Commentary By Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
It has only been 10 days since a deadly 7.2 earthquake, followed by an intense tropical storm struck Haiti. There are now over 2,000 deaths, and hundreds of thousands of Haitians are homeless. In some ways, it feels like it has been 10 years, given the amount of mainstream media television coverage that has been allocated to the ongoing crisis for our Haitian neighbors.
Yes — I know the excuses. Afghanistan, COVID, Henri, yadda yadda...so much news, and yet in the 24 hour cycle that is cable news, very little of that time is dedicated to following what is happening in Haiti, and engaging the American public in helping. Efforts that were put underway to assist Haiti from the Biden administration have been buried in a shitstorm of Biden Afghanistan blaming and Republican posturing, aided and abetted by pundits and pontificators.
There have been some bright spots in coverage, mostly from print media, and I point specifically to the work of Miami Herald Caribbean Correspondent Jacqueline Charles. If you are not following her on social media, suggest you do so.
How this Haitian man lost five family members to the 7.2 magnitude earthquake
She wrote, in A week after powerful Haiti earthquake, families start to bury their dead
A week after the deadly 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck this community and rural regions across Southwestern Haiti, families have begun to bury their dead. On Saturday, it was Franck Morin’s turn. The government employee in the Ministry of Agriculture lost five family members, plus the sister of his sister-in-law, when both his home and that of his brother’s fell.
As he and his wife looked on at the caskets, the crowd around them wailed. In three of the four coffins were his mother, Marie Rose Morin, 86; his nephew, Kelly Phildor, 15; and his daughter, Wood-Langie, 10. The fourth coffin belonged to Carl Handy Valmont, 4, also killed.
As the ceremony got under way amid Creole hymns, a stoic Morin, 43, tried to remain strong as he consoled his wife, Judith Lysius. Wood-Langie, 10, was their only child. Outside the field, food distributions continued, and in the city of Les Cayes, a search and rescue team from Mexico continued to sift through the rubble for bodies using a live locator.
Serge Chery, the delegate for the region, said he hopes people can still be found alive. “We hope that, but we can’t say for certain,” he said.
It is important that we are given faces and stories of real people who are going through hell right now, reported by journalists that know Haiti. It helps that Charles is the daughter of a Haitian mother. However, the Miami Herald has a circulation of about 75.3 thousand readers, which is far different than the impact of national tv and cable news viewership.
I was doing quite a bit of searching for analysis of recent Haitian coverage, and still haven’t found much, however I stumbled upon a few items of interest. This study, analyzing the 2010 coverage could be applied today.
Media Portrayal of Haiti Problematic, Says UConn Researcher
“On the third anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, public policy professor Thomas Craemer says negative stereotypes of the island nation in the media are widespread.”
When many Americans hear the word “Haiti,” a host of negative associations may spring to mind: “poor,” “densely populated,” “over-crowded,” “aid-dependent.”
The media play a prominent role in shaping public perception of foreign countries, and such stereotypes of Haiti can often be found across the spectrum of the U.S. media, according to UConn professor of public policy Thomas Craemer. This is a problem, he says, not only because those epithets can paint a misleading picture, but because they can also affect how American citizens and governments act. “I think there is a chance that these stereotypes can affect foreign aid and foreign policy,” Craemer says. [...]
Craemer was surprised to find that the picture of Haiti as a terminally dysfunctional failed state wracked by violence and endemic corruption was more or less consistently reported across the spectrum of news media outlets: about 67 percent of sentences coded in the New York Times’ coverage reinforced stereotypes, for example, as did roughly 77 percent of sentences in the conservative Limbaugh radio program. Craemer cautions that the small sample size does not allow statistical comparisons among individual media outlets. However, despite the small sample size a statistically significant bias emerged for the sample as a whole. In future iterations of the project he hopes to expand the sample so that source-by-source comparisons can be obtained.
The bias in the overall sample of news stories is a problem because the media take a prominent role in shaping public perception of foreign countries, says Craemer, and the stereotypes about Haiti present a flawed portrait of the country. Haiti is undoubtedly a poor country, 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. This unique feature dates back to the early 1800s, when former slave plantations were redistributed among insurgent former slaves. Land is a source of pride, and provides subsistence for extended families despite their poverty.
I did a word search in current stories on Haiti, and found no difference from Cramer’s conclusions re 2010.
This made me think back to my years of AIDS research, and the unjust stigmatization of Haitians here as AIDS carriers. This of course was piled on top of racist portraits of Haitians as “devil worshipers” due to a complete distortion of the religious practice of Vodou, which stems from a time after Haitians overthrew enslavement with a successful revolution. (see Ojibwa's 2010 story, Haiti's Pact with the Devil)
Vodou is elusive and endangered, but it remains the soul of Haitian people
“Most Americans don’t know that they don’t know what Vodou really is,” explains Elizabeth McAlister, scholar of religion at Wesleyan University, specializing in Haitian Vodou. They think Vodou is about sorcery, maybe love magic, usually some sort of sinister practice.”
The 1920s and 1930s cinema – the heyday of B-films like White Zombie and pulp fiction – helped reinforce caricatures of Africans as hypersexualized, superstitious and demonic.
“The best thing that ever happened to racism is Vodou,” explains Ira Lowenthal, an anthropologist, Vodou arts collector and former aid worker originally from New Jersey, who has lived in Haiti for over 40 years. “They made up their stories about it and their stories confirmed every prejudice of every white person in the world. It tells that person from Ohio that they’re right about black people as scary and dangerous … you can actually see on a screen your own racist beliefs justified.”
While pondering other disconnects between the American public and Haiti, I forgot, that rarely do we hear from Haitians, other than those who are fairly privileged, simply because of language. Though most folks here assume “Haitians speak French” that is far from the truth, which was addressed recently in this article in Foreign Affairs
It is estimated that roughly 5 to 10 percent of Haitians are functionally bilingual in French and Haitian Creole. However, 100 percent of Haitians speak Haitian Creole, and, more critically, 90% of Haitians speak only Haitian Creole.
Very few English language users of social media will bother to follow news reports out of Haiti in Creole, like this one
My final thoughts on all of this has to do with the absence of “big social media influencers” for Haiti. If Beyoncé was a Haitian American she’d be interviewed 24/7 and would have a major impact. Think about it. Name me a very famous living Haitian-American who is seen regularly on talk shows and in interviews. When Trump botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, who stepped up the fundraising were folks like Lin Manuel, J-lo, Ricky Martin and Bad Bunny.
Who does Haiti have?
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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The Homestead community is outraged and some are calling for Police Chief Jeff Desimone to step down after a video surfaced of him in plain clothes yelling at a pregnant woman waiting in the drive-thru of a local Giant Eagle pharmacy.
The woman said she was picking up medication for her sick child -- whom you can hear coughing in the back seat -- and the pharmacy was really slow that day. She said the chief, who wasn’t in uniform, put on his lights to get her to leave. She declined to do so.
Channel 11 talked to Desimone on Thursday. He declined comment, but said he is on vacation and would not be at the Homestead council meeting to discuss calls for his resignation.
On Thursday night, Desimone was suspended without pay for three days.
NBC News screenshot
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Judges have restored voting rights to an estimated 55,000 North Carolinians on parole or probation for a felony.
GOP state lawmakers, who were defending the law in court, plan to appeal Monday’s ruling to a higher court. But if the ruling is upheld on appeal, then people convicted of felonies in North Carolina will regain their right to vote once they leave prison.
“Everyone on felony probation, parole or post-supervision release can now register and vote, starting today,” the challengers’ lawyer, Stanton Jones, said in a text message Monday morning after the ruling came down.
Most U.S. states allow people with felony records to regain their voting rights at some point after leaving prison, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some have the same rules North Carolina had until Monday’s ruling, requiring people to first finish their probation or parole. But a larger number have the rules that the judges have now switched North Carolina to, with people regaining their rights as soon as they leave prison.
It’s the biggest expansion of voting rights in North Carolina since the 1960s, said Daryl Atkinson, co-director of Durham civil rights group Forward Justice and a lawyer for the challengers in this case.
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Black people make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, but only account for 9 percent of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. Color Lines: Here's Why The Gap in COVID-19 Vaccines Continues to Widen
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The United States has more than enough COVID-19 vaccines readily available, and the World Health Organization (WHO) maintains that vaccines offer the strongest protections against deaths and hospitalizations. That still hasn’t stopped the persistent racial gap in who opts to get inoculated, which presents a grave danger to communities of color. Right now, federal figures show that predominantly Black counties have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, The Washington Post reports.
According to Vox:
At the start of July, the vaccination rate was about 15 percent lower for Black people than for white people in the US, and the rate for Hispanic people was about 3 percent lower.
…Recently, the gaps have begun to narrow, but disparities still remain, especially at the state level…Black people make up 12 percent of the US population but only account for 9 percent of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
“I get mad when I see the numbers,” Ala Stanford, a surgeon and founder of the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, told The Post. Her Philadelphia, PA-based organization had administered close to 50,000 vaccinations as of June 11, about 75 percent of which went to African American people. It’s like the city “just decided we are everybody Black in Philly’s answer,” she added. However, “It just can’t be me. What are the rest of y’all doing?”
Vox points to income level as being a major dividing line between who does and does not get inoculated. Low-wage earners are more likely to work in jobs that make it challenging to take time off, or to recover at home after receiving the shot. They are also likely to face barriers like securing transportation to clinics.
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We will be the guinea pig,” said Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s president, before trade talks with America opened last year. A deal would make Kenya only the second African country after Morocco to sign a free-trade agreement with the United States. Officials in the Trump administration called the proposed deal “a model” for future ones. But such bilateral talks jar with Africa’s push for regional integration and with President Joe Biden’s emphasis on multilateralism. Negotiations are now on hold while America works out what to do next.
The pause reflects a sense of drift in Africa’s trade relations with the West, as both America and Europe rethink how they do business with the continent. In the past they granted concessions, such as lower tariffs on African exports, without requiring African countries to reciprocate. Now they are increasingly looking to negotiate two-way agreements which will open up African markets, too. The old approach was paternalistic and gave Africans little say. But the new one, handled badly, could put Africa’s own integration at risk.
Since 2000 American policy has been built around the African Growth and Opportunity Act (agoa), which grants duty-free access to thousands of products exported from around 40 eligible countries. It was a law passed by Congress, not a treaty negotiated between governments, so African countries have no control over the eligibility criteria. That creates friction. Rwanda, for example, was partially suspended in 2018 because its ban on imported second-hand clothes, intended to boost local production, irked the American firms that export them.
Now African countries must wait anxiously to see if Congress will extend agoa beyond its current expiry date in 2025. The uncertainty makes business “too unpredictable”, sighs a Ugandan technocrat. Kenya’s push for a fully fledged trade deal with America is an attempt to seize the initiative. It also draws on the promise of agoa itself, which was always envisaged as a stepping stone towards negotiated pacts.
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In the lawless provinces of the Central African Republic, a deep hole has been dug into the bare earth of a military base. Measuring some 20 feet deep by 12 feet wide, this grim pit is used by Russian mercenaries and federal troops as a black site to detain anyone suspected of rebel sympathies, two sources familiar with its existence told Foreign Policy.
Food and water are seldom provided. Men and women are held together, exposed to blistering heat or torrential rain, with no access to toilets. Release is only granted when a relative pays hundreds of dollars—a huge sum in what is one of the poorest countries in the world. “Even if you’re innocent, you have to pay,” said a local source who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearful of reprisals.
“Everyone came into contact with the rebels when they were here, so, in the Russians’ eyes, anyone is a suspect,” a U.N. source said. “People thought life couldn’t get any worse. But it’s got worse.”
While denied by the Russian authorities, the use of this squalid, secret jail in the town of Bambari epitomizes the brutal and counterproductive strategy pursued by CAR’s government and its Russian allies to claw back territory held by rebel militias for years. After a coalition of insurgents launched an offensive last December, Moscow’s paramilitary units joined government forces to repel them and have been gaining ground nationwide since.
Yet their punishing counterattack has come at a steep cost. The military operation is devastating communities, exacerbating grievances, and causing a spate of human rights abuses—all paving the way for greater conflict to come.
A dirty war is unfolding in the country’s impoverished hinterland, mostly hidden from view as journalists are banned from leaving the capital, Bangui. With pro-government forces on one side and an unruly array of rebels on the other, civilians are trapped between marauding forces, subjected to disappearances, sexual violence, torture, and execution.
U.N. peacekeepers go on patrol through the rebel-held town of Bria, Central African Republic, on Feb. 9, 2018. JACK LOSH
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HBCU officials say the political climate and calls for racial justice are also factors in the enrollment boom based on student majors.
“We are attracting students who have a significant interest in social justice and an interest in addressing what they see as the ills of society,” Chief Academic Officer Anthony Wutoh added.
For some HBCU schools, the popularity of their alumni has led to an increased focus and enrollment. That includes Vice President Kamala Harris, who attended HU, voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams, who attended Spelman College, and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who attended Florida A&M University.
Additionally, HBCU athletics is also enjoying the moment as top basketball and football recruits have committed to HBCU schools. Additionally, actors and athletes have partnered with HBCU schools for several showcase tournaments.
An HBCU provides a way to achieve higher learning with like-minded students who share the same experiences and fears about entering college as other Black students.
Due to the rise in enrollment and awareness of racial inequity, a number of national and international corporations have also entered talent pipeline partnerships with HBCU schools. Google, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, Boeing, and many others have committed funds and resources to HBCUs.
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH.
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
