980s, this isolation had decreased significantly. Still, economic hardship in rural areas caused many cultivators to migrate to the cities in search of a higher standard of living, thereby increasing the size of the urban lower class.[1]

John
Haiti does not abide by the one drop rule. Far from it! The racist hatred against the dark-skinned Haitian masses from the wealthy business mulatto, Middle Eastern (primarily Syrian and Lebanese), and white French elites is like Apartheid era South Africa.

Until the 1960s, with the rule of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier," a Black Haitian my complexion (I'm the same color as the actor, Denzel Washington,) was not even seen in exclusive mulatto social clubs like the Bellevue, the Port-au-Prince Country Club, or any of the wealthy clubs in Petionville, just outside Port-au-Prince.

In Haiti it goes like this:
The elite: Blanc (white), mulatre (mulatto,) and post Duvalier several dark-skinned Blacks have joined this class, but mulattoes still hold economic power.

Blanc: The word means white, literally, but there are many dark-skinned Haitian-Americans, Haitian-Canadians and Haitian-Europeans who return to Haiti with wealth and education acquired abroad, and paradoxically they are often referred to as "Blancs". Blanc also refers to white foreign wives and husbands of Haitians who have moved to Haiti. Dominicans living in Haiti of any complexion are usually called Dominicain.

Griffe: A light skinned mulatto, usually with green or hazel eyes. Hair can be wavy or curly.

Marabout: A very dark brown "black" person with European features and naturally straight hair. They are NOT considered to be the same as a "black".

Negre: A Black person. They comprise the masses of Haitians. It is practically unheard of for a "negre", a "noir," to marry a mulatre or a griffe UNLESS that negre has lots of money and comes from a Black elite family.

AFRO-EUROPE: Video: Black in the Caribbean - Race and class in Haiti and Jamaica


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so basically it seems like the OG French colorline came back to heavy usage because of a mulatto faction of leaders in Haiti, post independence, even though Dessalines (pure black) tried to combat this problem by calling everyone regardless of their actual race, "Noir"

Boyer

 

[mson]

Haiti's problems could be fixed its just the political leaders are so busy trying to get power and money but forgetting where they come from. Add upon this international intrigue on the island the country cant move. Like someone said earlier Haiti needs a nationalist party and a new elite. Get a bunch of nationalist Diaspora millionaires or 6 figure earning folk together and do a Koch brothers like takeover of Haiti. That means creating a venture capitalist group to buy media, buisnesses etc. Then when you do that you fund a powerful Haitian nationalist party to dictate your own agenda. The amount of wealth the Diaspora has pales in comparison what the elite in Haiti has.

It all comes down to money and not depending on white and asian nations to help us. Same with the black community in America money is one way to change things. Black nationalist in general is the solution for black nations and black people.

This is a great post. I overlooked this. I've had a similar ideas.