HOTUC COMMENT SPOTLIGHT on “What to Say to the Haitian?”

The HOTUC team appreciates your engagement. Your comments on the different stories that we post in fact sometimes spark the need for larger conversations. In these instances, we have decided to create a new feature on HOTUC that puts YOUR comment in the spotlight and is replied to by the writer.

On March 1^st HOTUC posted “What to Say to the Haitian?” (click title to read story)

Anonymous wrote: My brother is married to a first generation Hatian. She hates African Americans. She married my brother, because she thinks he isnt African American, b/c our mother is white, and our father is black. She hates his children that he fathered by a Puerto Rican, b/c she hates puerto ricans. She, and her family, completely look down on American Blacks, and personally, i find that ridiculous..she doesnt even consider herself black, and she is one of the darkest people i have ever seen> While I dont like what happened in Haiti, there is no way i would support them, their country and their racist ideology..and i would encourage african americans to take a good look at how Hatians really feel about us before we send another cent to that country.

Don’tLettheJCrewFoolYa responds: Thank you for your comment. However, I would encourage you not to project your experience with one Haitian on the other 12 million Haitians on the planet. Not to mention the fact that I suspect that your issues with your sister-in-law go far deeper than her attitudes towards African Americans.

Like every post-colonial society, Haiti has many reminisce of "divide and conquer" colonial power politics. In Haiti, it is simply not enough to share the same skin color or the same African lineage. Everyone's just Haitian. So, after 200 years of independence and power abuse, Haitians (whatever the hue of their skin) have done just as much to hurt other Haitians as whites did to non-white Haitians back in the day. As such, the idea that once in the US, Haitians SHOULD relates with Black Americans and therefore joins their community is foreign to them. And, it's also unfair. The community of African Americans as we know it in the US today is a direct product of unique policies in US history--namely the 1/5th rule. There is NO OTHER PLACE on the planet where one drop of African heritage constitutes being Black. In every other post-colonial society where there were either enslaved or colonized Africans, there is a name or category for every hue of Black. Is it right? No. But from distinctions such as mulatto (Latin America), Dulla (Trinidad), or Coloured (South Africa) we have various and distinct communities of color around the world. It's only in the America that a Halle Berry or Barack Obama are considered 100% Black.

So, for a Haitian, the idea that they belong to the community of Black Americans just doesn't connect as easily. But the distinction is not unqiue to the Haitian community. Nigerians come here and stick to their own, as do Trinis, Jamaicans, Ghanaians, etc. Dominicans don't think their Black either. The problem is greater than the issues between you and your sister-in-law or Haitians and Americans.

I spent several years working at US Embassies around Africa. I remember a Malian man pulling me aside in the US Embassy lobby. He pointed to the picture of President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell and asked, "How can they say Powell is Black? He is the same color as the other two!"

So, instead of trying to project your personal sense of culture identity on others, I would encourage you to take a moment, recognize and understand that people's identifies are rooted in their unique histories. The Black American experience cannot simply be projected onto every person of color around the world. When you do that, you only show the world how blindly you've adopted yourself to the same American SUPERIORITY complexes that kept so many people who look like you and me (and darker) oppressed for the greater part of the 17th, 18th & 19th centuries.

Besides, whatever anyone’s issues are with other cultures/races (or themselves) this should never get in the way of the human heart and help when someone is in need.

L'union fait la force

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Africa is Suffering from an Obesity Problem

Urban Chameleon news

The "index of affluence and power is linked to one's size." In other words, bigger is better, even if its unhealthy.

Women, especially in black populations, think being overweight is "something that is beautiful and attractive."
full article at Newsweek

Interesting topic considering people are re-thinking the current BMI levels as the standard to measure obesity. Now if they would only make this adjustment to SAT's (not that I'm condoning people being unhealthily overweight)

BMI is used to determine weight categories: 18.5 and below is considered underweight; 18.6 to 24.9 healthy; 25 to 29 overweight; and 30-plus obese. “This scale was created years ago and is based on Caucasian men and women,” says Dr. Molly Bray, associate professor of pediatrics and nutrition at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. “It doesn’t take into account differences in body composition between genders, race/ethnicity groups, and across the lifespan.”

ARISE, Africa Is No Joke

The Vibe might haven fallen but we are on the Arise. This new magazine with only it’s 5th issue out is killin’ em. Arise is bringing a new light to Africa accentuating it’s beauty, innovation and strength. I hope that its accessibility of African culture can especially help to bridge gaps between Africans and African Americans. (See posting Africans vs. African Americans)









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PLEASE NOMINATE US FOR ALL FOUR CATEGORIES!!!

Haiti Reppin' At the Waldorf Astoria Hotel

by today's Urban Chameleon contributor

A couple of years ago I was just finishing up my last semester in grad school at Harvard University I was interviewing at all the big Wall Street firms and when it came down to the final interviews, one of them flew me to New York and put me up at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Now, being a native New Yorker (born and raised), I hadn't ever really stayed at a hotel in Manhattan, let alone the Waldorf! So of course, once I told my Haitian mom who lives in Queens she packed her bag and came to live it up with me in the palace for a night on some Coming to America tip.

When my mom arrived later that evening she was decked out head to toe looking like Jackie Kennedy with dark shades, a sun hat, hair done, heels and her Louis Vuitton luggage in tow that she got from the Africans on Jamaica Avenue. The first thing she did was pull out her cell phone and call my aunts in Haiti no less to give them a play by play of the room. To make the experience complete, we ordered room service: a little wine and cheese and changed into the hotel robes like we were waiting for prince Hakeem. Within 15 minutes, the doorbell rang (yes, the doorbell to the room), and my mom jumped up to answer. And if our little "Uh, oh we are living it up" getaway wasn't enough of a reminder of the leaps and bounds that Ivy League education has allowed us to take, the next words I heard exchanged at the door slapped me right back onto Jamaica Avenue in Queens. "Oh! Laurent, sa wap fe la'a?" Translation? "My mother of course knows the room service guy. Not only knows him kinda sorta from around the way, but my grandmother is HIS godmother." LORD JESUS. I done made it all the way to the Waldorf and I'm related to the help.

Well, it didn't stop there. That morning, after my mother had left (at 4am mind you because she needed to make it back to queens in time for work), I headed out to Park Avenue to wait for the company car back to the airport. As I’m waiting I noticed an old Jewish classmate of mine from high school who was in town too visiting her family early for Yom Kippur, we chatted for a couple of seconds (never revealing what I was doing there) before I noticed my black town car pull up and I totally pulled a, “Well this is me girl, it was nice to catch up” and real quick hit her with some Hebrew in recognition of the holiday, "L'shana Tovah" before signaling for the bell hop to bring my things to the driver. As she was grabbing her jaw off the floor putting together that I was checking out of the Waldorf my jaw then dropped as I recognized the driver. "Oh! Sa wap fe la'a?" Translation: You have got to be kidding me. Leslie? Leslie like my aunt's ex-boyfriend? Now a man that could have very well ended up being my uncle if things had worked out with my aunt was my driver!???!!! Talk about being an Urban Chameleon, there is no movin' on up and forgetting where you come from. Well thank god because that's probably why I continue to keep it real.

"Comment vas tu Leslie? JFK Airport."

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No Swine Flu Is Stopping These Urban Chameleons

by today's Urban Chameleon contributor

My friend and I recently decided to take a last minute get away from NYC to Florida in desperate need of a tan on a beach despite the great Swine Flu epidemic. And why did this flu have to be from Mexico with the news all trying to have you weary of a Mexican? Lawd knows Mexicans don't need no more stigmatisms this might as well be aids in Africa the way they’re putting it. Is this just an excuse to keep yall across the border? Ridiculous. I know each race has to take turns and lawd no Black folks hold their breath and cross their toes when word gets out that someone did something stupid like shot, killed, robbed and ate someone, we all do be praying, "Please don't let them be Black." Now with Obama in office we may have skipped a couple of prayers a little more relaxed that if a few dumb ninjas end up on the news they won’t set the entire race back but regardless all people of color have to be ready to come with their pros to out weigh those cons. So Mexicans I hope you have ur "Flip it plan."

For instance we've even managed to find a positive prophecy in this I know I got my text message sent to me the other day

"They said we would have a Black president when pigs fly. 100 days into his presidency and swine flu!"

Why are we so deep.

I wonder if my white friends receive these same text messages or if they have their own confirmed prophecies that circulate.

Does anyone know?

Watch these two Urban Chameleons prepare for take off.




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African vs. African Americans

by today's Urban Chameleon contributor

I was recently engaged in an online discussion posted on The Black Snob regarding the hostility between Africans and African Americans, “Why Can't We be Friends?” The Snob mentioned that conversation came out of last week’s annual Harvard Kennedy School Black Policy conference that took place in DC that she opened up for larger discussion on her website. The stereotypes if you’re not familiar are that African/ Caribbean people believe African Americans to be uneducated and lazy having no concept of the world outside the US borders and African Americans view Africans as aggressive, pushy and living in jungles (uuuhhhm ok). I find this debate fascinating and absolutely ridiculous at the same time but more than anything sad because it only reveals that we have so much more work ahead of us. One commentator wrote:

Black folk are the TRUEST Americans..

because we have fought FOR this country. I just don't mean in every military conflict from the Revolutionary War on..

I mean, at the root of progression in this country, over the course of centuries - to live up to its actual creed, is a pile of Black bodies.

And, after Black folk did all the heavy lifting, here comes everyone else, to get the benefits, including Black immigrants that have the audacity to look down on American Black folk.

Hmmmm, now where does this commentator think the Black bodies came from? This is why folks like this be killing me- loud and wrong. We will be the first to bring up some “We shall overcome” and quick to remind white people of their historical discrimination against us but won’t call each out when we do it to each other. Having all shared a common thread of our enslaved ancestors you would think we would be more unified but that’s the irony of slavery- we are so broken from each other and riddled with self hate. You know what they say when you say something hateful about someone else it usually means you hate yourself- and too many hateful comments in our community exists whether it’s about wearing natural hair, someone’s big lips, round nose and or skin tone.

On a different note I sometimes wonder if people of color are even meant to be unified. Thembi from What Would Thembi Do? made a great comment on the blog that it's assumed we all fall within one category because we are of color. However as a result of our ancestry being broken up, languages lost, culture forgotten and spirituality tested and depending on where we landed we’ve had to put our selves back together as individuals and therefore have too many conflicting ideas of how we should exist as a race. It’s just too bad that we still have too many of our own plagued with the “self hate” syndrome to handle these differences progressively. Let’s just face it as Chris Rock says the war on Black folks and Niggas continue.We probably just have a few more generations before the ign’nt are gone and the progressive can thrive …and then who know maybe no more Tyler Perry, Madea movies! (Okay that last part was extra but valid)

What do you think about this war on our selves? Please share some hope.

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How the Urban Chameleon Came to Be...

by creator and editor-in-chief HaJ

One day, a group of friends and I were sitting around trying to think of a term that best describes people like us who approach the world from parallel perspectives, having mastered the skill of seamlessly transitioning into corporate America—from its private grade school classrooms, ivy league universities, corporate board rooms and social climbing ladders—back out into our bilingual/patois/urban slang speaking, hip winding, kinky hair handling and curry spice eating America.

We are the approaching 30ty sumptin', urban professionals of color born into the hip hop generation and raised by parents who were in search of a better life having migrated from the Caribbean, South America and Africa or those born here who lived to see Jim Crow Laws become the Civil Rights Movement— They shared an ambition of carving out their road towards the Great American Dream. Our families made homes for us in the largely immigrant communities nestled in the metro-city 'hoods of Brooklyn, Queens, Harlem and the Bronx where a walk down our street could still served up bangin’ plates of rice and peas, curry goat, plantanos, and collard greens and the rhythm of the streets were a flavorful mix of Afro-Caribbean-Latino-Hip Hop that would easily seduce us into gyrating our hips. We reveled in the pulse and comfort of our urban/Latino/Caribbean ‘hood, but when it came to our education our world stopped. It was as if the batteries in the boom box died and the sensuous aromas of all that good food was locked in the freezer. Having to wake up an extra two hours earlier every day to get ready for our commute, we witnessed, through sleepy eyes, regentrification at its finest as we were sent across town where we were only one of two kids of color in the best private schools. Our parents would drop us off, tell us just how much they loved us and off we were to learn another kind of world. A world that we would have to know if we were going to one day run a company or maybe even...a country.

We did what kids do and tried to fit in, realizing that rules in school were different, simply defined by someone else’s culture. Even the way they played “red light green light” was different from how we played it around the way. But after a while, having learned the new rules, we no longer fit in around-the-way. Soon, names like "Oreo" were whispered in our direction condemning us for the verbs we were now conjugating. Our families set aside our tears and feelings of isolation that came along with struggling to define ourselves in opposing worlds and instead took comfort in knowing that we were being prepared for a fiercely competitive world.

We continued to thug our way between the two worlds keeping up with Yo MTV Raps and -refining our best versions of the whop, Kid ‘n Play and the boggle for those around-the-way dance offs and our families continued to endure laborious work and financial strain as they often handed over their last dollar for our classical music lessons and summer travels around the world.

So, who did we end up becoming?

Today we are the cross-sector, world traveling, social switching consumers that can be found pumping down Fifth Ave in our Louboutin’s with a Bergdorf shopping bag trying to catch transportation back to the ‘hood for those two dollar codfish fritters before going to see the Dominicans to get our hair done.

We are the over achiever who works through the night prepping PowerPoint presentations to an iPod shuffle playlist of Lil’ Weezy, Jay Z and Buju Banton – and then maybe flip it to Jamiroquai and then brings it down with some Yo-Yo Ma

We’re the ones who identify the Caribbean/Latino/African customer representative, switch into the dialect of their homeland and score ourselves a free bump to first class then sit back with a glass of Kir Royal and chuckle at the person next to us who tries to figure us out peeping our selected reading material of The New Yorker, Financial Times and Vibe Magazine (with T-Pain in platinum and diamond fronts on the cover)

But that’s okay, we’re accustomed to the confused looks, inquisitive stares and the ignorant questions from those who can’t seem to figure us out— Not quite Cosby kids and not quite Bebe’s kids. We inherited our family’s hustle mentality with a cosmopolitan twist where we go from skiing in the Alps of Switzerland to being upside down gyrating on a float at a West Indian Day Parade.

We are Urban Chameleons.

One thing is for sure: no matter what your cultural background, the ticket to the American Dream is still embedded in White America. So, we know there must be all kinds of chameleons here hustlin' towards their American dream as they juggle more than one kind of world. These are just our tales as we know them and we find humor and comfort in sharing them…this is the journey of the Urban Chameleon.

Please enjoy and contribute to the journey.