Haitian Students: Are They The Future Leaders?Nekita Lamour
April 2000With the senseless murder of Jean Leopold Dominique, Haiti's most respected journalist, one may wonder whether there is a future for Haiti. Five years ago, I was pessimistic. Like most people observing the political situation in this Caribbean nation of 7 million people, I resonated a hopeless situation. However, when my son entered high school four years ago, I began to see an optimistic future through him and the level of activity and performance of the Haitian students at his high school. Haitian students ran and actively participated in numerous clubs in a school of several thousand students who had come from all corners of the world. They were official members of the student government and the school newspaper. They ran the yearbook club and many fund raising activities. The black student union was basically an association of Haitians who were either born in the U.S or immigrated a young age. The majority of the students enrolled in Mass PEP, (Massachusetts Pre-Engineering program for minority students) at the high school were Haitian.
As my son entered college in the fall of l999, I continued to focus on this young generation of Haitians. I was so proud when he sent me an e-mail after he attended a National Conference of Black Engineering Students. He wrote me to say that the majority of those engineering students were Haitian and if the student body organized themselves, they could become a powerful and influential organization at the national level.
Recently, I spent a weekend at New York University (NYU) with close to 200 Haitian college students, and I witnessed a reemergence of hope. Under the theme " Essence d 'Haiti " (Essence of Haiti), those young people gathered for the Third Annual Haitian Studies Conference to reflect about Haiti, and in the process they raised some pivotal issues and concerns. The event started on a Friday afternoon with registration and, as one would expect from college students, a party with Haitian, Hip-Hop, and Spanish music by an energetic DJ.
Saturday was devoted to working sessions. Prominent Haitian professionals gave interactive presentations. Patrick Lemoine, the author of "Fort-Dimanche, Dungeon of Death", and a survivor of Haiti's most infamous place of torture under previous dictatorships ("Haiti's Auschwitz"), talked about Haiti's politics and government after Duvalier. Students asked what constituted a political prisoner and whether light-skinned people had been the only targets. Lemoine responded that the skin-tone issue was a false one. An older participant noted that her father, a physician, was arrested several times merely because he complained that doctors were often not present to take care of patients.
Dr. Hughe St. Fort, a linguist, talked about the roles of Creole and French in Haiti's history, the position of Haitian Creole in Haiti's official and unofficial life today, and Creole as an indicator of social status.
Raymond Joseph, co-founder and editor of Haiti-Observateur, Garry Pierre-Pierre, former New York Times reporter and now editor and publisher of Haitian Times, and Peter Pouchon, host of the television program Caribbean Images, shared insights into the role of the Haitian media in the U.S. Some students felt that the media should play a leadership role in the community. Pierre-Pierre replied that the media's role is to disseminate the news, not to make it. Joseph supported this, by urging the students to write to his editorial staff if they had a concern they wanted addressed.
There were also workshops where participants could physically engage, like the "Judo in Haitian Style" demonstration conducted by Jacques Wisler of the Vérité Judo Club in Queens, and "Dance" by the Konbit Kreyňl Dance Troupe.
Following the sessions, a banquet was served with delicious Haitian dishes like lambi (conch), rice with dark mushrooms, traditional rice with kidney beans, vegetable stew, various kinds of fish, chicken in Creole sauce, Haitian soda pop and of course, home-made cake. A dance with popular CDs and the famous Haitian band Zen concluded a long but fascinating day.
A multimedia (Power Point) presentation of historical images by Giscard Guilloteau a Georgetown student majoring in Latin American Studies began the Sunday session. Guilloteau illustrated various aspects of Haitian history and life, from images of Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, and the U.S occupation (l915-1934) to views of contemporary Haiti. The Western media portrays primarily the poorest parts of Haiti like Cité Soleil, but Giscard also projected middle and upper-class images of Port-au-Prince as well as other attractive parts of the country such as Cap Haitien and Jacmel.
His presentation was followed by a lively question-and-answer session. Students addressed concerns which echoed similar ones heard previously in other young Haitians' gatherings. They raised issues of linguistic, social, and cultural identity. Haitians born in the U.S see themselves ridiculed by first generation counterparts because they are not fluent in Creole. College students who were born in Haiti sometimes got startled looks by native Haitian-American for speaking Creole in Haitian settings or for speaking English with an accent. Dress codes ranging from baggies to jeans to Muslim outfits, veils and long dresses for women, and hair styles like dreads present generation gap concerns.
Despite intergenerational issues of fluency level in Creole or dress code, one trend is evident -- the new generation is far more interested in Creole than in French, in their African roots than their European heritage. They want to learn to read and write the Haitians' native language. Many, including the Harvard/MIT Haitian Alliance, have their internet postings in Creole. They see Creole as the language of their roots and their outfits and hair styles as part their African and Caribbean ancestry.
Role models and an interactive mentor system seem to be lacking in the Haitian community. Young Haitians want to identify with the Haitian culture, but have no immediate role models except for the moral and cultural support they gain from their parents. Serge Aimé, from Drexel University intervened in that sense. A budding architect, he wants to learn more about Haitian architectural designs, but he does not know any Haitian architects or has any idea how to find one.
Mentoring seems to be more successful for African-Americans, and most Haitian students get help from Afro-American professional associations although there are many first-generation accomplished Haitian professionals. Older Haitians came as presenters, but there were only four Haitian professionals who stayed with those 200 young people throughout the conference. The same phenomenon occurred when the Harvard/MIT Haitian Alliance had their debut in Cambridge, Mass. on December l999. Only a handful of Haitian professionals came to support them. It appears that if the second generation of Haitians educated outside of Haiti continue with organizational rigor, they will be the catalyst of change, the role models, the leaders that the Haitian community needs in the U.S. If they maintain and organize joint programs with various schools and student organizations in Haiti, one might see a much different Haiti 20 years from now.
The new generation is also concerned about the vacuum of leadership in the Haitian Diaspora. When these Haitian college students were born in the early 1980's during the first influx of boat people, the leaders were people like Father Gerard Jean Juste, who opened the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami. He was a national spokesperson and advocate whom the mainstream media would call on for insights into Haitian issues. The late Wilson Desir was also vocal. However, by the time these students went to high school and college in the mid to late '90s, they had never seen anyone advocate for Haitians. The Fugees and Wyclef Jean are probably their only frames of reference. In terms of literature, Edwige Danticat is an icon for the younger generation, although her novels and stories tend to reflect the darker side of Haitian culture and history, not the positive ones that Guilloteau projected during his presentation. Danticat through her novels reaffirms the (mis)conceptions that the Western world has of Haiti, her destitute poverty, the calamities and misery. Many minority writers and novelists do reinforce the perceptions that the western world has of Third World society. For instance, Terry McMillan in her book and famous movie "Waiting to Exhale" confirms the negative stereotypes of black men. It is unfortunate that under the notion of "artistic creativity" many women and minority writers gain prominence by writing from "the majorities'" perceptions of them.
The students' efforts and those of the conference organizers must be commended. Nevertheless, some drawbacks need to be addressed for the future. There was a lot of dead time. The keynote speaker, Edwige Danticat, had to cancel and there was no provision for an alternate speaker. Conversely, the 50 minutes allocated for the workshops were not sufficient for two or three presenters and question-and-answer periods.
The conference also suffered from a lack of closure. Organizers listened to the comments at the end and gave an e-mail and web site address on which they will post future information, but there was no sense of "Where do we go from here?" The students were urged to become more involved in their communities, and to write about the event in their campus newspapers. First generation Haitians need to hear their concerns, and since most Haitians listen to the radio, they should ask the Haitian radio announcers for an interview.
There was some criticism that it was an elitist conference. Students from CUNY were not present, nor did one see name tags with Brooklyn College, Queens College, or Hunter. Coming from Boston, I did not see any UMass Boston or Roxbury Community College name tags. The e-mail addresses exchanged were for places like U/Penn.edu, Wellesley.edu, Rutgers.edu, MtHolyoke.edu, Harvard.edu, Drexel.edu, MIT.edu, Georgetown.edu, NYU.edu and the like. The announcements were made on the Internet and many students from non-elite colleges don't have computers at home. The organizers did publicize the colloquium on a New York Haitian radio station, but they gave a web site address to register -- there was no phone number or mailing address.
This argurment can no longer be accepted because in major cities in the U.S with large Haitian population, one can access the internet in most neighborhood and college libraries. If the previous generation wants to interact with the new one, and most importantly with the world, they should be on the Net.
The lesson may be: don't neglect any medium of communication when announcing important events like this. I am positive that all Haitian newspapers in the U.S. would give free and prominent display to the students, and Haitian radio stations outside New York would have made the announcements. The bottom line is that Haitians need to become more media savvy.
This raises questions on why the mainstream media does not cover such events: why "200 Haitians from major universities holding a convention at NYU" can't be in the paper, whereas had 200 Haitians disembarked on the Florida shores, it would be headline news.
Given the lack of community and intergenerational support, the students' efforts and those of the conference organizers to accommodate close to 200 students must be applauded. One should be proud to see sons and daughters of blue and white collar Haitians attend major universities in the United States, and hope such organizing effort will reverberate in all campuses where Haitians are. Regional Haitian Student Associations will be formed, and in the not too distant future, there will be a National Haitian Student Association (NHASA).
Nekita Lamour is an educator and essayist who is active in the Haitian and the educational community in Massachusetts.