#155 – Dick Bernard: Haiti, a plea….

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December 8, 2003 – it was my second full day of my first trip to Haiti – we had spent a powerful and draining morning being briefed by ordinary Haitians, women and men, about the atrocities of the 1991-94 coup in Haiti. There were six of us. I had nothing to say. I was there to listen and to learn.
Our group leader had arranged for lunch for the entire group, and before we left we went around the circle of perhaps 20-25, simply to shake hands and thank the group for their hospitality. About two-thirds of the way around I extended my hand to a man, and he refused the handshake.
Experiences like that tend to stick with me. I have no idea why he singled me out (I was the only one of the group of four men and two women so treated). Perhaps I reminded him of someone, some white American, some terrible experience. I’ll never know.
Similarly, I remember a poolside luncheon later the next day at one of those fancy hotels in Petion-ville. We were being briefed by a supporter of then-President Aristide, who later took us around to a school and to a television station to meet other people. At the hotel, I noticed a solitary white man sitting quietly in a deck chair reading a book. I wondered who he was and why he was there. I didn’t ask and I’ll never know. I gather, though, that a white face in Haiti is a suspect face, with good reason.
So it is.
Years have now passed, and I’m far better informed than I was then, and I happen to be at the intersection of lots of electronic communication about what is happening in post-January 12 Haiti. I’m also ice-bound in the middle of the U.S., trying to help as best I can from here.
I know lots of people with lots of points of view, from total ignorance of Haiti (as was true with me seven years ago) to Haitians who are trying to find ways to work together within whatever system exists in the U.S., to others who, like that guy who refused to shake my hand that December day, just want US the hell out*.
I wish there were simple “one-size fits all” solutions. There aren’t.
A short while ago I started one of these blog posts with a sentence that we had raped, looted and pillaged Haiti for its whole 206 year history. Pretty harsh indictment, but not at all unreasonable. Someone I know responded and seemed miffed with my indictment of US (as in U.S, and we Americans): he really didn’t know any of the back story, apparently. I tried to inform him.
On the other side of the equation, I expressed “disappointment” about something sent by a prominent Haitian leader with a large list, and was told that I “insulted” the person (who I respect.) The rage is palpable and we probably deserve the rage. (My work career found me frequently in the position of being yelled at by one side or another, so I’m used to harsh comments. But, do bitter and angry comments help anything, any more than willful ignorance and misplaced trust? I don’t think so.)
The voiceless ones, represented by that guy who wouldn’t shake my hand, have desperate needs, and the needs will be very long-term.
Somehow we need to accept the fact that the U.S. is key to solutions to this catastrophe, and that there will be all manner of well-meaning and malicious attempts to help (or “help”, as in profiteering from the crisis.)
I think “boots on the ground” folks like Dr. Paul Farmer are in an excellent position to do some good, and know the political system very well. To me, Dr. Farmer has earned his credibility.
The guy in the circle that day in 2003 has also earned his credibility with me.
We need to listen to both sides, and to do what we can to make for a better Haiti, one that is founded on Justice, not dependent on Charity (there is a big difference.) My definition, from December 2003 is found at page 17 of my reflections when I returned.
* – there is more than a little logic behind the resentment of Haitians towards the U.S. See my short commentary at page 7&8 on White Rice, Pigs and Chickens, from my 2006 reflections after coming back from Haiti.

#154 – Dick Bernard: Haiti…and Power

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Two weeks ago today, 4:53 p.m. Haiti time, Port-au-Prince (Potoprens in Kreyol) and area were devastated by a massive earthquake. Today, two weeks later, coverage of the disaster is decreasing; finding fault or blame is increasing; and the attention of the world and U.S. body politic is shifting back to more mundane things, like the Super Bowl.
It will take years for Haitians to recover and the international community will be central to their recovery, but how long will people care? It’s an important question.
Long before the latest catastrophe struck Haiti, I’ve been thinking about what I believe is a pertinent and basic “conversation” in, particularly, westernized society…and that is the conversation about Power.
Boiled to its essence, I believe there are two classes of people: those with Power, and those without. Those in Power presume they have the right to control agendas and conversations. They do this in sundry ways: controlling information, money, and on and on and on. You can be born into Power, work to get into Power, or be identified as useful to Power. But it’s a club entered by invitation only.
The official Haiti conversation is almost totally dominated by traditional Power.
Power isn’t a partisan deal, and it isn’t Republican or Democrat either. It can be cliques who through one means or another control access or agendas. It can be seemingly out of Power people who have a following. Power is ubiquitous. One way to stay out of the Power circles is to diss Power…. Power people prefer followers.
In Haiti, most of the people are about as Power-less as any people are anywhere in the world. Most are illiterate (I’d maintain this is far more by design of the Powerful rather than lack of motivation of the Powerless). Educated people can be troublesome. The language of the ordinary Haitian is Kreyol; the official and international language of Haiti is French…. Even language disenfranchises the ordinary Haitian.
Of course, there are decent Power people, and indecent ones. It is a complicated process to identify the difference, so usually everyone in a particular class is typecast in various ways, as “good” or “bad”. Such simplicity is not helpful.
The out of Power people far, far outnumber the people in Power, and the Powerful know this: thus the strategies to disempower those not in the inner circles, by disinformation, or discipline or otherwise. If one’s neighbor ends up in jail for no good reason, one notices.
There’s a way out of Powerlessness and that is by no longer being willing to play by the rules established by Power. If the folks in the neighborhood were challenged to play a National Football League team, using NFL rules and criteria, one knows the result…but if the NFL rules and criteria were thrown out and replaced with the neighborhood rules, the results could be very different. But one first of all has to believe that there are other rules of engagement than those mandated by the Powerful.
I’ve long been enchanted by the mantra I hear at demonstrations: “Ain’t no Power like the Power of the People, like the Power of the People, say WHAT? There ain’t no Power….” The chant is delivered with gusto, but I have come to believe that the chanters really don’t believe their own message. And they leave their power on the street, unrealized.
The ordinary Haitians, the ones who will disappear soon from the media screen, but are there in the neighborhoods, will be the salvation of their country. All one can hope is that the commitment of the Powerful will be a bit more towards Justice than the traditional Charity*.
Stay engaged. If you feel you have no power, try to look at your Power a bit differently.
It’s 4:53 p.m. Haiti time. Time to click on Publish.
* My own very brief interpretation on Charity vs Justice was written on return from Haiti in December, 2003. It is accessible at this link page 17.

#153 – Dick Bernard: Haiti. Hope is on the Way?

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It can fairly be said that the place called Haiti, and the people called Haitians, have been raped, looted and pillaged by my “civilized” world for the entire 518 year history since Christopher Columbus and his men landed there (in the vicinity of today’s Cap Haitien) in 1492. An excellent primer on this history for me was Dr. Paul Farmer’s book, “The Uses of Haiti*“. (I initially thought that this book was still in print. Apparently it is not. The link provided here is to a discussion and critique of the book by someone I early became acquainted with and respect. Take a look, and read the review* all the way through.)
(Today, Dr. Paul Farmer is the most prominent “point person” for the U.S. and the United Nations on Haiti. He was appointed some months before the earthquake; and he has a long history in Haiti and among the Haitians. His Partners in Health is easily considered one of the very best destinations for donations to Haiti. His more recent book, Pathologies of Power remains available, and worth a look.)
It can be fairly said, I believe, that everyone of us in the developed West have grown up with an official and almost exclusively negative narrative about why Haiti is so poor. The essence of the narrative is that Haitians are incapable of running their own affairs: that their problems are their own fault, and that we in the developed world need to rescue them from their own incompetence. We are “the Great White Fathers”.
Historical narratives are developed and shared by people of influence, like leaders, or academics, who are in a position to convey their influence down to the commoners who are the pawns of history. The official story is the story written by the one in Power**. We are told what to believe, and tend to believe what we are told by people more “important” than we are. That is an elemental fact of life. Even Black Americans and Native Americans have absorbed a negative story about Haitians. It is a fiction which has come to be accepted as reality.
When my friend Paul Miller finally convinced me to travel with him to Haiti in 2003, I knew almost nothing about the place and its people. I came back committed to learn about the geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and Haiti. It has been an eye-opening and troubling experience.
Today, January 23, 2010, I feel for the first time since I darkened Haiti’s door December 6, 2003, that hope is truly on the way for Haiti, and along with the hope, some potential for long-term justice for the Haitian people.
There are a boat-load of serious problems beyond the earthquake: I read about them every day in commentaries never seen by the ordinary news consumer in this country. And you don’t undo over 500 years of exploitation overnight.
To those who look only backward at the abuse of a beautiful country and its beautiful, determined and tenacious people, I urge: don’t turn your back on the future and in effect walk only backwards with your eyes only on the awful past.
To those of my country men and women, especially those who share my whiteness, who believe only the official narrative, consider the possibility that you’ve been lied to, deliberately, and often, by most everybody. Crucial information has been tampered with, or left out of, the stories you’ve heard. Open your eyes as you walk forward, trying to help.
To both, consider the possibility of true dialogue, and a willingness to understand the other. Without such an intersection, all of the huge outpouring of money and caring and good intentions engendered by the earthquake of January 12, 2010, will be for naught…and we’ll slide back into the dismal reality that has prevailed over Haiti’s entire history.
Post note: Within the last few days the Twin Cities Daily Planet published a post of mine about the current situation in Haiti.
I have a website concerning Haiti which includes a comparative map and a timeline of significant historical events.
* The review relates to the original edition of the book, 1994; the book I read was the 2003 revised version which very likely dealt with some of the concerns Bob Corbett had with the first edition. To my knowledge, neither edition remains available.
** Quite by accident I was able to document one such occurrence with Haiti. Click on “Anatomy of an Official Lie” here .

#152 – Dick Bernard: Who deserves medical care? A personal experience.

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Recently I attended a greatly informative information meeting on the realities about, and need for, Universal Health Care. The meeting was facilitated by the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition.
The experience led me to recall my own personal history, which was published as a column in today’s edition of the Woodbury (MN) Bulletin. The column follows:
Forty-five years ago this month my wife, not yet 22, was actively engaged in the very difficult work of dying. Our first child was not yet one year old. We lived in a tiny apartment in the small town in western North Dakota where I was teaching school.
Barbara, who had kidney disease, was too weak to take care of her son; she was in the hospital about as much as she was at home. I took our son to the babysitter each morning.
At the end of May, 1965, I came home to pick up some materials I had forgotten, and found Barbara unconscious on the floor. I carried her down the stairs to the car, drove her to the local hospital, where she was transferred immediately to the hospital in Bismarck.
She had no alternative, they said, but to have a kidney transplant.
We had no insurance.
Finally University Hospital admitted her; she was there for almost two months, and she died July 24, 1965, leaving me with a year old son and medical debts equal to almost four times my to-be teacher salary.
I was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, but was saved by North Dakota Public Welfare which agreed to pay the University Hospital portion of the bill; and by one hospital which forgave my bill with them. When it was all over, I owed about a year’s salary worth of bills, which then became manageable.
Six days after she died, two days after she was buried, Medicare was signed into Law, July 30, 1965.
To me, that government action was totally irrelevant, then.
Years and years have passed, and now I’m well into my Medicare years, and, if anything, over-insured with things like Long Term Care insurance, hoping that I have the right coverage. Unlike most, I can afford this luxury.
Back then in 1963, two weeks out of the Army and in a new job and in a new marriage, I passed on signing up for Blue Cross coverage so, somebody can say, it was my fault we were uninsured. Truth be told, even then, knowing what I know now, my wife would have been excluded due to an unknown (to us) pre-existing condition. The kidney disease did not manifest until shortly after I declined to sign up for the insurance.
I look at the current health care debate, the information and the abundant misinformation, through the lens of my own past. It is, I guess, a luxury that I have.
Now there’s group insurance – for the fortunate; and because of government foresight in the same year my wife died, Medicare for we fortunate elders.
There is absolutely no excuse for us to quibble and squabble over who deserves to be insured in this still wealthy country of ours. It is – or it should be – a basic and equal human right for every one of us, no questions asked.
At minimum, our kids and grandkids, faced with greater future uncertainties than we had to face, deserve our foresight more than our selfishness.
I urge you to learn more, and truly dialogue more, about this most critical issue. An excellent source of information is www.muhcc.org, a group dedicated to moving us from a patchwork and unfair system of health care, to more universal care. Doubtless there are other sources of information, but this is a place to start.

#151 – Dick Bernard: Start Seeing Haiti

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I have watched the news about Haiti until I can’t watch much of it any more.
I ask you to be very, very attentive to Haiti long after the TV cameras leave and the fundraising appeals end, and we move on to other things, as we always do. Collectively, we Americans have a very short attention span.
This is truly a time to Start Seeing Haiti.
Here is a good graphic map of Port-au-Prince which was in Sunday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune. The neighborhood where my driver in 2003 lived, and in whose home we had our evening meal, is in the “shantytown” above Petionville. (If you follow the faultline till it is directly south of downtown Port-au-Prince, you’ll be in the approximate location of the hotel in which we stayed at the end of our trip to Haiti in 2006.) To get to that hotel, we travelled perhaps 10 miles more or less along the top of the mountain range beginning above Petionville. The hotel was, in Haitian terms, a luxury hotel. I would guess that hotel was severely damaged or destroyed a week ago. On that trip, we saw farmers working fields that were down slope, and passed villages perched on the mountain sides. We’ll probably never hear what happened there – it was just a place out in the country. Then, it was an idylllic if primitive pastoral scene – people in the fields with hoes…. Today?
I have been to Haiti twice: 2003 and 2006. In between, especially 2004-2007, I made a very strong effort to get very well informed about U.S. policy and our impact on Haiti over Haiti’s entire history as an independent Republic (206 years, beginning 1804). That trip to becoming informed was a troubling one…when one’s eyes are opened, sometimes you see uncomfortable things about yourself. That happened with me.
I am considered to be someone who knows something about the untold story about why Haiti has suffered for so long, and continues to suffer. I particularly resonate with this column by a long time and highly respected journalist here in the twin cities.
None of us know enough, at the moment, to be truly knowledgeable about what is going on, on the ground in Haiti. We see only fragments, and hear only bits and pieces.
We do know about the past. Suffice to say, U.S. history with Haiti goes back as far as President Thomas Jefferson and the 1804 U.S. Congress, and centers on slavery, and fear of a country, Haiti, whose slaves had successfully thrown off their chains and defeated France. We were, of course, a slave-nation then, and for many years later. (In too many ways, we still harbor these attitudes. They are an unfortunate part of what we are as a people.)
France, which held Haiti at the time of the slave revolt, has had its fingers in the destruction of the country since 1696 (it bankrupted Haiti as punishment essentially by extortion in the 1800s), and the Spaniards controlled Haiti before that (a guy named Christopher Columbus was first on the scene in 1492.) For a number of years I’ve had a timeline concerning Haiti-U.S. on my own website (there is one error: 1915-1934 should be the time we occupied Haiti). (My basic Haiti website, needs updating, but still includes much useful information.)
We Americans have much to be very ashamed of when it comes to our treatment of Haiti over the very long term. Haiti has been a human and physical resource to be exploited. That aspect is not, and will likely never be, talked about in the media that we Americans rely on for our daily news. (Frankly, I pay as much attention to what the media does not say, as to what it does. For example, I think there are hundreds of Cuban medical personnel now helping in Haiti, many who were there at the time of the quake; I hear not a word nor see a single image about them on our media. It is a forbidden part of the narrative, apparently.)
If you wish to learn more about Haiti and the US a good place to start is with American Dr. Paul Farmer’s books “The Uses of Haiti”. and “Pathologies of Power”, and visit his Partners in Health website, and read his biography, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. There are mountains of other pieces of information, but these are good places to start. Another heavily researched and recent book is Damming the Flood by Peter Hallward. IJDH (Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti) is an excellent website to visit and get familiar with.
Partners in Health is an excellent and reliable destination for relief $$’s. Cathy and I are most involved in Fonkoze , a major Haiti micro-finance institution. Fonkoze has branches through Haiti, but it is headquartered in PaP, and it too has suffered severe setbacks in all the ways other Haitian institutions have been damaged or destroyed. EVERYONE has suffered in this tragedy.
60 Minutes on CBS on Sunday had an excellent segment on Haiti.
The Haiti government, fragile to begin with, was essentially destroyed in the quake. Medical facilities and their personnel: destroyed and many dead. There is one major airport, and it has a single runway. Thank God the runway wasn’t damaged. Cap Haitien in the north has an airport, but too short a runway for the big planes, and (compared with our freeway travel) the relatively short trip between the two cities takes forever. To my knowledge there is a single direct motor route between the Dominican Republic and Port-au-Prince. We have ridden on a good part of this road in the pre-quake times: it took three to four hours to go about 60 miles and this was on a good day. It is heavily travelled and poorly maintained – it takes money to keep up infrastructure. Many roads are still blocked with debris and even bodies, and heavy equipment will really not come in until the ships bring it – the harbor facilities were damaged in the quake. Fuel is hard to come by.
It is impossible for us to imagine the desperate situation on the ground.
Most of the people of Haiti will be alive when this is all over, but what are they facing in the short and long term? Ultimately, the urban population will likely have to be largely evacuated, at minimum displaced, and Port-au-Prince essentially completely rebuilt. It is the world community, led by us, that will have to do the rebuilding. Image starting over with a city of 2,000,000 (the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul and suburbs is 3,000,000.) It will be a gold mine for the unscrupulous, and one hopes that disaster capitalism will be kept better in check than it was in Iraq. But it will be a place where lots of money will be made – and not by Haitians. (Another useful and troubling book: The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.) We can do right by Haiti this time. I hope we will, and then allow Haitians to build and restore their society and be full partners within the world community.
As I write, we know a lot, but we know only a tiny bit of the long-term implications of this disaster. Some of the best insights I’ve heard came from a Haitian kid who appeared to be in his 20s at a meeting we had on Saturday. Haitians are networked world wide. They are resourceful and inteligent, but they are going to need lots and lots of help and they’re going to need it for a long, long time.
Be with them in any way that you can.

#150 – Dick Bernard: "We're off to see the Wizard…."

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Last night, we listened to the magnificent Minnesota Orchestra as the front band for the 1939 classic film “Wizard of Oz”. It was a wonderful evening. I felt a bit guilty being there, given what has happened in Haiti in the last few days; on the other hand, we had these tickets for almost a year.
I did watch the film with new eyes last night. It remains a wonderful film with lots of positive messages for one who chooses to look for them. (In the lobby, at intermission, I noticed a poster borrowing from Robert Fulghum’s “everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten“: “everything I need to know I learned in the Wizard of Oz“. A lot of simple truth there, I thought.)
I don’t remember when I first saw Wizard of Oz, but it was long after it was made. Even though I was born a year later than the film, in 1940, movies were a rare treat in my growing up life in the country.
Last night coincided closely with Martin Luther King’s birthday, and last night I looked at the casting for Wizard of Oz. I looked pretty intently. I do not recall a single face that looked unlike mine. The cast was, best as I could see, totally white.
That is how it was, then. If African-Americans had any roles at all, as in the famous Civil War epic Gone With the Wind produced about the same time, Negroes were kept in their proper subservient place, invisible or inferior; and if their role was important, whites in black face filled in just fine, if I remember rightly.
I describe a deeply ingrained American attitude. And, yes, it has played out in Haiti for its entire 206 year history as an independent Republic, right up until today.
Coincidentally, this past week I listened to a talking book, The Hornets Nest, Jimmy Carter’s first novel, an account of the Revolutionary War in the South, in the years 1770-1790. (The audio book was excellent, worth my time.)
Carter’s book outlines the tension and violence in the south often relating to whether or not there should be slaves, and how to deal with the native population. (One doesn’t need to read a book about what happened, but Carter effectively develops how the grass roots embrace of slavery and eradication of the native Indians evolved and became institutionalized.)
This afternoon I finished the fifth and last CD of the book, and in Carter’s epilogue, the final sentences recounted Thomas Jefferson’s reluctant but firm embrace of slavery as the only way to assure white dominance and continuation of the “American Way of Life.”
Carter in his last words also notes the official continuation of American slavery till the Civil War, and the separate-and-unequal prevalence to the present in our country.
It was Jefferson who was U.S. President in 1804 when Haiti’s slaves defeated the French and declared their independence from France, only the second free Republic in the western hemisphere. A free Haiti was an intolerable threat to our own United States, ourselves a slave state; meanwhile, the vanquished France successfully starved the infant Haiti Republic almost to death, with the U.S. standing by, and so it has gone for Haiti until the present day.
No wonder, some Haiti advocates wish us to be gone.
Our racial climate is different now, than it was in the time of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, but not so much.
The conversation about Haiti, spoken and unspoken, is dominated by racial attitudes that we have been brought up with.
There is an opportunity, in this time of horrible crisis in Haiti, to slowly begin to change the conversation.
I wonder who, or how many, will actually try to do so….
A bit more on Thomas Jefferson and his own personal attitudes here.
At my own website is a timeline of Haiti-American relations. (There is on error there; the U.S. occupied Haiti in 1915-34, rather than 1919). My general Haiti web address is here.

#149 – Dick Bernard: Fr. Tom Hagan; A Horrible Tragedy in Port-au-Prince, and a message to us all.

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UPDATE: Sunday, January 17: It was reported today that Fr. Hagan, who was back in Port-au-Prince at the time of the earthquake, was injured. His office and guesthouse destroyed, and school damaged. Just one of endless fragments of information coming out of Port-au-Prince.
Saturday afternoon we went to early Mass at Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. This is not our usual time. I had agreed to set up a table for my favorite Haiti cause, the micro-finance group Fonkoze, to go along with the guest speaker for the weekend, a Priest from Port-au-Prince, Fr. Tom Hagan, long-time of the group Hands Together.
Fr. Tom had apparently just arrived on the plane, not long before Mass. There seemed to have been no time to get acquainted with the visiting Priest, and some awkwardness at how or whether to introduce this guy from out of town. There had apparently been too little time to coordinate such – from the plane to the pulpit. Sitting in the pew, I wondered what was to come.
But all that that was a very small hurdle, and Fr. Tom gave his homily, one of the most unusual and most powerful I have ever heard from a mission representative. People don’t applaud sermons at our parish, even though we almost always have gifted homilists. This day, somebody in the back started to applaud, and everyone joined in.
The response was the same at all the remaining Masses, five more on Sunday.

Fr. Tom Hagan, Hands Together, preaching at Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis, January 10, 2010


Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis, January 10, 2010


Monday, Fr. Tom flew back to Port au Prince, and was on the ground Monday afternoon and back in his long-time Cite Soleil mission. I heard that the second collection for Fr. Toms’ work set a record for the Basilica. He raised a lot of money in that day in Minneapolis. Since I had a table next to his, we had an opportunity to chat between Masses. He inspired, in an understated yet profound way, just by being who he was.
Then came Tuesday, about 24 hours later, the deadly quake in Port-au-Prince. It’s now Wednesday and we just got word that Fr. Tom is okay; his house has been destroyed. As for the rest of the population of Port-au-Prince, including his community of Cite Soleil, I know no more than anyone else. It is horrific. All that remains, over the coming months, will be the details of the carnage.
Fr. Tom gave a powerful message, which led to applause and to [over $30,000 that] weekend*. This gentle man from Philadelphia, my age, now 14 years in Haiti, got into our hearts.
His message? I keep struggling with how to summarize it other than it was very powerful, from the heart.
Basically, I guess, he “gave we Americans hell” for our self-absorption, and he did it in a way that stuck to the wall without offending too many. He acknowledged tough economic times; he didn’t ask us to contribute a thing; all he wanted us to do was to consider what it was we all take for granted, even in these times of recession, and the daily reality of the people that he served, who have nothing. He burrowed into our souls. He gave his homily with good humor and with understated passion.
So…without intending last weekend, I had something of a front row seat to the soon-to-unfold tragedy in Port-au-Prince. Fr. Tom came to Minneapolis to share Haiti with me.
Now I have to decide how best to respond. Lots of us are in the same position, I would guess.

Fr. Tom with Janice Andersen, Mary Rose Goetz and unidentified lady after Mass January 10, 2010


[* – in all, I heard, a total of over $70,000 was contributed through Basilica to Fr. Hagan’s work between January 10 and January 17, 2010.]

#148 – Dick Bernard: Harry Reid and me.

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So, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid is being drawn and quartered for remarks made about candidate Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2008 Presidential election. “There but for the grace of God go I”, and probably most everyone else, of any ethnicity, anywhere.
As a good friend of mine is wont to say “give me a break!”
Let’s take two days ago, just for instance.
It was Sunday, and I was at Church, this particular day taking care of a social justice table about my particular passion, Haiti.
A few of us were visiting at the neighboring table, including a man of, shall we say, very dark complexion, and an interesting accent to his English. “Where’re you from?”, I asked, since I was curious.
“Minnesotan”, he said…and it took awhile for his puckish grin to appear. He’d heard this one before.
It was awkward for a bit. He was Ethiopian, he finally said, had been here for quite a long while. There are plenty of Christians in Ethiopia, and also, as I began to insert foot in mouth once again, Jews as well – I’d seen a group of these black Ethiopian Jews in Israel in 1996….
Upstairs in church my long-time and great friend John was ushering. We said ‘hello’ as usual, and I got to thinking back two or three years ago when he and another friend of mine in another state were helping me set up an earlier rendition of this blog. I sent a brief e-mail to the other guy about my African-American friend, John, but by mistake I copied John on the e-mail.
I immediately apologized to John for the stupidity – his ethnicity had absolutely nothing to do with anything I was talking about with the other guy – and the matter was over in an instant. My guess is that John is used to gaffes like mine on the race issue. But it has stuck in my mind. And perhaps in his, too.
The one who says that they’ve never thought, or talked, negatively or apprehensively about someone who looks different than they do is not being truthful. I’ve been to homogeneous countries where most everybody looked alike (except for we tourists) and we were all white.
We grow up with said and unsaid messages that are imprinted.
I do family history, and I was taken aback when Aunt Mary on my German side, born in 1913 and lifelong North Dakotan, wrote in the early 1990s about the horses she remembered on the North Dakota farm. King, Queen, Kernal, Sally, Nelly, Sylvia, then “I think Old George and Nigger were part bronco”, Prince, Lady…. Horses were truly a part of the family in those old days, and, I suppose, “Nigger” was a black horse, but….
(I picked these words out of the family history I wrote. Initially I was going to edit out that word, but I’m glad I didn’t…some years later we found a batch of letters from 1905-06 from the farm kin in Wisconsin where on occasion “nigger” and “Jew” popped in as well.)
It’s a problem, and Harry Reid will survive it – since, after all, it’s rank hypocrisy for anyone to cast judgement on the man for such a statement in our still race-sensitive society. Similarly, it is unfair to “judge the book by its cover”…being white, or black (or blue or green or whatever) is no criteria for goodness, or badness.
This goes all ways, and it’s no fun to experience it first hand.
I remember my first trip to Haiti in 2003. I’d been there all of two days, and we were being briefed by victims of heinous crimes in the slums of Port au Prince during the 1991-94 coup time. It was very, very powerful. At the end, we went around to shake hands with the participants, men and women. One of the men refused my hand. I hadn’t said a word in the presentation, and I knew nothing about Haiti. I reminded him of someone, I’d guess. I wonder who.
Best we all learn by bits and pieces. It’s all we can do.

#147 – Dick Bernard: Avatar

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UPDATE January 12, 2010: I have been most intrigued by the assorted interpretations, on all “sides”, about the real meaning of most everything about Avatar. About all I can say is that it serves a useful function in causing thought and (hopefully) conversation. Now, if the assorted “sides” could dialogue with each other about the diverse meanings of the film, now, that would be something. It is now a blockbuster status film. I think it deserves its status. And it is an opening for serious conversation about, particularly, American society and its relationship to the rest of the planet.
A few day ago I made reference to the new film Avatar in this blog.
At the time, I had not seen the film. I went yesterday. I would highly recommend the film as food for thought and for lots of reflective discussion for anyone with even the slightest interest in or concern about the past, present and future of humanity and the planet in general.
Avatar is a high-tech 3D film set far in the future on a planet populated by humanoids similar, I would say, to the indigenous peoples who populated this country and hemisphere 500 years ago, pre-Columbus.
The planet has been targeted for exploitation of an essential new element by a force from the late, great planet earth (to borrow somebodies phrase from long ago.
The earthlings do not, shall we say, represent us as we would like to be seen…on the other hand, they represent us pretty accurately…at least the exploiters who have moved from one objective to the next over the centuries who, in turn, have enlisted our support for things that lay waste to a decent, balanced relationship between the earth and all of its creatures, only one species of which happens to be human.
As we watch the “transformer generation” in Avatar, we are watching ourselves, today, and in especially the last 150 years or so in the U.S., far longer in exploited places like Haiti, where European exploitation began with Columbus over 500 years ago. It is not a pretty sight.
On the other hand, those who we dismiss as Third World, presumably worth less than ourselves, are portrayed well, particularly as their relationship to the earth and each other is concerned. One is reminded of the intimate relationship between the Native Americans and their environment in the time before the introduction of the things that have brought us domination and prosperity.
One can wonder who will get the last laugh as humanity lurches down the road to some final probably destructive destination, perhaps sooner than we like to imagine. Perhaps Jesus’ Beatitudes, the first of which is “Blessed are the Meek” (defined in my grandmothers Bible as the “poor”) are the ultimate inheritors of heaven, to contrast with the present hell on earth visited on so many of them.
For the rich among us, which is most Americans, even those of us who are fairly poor, perhaps we’ve got it as good as it’s going to get…in the end we may trade places with those we now dominate. Nobody knows, just a thought….
Avatar is a long film, nearly three hours, but it is gripping. I found myself wanting popcorn, but not wanting to leave the theatre should I miss something. Those with me in the theatre were equally glued to their seats. Avatar is certainly not an escapist film.
People watching this film can come to their own conclusions. It will be difficult, however, to come to the conclusion that the reality of our lives will serve future generations well.
I recommend this film.

#146 – Dick Bernard: Armies of One

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Wednesday of this week a good friend from the old teacher bargaining days, Paul, met me for coffee at a St. Paul restaurant. He, his wife and I talked about many things, and part of our time was about the raggedness of today’s political conversation in this country, even within “birds of a feather”.
Among other meanderings was the recollection of how difficult negotiations really is for those idealists who actually do the bargaining. Not only is there the obvious disparity in positions between the formal “sides” – in our case, labor and management; even more difficult was the internal “scrum” of priorities within the group we were charged with representing. Individuals and small special interest groups within the union made the process even more difficult…and this was totally off the visible screen for most. It could be brutal.
Yesterday, another good friend and I “talked” a bit on-line about how President Obama has done this first year in office. Jeff is in international business and the very nature of his work is constant negotiations, representing producers in this country in dealings with consumers in other countries. His is the same process that involved Paul and I, only a different venue.
Jeff and I bantered back and forth for a bit about the President’s performance, in baseball terms. “[He has] the “potential to hit .425 in Major League baseball…call me disappointed.” “Your response leads to a question: is there a common definition in this country about what is a political “hit” leading to the .425?” “People got excited with his promise…and promises…now he supports [something else].” “So, “People”? Some think he hit a double; others think he’s struck out; still others would toss him out of the game…it gets complicated really quickly, eh?”
I thought to myself: the baseball metaphor doesn’t work too well here.
Then, late in the afternoon came an out of the blue e-mail from a fellow I know only from e-mail, who I hadn’t heard from in a long time, whose common interest with me is genealogy and a cultural group newsletter I used to do. “Bonjour Dick…just curious…were you ever in the military?…if so, when and in what branch?” The question was completely out of his and my ordinary context. I answered the question in more detail than perhaps he expected: yes, U.S. Army, 1962-63, peacenik, etc., etc. Maybe I’ll hear from him today on what made him curious, maybe not.
The assorted “threads” above, plus others, got me thinking about the that old, odd Army recruiting phrase: “Army of One“, which at some point replaced “Be All You Can Be” and in turn was replaced in 2006 by “Army Strong“.
Having been in the Army, “Army of One” made absolutely no sense from an operational point of view. An “Army of One” would be an Army of Chaos. But at the time, it was probably the only effective way seen to get enough of our Nation of Individualists to volunteer for service: “I’ll come in, but on my terms” was their demand. That probably lasted through the first day or two of basic training and they learned the truth….
Here we are, in 2010, where we seem, too much, to be a “Nation of Ones”, regardless of ideology. The whole is much, much too complicated, so we tend to fixate on a single issue or aspect of the Whole, and make it our non-negotiable demand. As my negotiator friend and I learned long ago, in much smaller contexts, that kind of bargaining simply does not work. Sooner or later, a resolution for the whole needs to be found, that will also satisfy the other “side”. Absent that, chaos.
So, we elect a new President, and immediately challenge everything he does, every decision he makes, and even his supporters call him a failure because he didn’t single-handedly and immediately resolve all of the very real problems that were on his plate coming in.
I think President Obama understands this conundrum. We should too.