W ith all of this going down in Haiti , I am at a loss when figuring out some things in 2010. In case somebody has forgotten, its history and geography seems to be overlooked and undervalued in my opinion. The facts leading up to this disaster have been cooking in this region for 2-3 hundred years. First of all the country of Haiti is half of an island, long conquered from the west by France and Spain. The forced-upon Haitian native tongue is French, and the Dominican Republic side is Spanish. The West enslaved black people from the continent of Africa on both halves of the island, never letting those enslaved people mix, and created fabricated prejudices and bias that exist to this very day. Although Haiti has been the heartbeat for many black people in the entire Diaspora because of the revolutionary liberation led by President Toussaint L'Ouverture, one cannot help but think that the West has damned that liberation.

When the people on an island cannot come and go, as its indigenous people once did, and are forced to be concentrated and compacted by limitations, you have millions of people in Port -au-Prince who flocked to the city for better survival chances. When resources are sucked from a region and the people don’t share and can’t build, you have a recipe for disaster.

The problem in Haiti doesn’t stop just because Americans take it off the news. Long after Wolf Blitzer, Larry King, Anderson Cooper, Fox News, and MSNBC leave the half-island nation, the issues that had been going on before will be twice as heavy. The question remains, what is the West going to do to truly fix a region they screwed up with slavery, takeover and underhanded modern gangsterism?

The West interrupted and destroyed the Caribbean, South America and Asia for the benefit of Europeans, North Americans, and a vast majority of white skinned people. If the West now wants to truly aid they would liberate the entire island. Build townships and cities to redistribute the population and allow Haitians and other people from the descendants of slaves to travel the world for refuge. Provide them with a universal passport, so to speak.

I also have issue with the fact that somebody in this crisis had the nerve to try to discredit Wyclef Jean and the Yéle organization which has been consistently helping throughout these past years when Haiti wasn’t on the international radar. He has been a leader and conduit and we will continue to support Yéle and Wyclef Jean.

For this, a song I picked by artists of Haitian connection speaks volumes of the feeling that ain’t never left. The anger evolves from when people are played with for centuries. Tired and mad as hell and ain’t gonna take it no more.

Chuck D

Co Founder of CLASSIC Rap Group Public Enemy
ChuckD@publicenemy.com
www.publicenemy.com
www.SLAMjamz.com
www.HIPHOPGODS.com