Black : A Dichotomy

I have each leg on a different shore. I have each leg on a different shore and between them lies a violent ocean that so long ago turned humans into property and a continent rich with history into a mother grieving the loss of her children. I feel like a character in a story that I don’t even know and I have to resolve a conflict that I’m in the middle of without knowing which side I’m on. I’m losing. 

This had been going on ever since I was born in a country that was foreign to my parents, waging a war, obvious but silent between my very patriotic father and my very pragmatic mother. More than an argument between a newlywed couple, it was a battle between the desire to stay true to your country and the necessity to make a practical decision for a baby’s future. It didn’t make sense that a practical decision was to renounce your nationality but reality isn’t always logical. And so a choice between citizenships . I could either be a citizen of a country where the tortured souls of ancient slaves still live in the inability of a nation to come together or I could be a citizen of a country where it is easier to get a gun than a green card. They chose the latter and with the passing of time came a brief truce, the blink of an eye, and a semblance of peace until the fire of the war was refueled by a spark of ambition because the only way to succeed as a Haitian is to do so outside of Haiti.

They say your experiences define you more than your origins do. My origins are Haitian but my experience is African American . It can be hard for people to understand why these two things differ because race and ethnicity are difficult concepts that are often used interchangeably and few people actually know about Black ethnic divides. Black is a race and it can’t be reduced to one ethnic group, regardless of who that makes uncomfortable. The minimization of the term Black is solely an attempt to minimize the worldwide cruelty against Black people and to justify their enslavement, genodicide and dehumanization. But the Black experience has never been a geographic thing.In fact there is something remarkable, magical even in the capacity of a billion hearts scattered all around the world, to unite in one spirit and to fight for the same cause. Because whether it is in Yoruba, French, English, Creole, Patois, Swahili, your struggle is still the Black Struggle. It’s a fight that we all share no matter where we are in the world. It doesn’t stop at the people who experienced slavery or at the people who are descendants of slaves, but at anyone who looks like a descendant of a slave. It’s a fight that I fought as Haitian, growing up in a country where they glorify western culture and whiteness and everyone’s ultimate goal is still to look as much like the colonizer as possible. It’s a fight that I still fight, although now on a different battlefront, living in a country that is built for by black people for white people.

You can take a woman out of Haiti but you can not take Haiti out of her. When I moved across the ocean, I tried to bring as much of my little island with me as I could. My language, my favorite foods, the mat that I sat on when my mom braided my hair and the smell of my grandmother’s coffee were all in my suitcase in the form of memories.I traveled with my perception of the world, my rules and my beliefs, folded in between two pages of my passport with no idea that they would all soon be challenged.  I arrived at what was deemed the home of the brave and the land of the free to find that it was majoritarily propaganda. I may be mistaken but I don’t think there is anything brave about murdering humans out of impulse  or anything free about caging refugees seeking asylum.Who’s home is it even if the original owners live on reservations left in despicable conditions and the tenants have declared themselves landlord?  As I was becoming conscious of my surroundings, it hit me that I no longer had any idea who I was anymore. When I was in Haiti, I thought I had it all. It’s easy to naturally abide by the norms of the society you grow up in and to live by its values. My environment had played a major role in shaping my personality but now that it was different, I felt like I didn’t fit in. Everything I knew only existed 1617 miles away and I was lost. My home had disappeared so I shifted my focus to the closest version of it I could find. My people weren’t here so I turned to the people that looked like them the most. I had barely managed to convince myself that it was enough, when I started having doubts. I didn’t know if I was ready to carry the weight of African-American life in the United States.  Although my ancestors had never experienced things like Jim Crow or Red Lining, I am currently feeling the remnants of them, like running my hands over lash marks on a back.  I had never been more aware of my skin color. I had never realized that the color of one’s skin came with the unravelling of a legacy I was not privy to. But even more than that, I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not in accepting to do so, I was betraying my Haitianness. 

At first it was hard to know which side I was on. I couldn’t decide who I was fighting for, which belligerent I identified with the most.I didn’t know what part I was supposed to play. When I’m in Haiti I’m the American girl, “diaspora a” but when I’m in the United States, I’m the black girl to the white community and the Haitian girl to the Black community. In between these two realities, I am no one. It seems as if I’m either bi-cultural or I have no culture but while I love and fully embrace both sides of me, I can’t help but wonder if they can coexist. I can’t help but question the validity of all the beliefs and values that make Haitians Haitian and African-Americans African-American because although we’re fighting different battles, the war is ultimately against one opponent and for one trophy, oppression and social acceptance respectively. And while the justification for a conflict between those two was blurry, I can’t deny that I feel its existence. However, there is too much shared trauma, too much history, the same ancestry, Haitians and Africans might have died different deaths but they shed the same blood. When we were being ripped away from our  motherland, when our treasures were being plundered, when our history was being massacred to later be adjudicated non-existent, who is to say that members from the same torn family weren’t brought in both countries? There are some experiences that you have as both a Haitian and an African American that don’t change even if the context does. Positive ones, such as having a tight knit family , dancing before you know how to walk, singing before you can pronounce actual words ; negative ones as well such as living in a world that hates you so much, you sometimes hate yourself or code switching from Creole to French and from English to “better” English, depending on who you’re addressing. There is too much too much intertwining for me to let this internal conflict deepen any more. Because matter what setting I’m in, whether I’m thinking as an African-American or as a Haitian or even as a Black person, the end goal is the same: to thrive as a member of my community without my success being measured in units of comparison to the white man. And in order for that to happen, I know that I have to strive to find a way not to put forward only one aspect of who I am. I don’t have to be only Haitian or only African-American  It was only a difficult choice to make until I realized that it wasn’t a choice I had to make. Black bi-culturalism is hefty but it’s not a burden, it’s a weapon. It gives you both a rich heritage and a dual perspective on the reality of Black people in the world.  In completely understanding that, I hope to find a way to understand who I am.

With that realization came a load of responsibilities. I owe it to myself and to both of my communities to be equally part of each of them, to try to find the common points and to stay relevant to both. I can praise the bravery of both Toussaint Louverture and Malcom X, enjoy both Fritay and Soul food and listen to both Rihanna and Emmeline Michel. I can choose to say that I’m Haitian and not African-American as much as I want to but that won’t change the fact that when I or any Black person is in the United States, the struggle is shared due to the simple fact that prejudice is more racial than it’s ethnic. When a police officer attempts to arrest you for cleaning your own patio or shoots you for holding your phone that he “mistakes” for a gun, your ethnic identification won’t affect his decision. I can also choose to say that I’m Haitian and not African American, but that won’t stop me from having Soup Joumou every January 1st and it won’t change the fact that although I never participated in athletic running I know how to run away from riots because that’s the Haitian in me. I can choose to be only of those things but not without betraying part of myself. In order to stay true to who I am, I have to be both .I’m not sure what that implies but I have no choice other than to find out. Like many others before me, I’ve had to bear the brunt of a tome written by men who asked people who looked like me to build them a nation to rule and monuments to bare their names. I feel robbed of a story, written hundreds of years ago, in words of abuse and blood, ergo I will write my own, in words of self-love and hope.

1. Black : a person of African descent.

2. An African-American refers to descendants of enslaved black people who are from the United States.

3. An Afro-Carribean or ( West Indian) is a person of African descent whose ancestors were taken from Africa via the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the Caribbean Islands.

4. Soup Joumou: Pumpkin soup. Haitian slaves were prohibited by colonizers from drinking soup because it was "too rich" and they "weren’t worthy" of it, even though slave servants often had to cook it for their masters. On January 1st of 1804, Haiti’s independence day, the former slaves celebrated by having the forbidden meal and it became a tradition that is still honored to this day.