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"WHERE BLACK RULES WHITE"

A Journey Across And About Hayti sic

With Thirty Illis., Pp. 286, 8vo, Cloth
Imported By Chas. Scribner's Sons

A most interesting review of this title appeared in the New York
Times recently-recently, that is to say, by geologic time, only a
hundred and eight years ago.

Read it for yourself:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstrac...9C94 6097D6CF

Very certainly don't take my word for it, because I might be a
racist.

And don't take this guy's word for it either, because he really was a
racist:

"I have in front of me a book on Haiti written by a British scholar, a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, following his extended travels in Haiti at the beginning of this century. The book was published by Thomas Nelson and Sons, with offices in London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York. The author is Hesketh Prichard, and the title of his book is Where Black Rules White: A Journey Across and About Hayti. Prichard chose his title because he was especially interested in the fact that Haiti was a country ruled entirely by its Black population, without the White colonial domination that was present nearly everywhere else in the non-White world at that time. The only Whites in the country were a few hundred businessmen and their agents in the coastal cities. These Whites were not treated well by the government or people of Haiti.

Prichard was basically sympathetic to the Blacks and wanted to see how
they lived when they had been introduced to civilization by Whites but
were then left completely free to do as they wished, without White
control. He writes of Haiti in the first chapter of his book: "There
the law of the world is reversed, and the Black man rules. It is one
of the few spots on earth where his color sets the Negro upon a
pedestal and gives him privileges. The full-blooded African is
paramount; even the mulattos and half-breeds are disliked and have
been barbarously weeded out as time has passed."

One of the first things Prichard notes about Haiti is the pervasive
filth. He was not expecting sanitation to be up to European standards,
of course, but he was stunned by the degree of filth he actually
encountered, not just in the villages but also in the capital city,
Port-au-Prince. And he was struck by the caricatures of finery and
elegance which thrived in the midst of this filth. For example, he
noticed that every Haitian of any importance at all bore the title of
"general" and was equipped with a gaudy general's uniform, replete
with gold braid and all the other trimmings. When he inquired into the
military establishment in Haiti, where the total population at that
time was under two million, he discovered that the Haitian Army
boasted 6,500 generals, 7,000 regimental officers, and 6,500 privates.

Prichard recounts a conversation he had one evening with three Haitian
generals. It is a conversation with a surrealistic quality, as are
many other things in Haiti. At one level the Black generals are able
to converse with a semblance of knowledge of military matters, but at
another level it is clear that they are completely out of touch with
reality. One is reminded of the classical stereotype of the African
cannibal wearing an opera hat and a loincloth.

Prichard's book is filled with fascinating anecdotes and with detailed
descriptions of his personal experiences with various facets of
Haitian life. He remarks on the good-natured, open-hearted character
of the people, who could nevertheless commit the most blood-curdling
atrocities at the least provocation. The extreme degree of corruption
of the Haitian bureaucracy elicits special attention from Prichard, as
does the utterly capricious way in which it operates. The dispensing
of justice, in particular, is a caricature of European systems, in
which many of the same outward forms are observed.

Prichard also comments on the religious beliefs and practices of the
Haitians. The official religion, which they inherited from their
former French masters, is Roman Catholicism, but the true religion of
the people is Voodoo, a peculiarly African religion with Catholic
touches. In religion as in other aspects of Haitian life there is a
bizarre blending of White forms with Black substance.

Later in his book Prichard generalizes from many of his observations
to reach a fundamental conclusion about life in Haiti: namely, that in
all matters regarding their connections with the White world, with
White civilization, the Haitians are more concerned with show than
with substance, and their ability to mimic the characteristics of
White people, both individually and collectively, persuades many
people who observe them only superficially and who want to believe
them equal that they really are equal.

Prichard writes: "What most astonishes the traveler in Hayti is that
they have everything there. Ask for what you please, the answer
invariably is, 'Yes, yes, we have it.' They possess everything that a
civilized and progressive nation can desire. Electric light? They
proudly point to a [power] plant on a hilltop outside the town.
Constitutional government? A Chamber of Deputies elected by public
vote, a Senate, and all the elaborate paraphernalia of the law: they
are to be found here, seemingly all of them. Institutions, churches,
schools, roads, railways . . . . On paper their system is
flawless. . . . If one puts one's trust in the mirage of hearsay, the
Haitians can boast of possessing all desirable things, but on nearer
approach these pleasant prospects are apt to take on another
complexion.

"For instance, you are standing in what was once a building, but is
now a spindle-shanked ghost of its former self. A single man, nursing
a broken leg, sprawls on the black, earthen floor; a pile of wooden
beds is heaped in the north corner; rain has formed a pool in the
middle of the room, crawling and spreading into an ever wider circle
as the last shower drips from the roof. Some filthy sheets lie wound
into a sticky ball on two beds, one of which is overturned. A large,
iron washing tub stands in the open doorway.

"Now where are you? It would be impossible to guess. As a matter of
fact, you are in the Military Hospital of the second most important
town of Hayti, a state-supported concern in which the soldiers of the
Republic are supposed to be cured of all the ills of the flesh. . . .

"It was the same with the electric light. The [power] plant was here,
but it did not work. It was the same with the [Army's] cannon. There
are cannon, but they won't go off. It was the same with their
railways. They were being 'hurried forward,' but they never
progressed. It was the same with everything."

There are many more examples. What had dawned on Prichard is that the
Haitians really don't care. To them the imitation of civilization is
as good as the real thing. They believe that if they are able to dress
like White men and speak the White man's language and mimic the White
man's institutions, then they are as good as White men. And I believe
what Prichard observed of the Haitians applies equally well to Blacks
in the United States today.

Prichard ends his book with a chapter titled "Can the Negro Rule
Himself?" And he answers his question:

"The present condition of Hayti gives the best possible answer to the
question, and, considering the experiment has lasted for a century,
perhaps also a conclusive one. For a century the answer has been
working itself out there in flesh and blood. The Negro has had his
chance, a fair field, and no favor. He has had the most beautiful and
fertile of the Caribbees for his own; he has had the advantage of
excellent French laws; he inherited a made country, with Cap Haitien
for its Paris . . . . Here was a wide land sown with prosperity, a
land of wood, water, towns and plantations, and in the midst of it the
Black man was turned loose to work out his own salvation. What has he
made of the chances that were given to him?"

Prichard then summarizes the century of Haiti's independent existence,
running through a list of Black rulers and strongmen, of revolutions
and massacres and disorders. He winds up his survey with these words:

"Suffice it to say that . . . [Hayti's] best president was Geffrard, a
mulatto, and that the dictatorship of her Black heads of state always
has been marked by a redder smear than usual upon the page of history.
The better, the wiser, the more enlightened and less brutalized class
has always been composed of the mulattos, and the Blacks have
recognized the fact and hated the mulatto element accordingly. But to
pass from the earlier days of independence to more recent times: we
had not long ago the savage rule of President Salomon, a notorious
sectary of snake worship, beneath whose iron hand the country groaned
for years, and public executions, assassinations, and robbery were the
order of the day. And at the present time? Today in Hayti we come to
the real crux of the question. At the end of a hundred years of trial
how does the Black man govern himself? What progress has he made?
Absolutely none."

That's the way it was a century ago, when Prichard wrote, and that's
essentially the way it is today, despite three large-scale efforts by
the United States during this century to improve the lot of the
Haitians.

Why is all of this important to us? A century ago Prichard was by no
means an unusual man of his class. He went to Haiti, he carefully
observed life there in great detail over an extended period, and he
drew logical and reasonable conclusions from his observations. Other
scholars of his day could have done the same thing. But it is
unimaginable that a scholar today, whether from Britain or America,
could make observations like Prichard did, draw similar conclusions,
and then publish his conclusions in a book by a mainstream publisher.
It is simply not possible.

In the first place, one would be hard pressed to find a scholar from
any university in America or Britain today who would have the courage
to write honestly about Haiti, because he knows that if he did he
would be condemned as a "racist" by a numerous and noisy faction of
his colleagues and would be drummed out of the academy. And even if
someone did write a book with observations and conclusions similar to
Prichard's, no mainstream publisher would touch it. That's how far
downhill our civilization has slid in a century.

The Haitians have their Voodoo, with all of its disgusting and bizarre
beliefs and practices. And we have our cult of Political Correctness,
our cult of egalitarianism. It is a cult based as much on superstition
and as devoid of reason and logic as the Voodoo of the Haitians. And
it exercises as strong a hold on its adherents. A Haitian would as
soon offend a Voodoo witch doctor and risk having a curse put on
himself as one of our modern scholars would risk being labeled a
"racist!"

http://www.natvan.com/free-speech/fs9712c.html