Haiti - A Young Woman’s Struggles With Culture Identity - Jackie's Story
Posted: Friday, February 12, 2010
by Rose-Marie Chaperon
Chaperon Consulting, LLC
I was born in Haiti, I came to the United States with my 3 other sisters, and we did not enter the country illegally. My father was a physician living in the US through him we became legal residents. When I entered the United States I was already a college graduate, a very young one I might say. I was 15 years old when I graduated from high school, by the time I was 19 I had already received my first baccalaureate degree. I grew up in a very loving family with every means available to us. I had the privilege of having a father who was a physician, a mother who was self-employed with her own grocery store, a hardware store, one household appliance store and 2 dry cleaners.
People from other ethnic backgrounds are always portrayed as people of color with extremely dark skin, poor and uneducated. Especially in the case of the Haitians, the media does not do us justice at all. On television they always show the worst parts of the country which is what we call "la masse" however; the elites remain hidden. The media refers to Haitian as uneducated, undocumented, boat people and poor. At one point they blamed the HIV/Aids epidemic on us. The media has painted a pretty horrific pictures of Haitians living in the US and Haiti, sometimes it puts us in awkward positions to defend ourselves when people make moronic statements about our culture.
The US is an industrialized country and rich in resources, although a high school diploma is required for all lower level positions, one thing the education system is lacking is a thorough lesson in geography. Sometimes I get a lot of idiotic questions asked of me; a few of them will remain with me forever.
From an executive with a PHD - "Oh you are from Haiti, I have a friend who is from Ethiopia, her name is...... did you know her? could you walk to her house from where you lived or would you have to get on a horse or a camel?
From a nurse - Hey Jackie I have a patient in the emergency room from Africa, can you translate? I would love to help you out, what country in Africa is she from? She is from the Africa. Aren't you from Haiti? You should be able to speak with her.
From one of my classmates in Miami - Wow, you are form Haiti, what did you do for food when you lived there? I bet you are really happy to be here where you can eat anything you want. I am surprised you are not fat!! Was it hard to eat mud pies?
From someone I worked with - When you came to the US were you happy to see electricity?
From someone I went on a date with - How come your skin is not really dark? - (We did not have a second date).
From a baptist minister - You are a volunteer literacy and ESL instructor that is great news. Was it difficult for you to learn how to read when you came to the states?
From a beautiful blonde- How often did you shower in your country?
To top it off this man once asked me in a Chicago airport if I spoke Haitian, I asked him if he spoke hillbilly. He threatened to beat me up!
From a gentleman at my gym - "Is Haiti the country where women do not wear deodorant?"
Most of these people usually do not even know where the country is located? After I get the dumb look from these people then I decide to educate them by telling them. Haiti shares the same island as the Dominican Republic, therefore Haiti is a country, it is exactly 681 miles from Miami and by plane it is 590 nautical miles, and it is 1.5 hours, by plane.
When people make their idiotic comments about my culture, I used to think that it was due to their own prejudice, and then I realized there is no reason to turn this into a racial issue just because the media doesn't balance their coverage of Haitians with that of other cultures. Why would I want the news to misinform the public by playing down such a serious situation? My father immigrated to this country when he was a young boy and was able to achieve great success through hard work and determination. No one babied him or cut him any slack.
Although I am a naturalized US citizen, I still retain my Haitian values and I am very happy to have had the pleasure of living in the United States for as long as I have. I regard my culture with pride, now I go back to Haiti to visit my family, I find it repulsive that people have maids to do their laundry, clean their homes and cook their dinners. My parents usually say, we have maids because it is a way for the elites to keep the poor employed. Although I never did believe it, but in reality those who work as maids would not have any form of income if it was not for these dead end jobs.
Jackie
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Thank you very much for posting this article.When large numbers of Black people came to Britain from the Caribbean, they experienced similar kinds of prejudices. They had been educated to know everything about their "mother country" only to find out that most people in the UK didn't even know where the Caribbean was, or that it was part of the Empire.I consider myself to be very fortunate because I was born and grew up in the U.S. but now live in the UK, so I am aware of many different cultures.What do you recommend as the best way to help victims of the earthquake disaster?Hi Zhana,The best way to help Haiti is to offer help in anyway a person can. When it comes to monetary help, I would suggest either donate through the Red Cross or the Clinton and Bush Foundation. Be careful there are a lot of organizations out there who are there simply to make money and they have no intentions of giving the money to the people of Haiti. For instance, I received an e-mail from someone in Mozambique asking for money. Thanks for your comment.Rose- Marie
Just curious, Rose-Marie: Are you Jackie in "Jackie's Story"?
When it comes to colonial thinking, cultural education flows one way: the imperialists make sure everyone else learn their culture, while children of the "superior" culture are kept in total darkness about the "lesser" culture. Without using words, the imperialist attitude says "lesser" cultures are not worth learning about as part of cultural education. That's how come an American or European student can wear a graduation gown while totally ignorant about Caribbean and African cultures.
Speaking of culturally illiterate students, my trophy goes to this questioner from a geography / social studies class in Louisville, Kentucky - I'll paraphrase: "How do y'all (Africans) sleep up those trees with all them snakes on the branches and on the ground?" ~mogama~Hi Mogama,You are correct, "cultural education flows one way: the imperialists make sure everyone else learn their culture, while children of the "superior" culture are kept in total darkness about the "lesser" culture"I really think that people really need to understand that -cultural diversity is being respectful to other cultures besides your own. In other words, they really need to refrain from making idiotic comments.As far as the main character in the story - let's just say, "maybe - maybe not"So “ dow do y'all (Africans) sleep up those trees with all them snakes on the branches and on the ground?"LOLRose-Marie
this is too funny. Are Americans that stupid? I am surprise and ashame to be one of them.
I usually do not read blogs or anything that just pops up on my screen, but to tell you the truth this was a very interesting post...Most people think that all blacks are alike and they all come from the same place...I had similar instances...The media does more harm than good in some instances and this is one of them. Nice article.
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