Racism in Haiti! "Why would a Black country have any racism?" you might ask. Well take it from me, racism in Haiti has been, and will probably always be, alive and well. I've been there, done that, and have lived through it. I wasn't always the fly Haitian Diva you see in front of you today. I used to be a little, shoeless girl running up and down my little street in Diquini, just west of Port-Au-Prince.

My best friend Sandra and I used to hang real tough. We went everywhere together. You never saw one without seeing the other. We were alike in almost every way except for one; I was a brown, chocolate complexion, and she was very light-skinned. She wasn't white (a "bon blan"), and not quite a mulatto, but what African-Americans usually refer to as "High-Yellow." Now, you have to understand that Sandra has never been that attractive, but she was light, and in Haiti that was all you had to be.

Her skin color never really mattered to me until a particular incident, which I will never forget, occurred when we were growing up. As we got older, we started noticing the boys and, of course, they started noticing us. There was this one kid in particular, who was always following us to the Machann Fritay, where we would buy a little Fritay snack on the way home from school. We always pretended we didn't see him, even though he was usually all up in our faces. He was really cute, and one day I wanted to talk to him to see what he was all about.

I told Sandra, "Ann pale ave-l non. Ann mande-l ki jan li rele." ("Why don't we talk to him. Let's ask him what his name is.")

Sandra's eyes got real big, her face turned red and she yelled at me "Kisa? Ou fou! Gade jan li tou nwè, tou lèd, epi l-ap fè interesan!" ("What? You're crazy! Look at how black and ugly he is, and he has the nerve to be showing off!")

Well! Since, my butt was just as dark as this guy, I figured Sandra must have thought I was ugly too. I never brought it up again, but that experience opened my eyes to how we Haitians treated each other based on skin color and perceived social status. In Haiti, aside from having the right last name, having the right skin color can open many doors for you. Even back then, I knew that these attitudes must have been due to our history, and were the remnants of a culture introduced by the white, French colonists who were long gone by the time I was born. When they left, the power vacuum created much tension between the mulatto upper-class minority (who were educated and had economic power), and the darker, usually uneducated masses.

I even had other dark-skinned girl friends who swore up and down that they would never go out with a dark-skinned guy. Bernadette, another close friend of mine, would say stuff like, "What am I gonna do with a guy as dark as me? What would our kids look like? Dife Chabon? ("Coal fire.") Oh my goodness, how sad my people can be when they aren't thinking straight. I remember all the times I was skipped over by the boys, for some girls who were lighter than I was…but definitely not cuter! They obviously did not know I was a Diva!

I remember one day, when Bernadette had a little money, she dragged me to this beauty supply store in Port-Au-Prince and she used up all her little savings to buy some Dermaline skin whitening lotion. (I know you girls out there know what I'm talking about!) She couldn't even wait until she got home, and dragged me into a little alley where she started putting this stuff on her face. Then she tried to put it on my face talking about "L-ap fe figi-w paret fre. L-ap fe figi-w pi klè." ("This will make your face look fresh. This will make your face lighter.") Although my better judgment told me not to, I thought that maybe she was right. Maybe this would help me get some of the guys I was hot for. I let her put some on my face and rinsed it off with some water Bernadette brought in a plastic bottle. After drying our faces with some napkins, we hopped on a tap-tap, and went back home to Diquini. I felt stupid the next morning when I woke up, ran to the mirror, and realized my face was just as black as it was before.

I stopped talking to Bernadette. The next time I saw her, she was talking to this guy who was pimple-faced, buck toothed, weasel-looking, and ugly as sin …..but he was light- skinned. That's all she cared about. In Haiti, everything black was ugly, everything black was negative. The messed up part was that, the majority of us Haitians are dark! The entire country has this inferiority complex. That was one of the reasons I was happy when I left Haiti for New York city, where I thought that this kind of thing would surely never happen. Little did I know…

More recently, In Brooklyn, I remember seeing the T-Vice's "Medikaman" video and being so disappointed at the number of light-skinned, high yellow, non-Haitian looking girls prancing around in their bikini's. Was this the popular Compas group that was supposed to represent Haiti? I remember realizing that my country hadn't changed a bit.

Last year, I went back to Haiti and decided to look Sandra up since I heard she had gotten married and had a couple of kids. I was bugging when I went to her house and realized she was married to that same "black and ugly" guy she had so thoroughly dissed years before. At that moment I realized that if her hard-headed self had managed to change her ways, then maybe there was also some hope for Haiti!

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