POTUS #45's racism has no end in sight. He is a bully, has no shame and don't know history whatsoever. His slurs to Africans, Salvadoran's and in particular to Haitians was a very low hit. Africa and its history is well known, but people don't know much about Haiti unless it's about poverty, natural disasters such as devastating hurricanes and earthquakes. The story of Haiti is compeling one, it is human story that captivates the mind. Haiti is situated in America's backyard and is one of the poorest countries in the Americad hemosphere. The question is why Haiti is that poor and so close to the rich Continental North America? The answer is simple - racism ! Yes, it's racism, and anyone else thinking of Haiti as voodoo practising, diabolical, AIDS ridden people are just propagating the worest kind of racism. The truth is Hiatians revolted against slavery first and they are punished for that till today. I, an African born world traveller, have been always interested in Haiti's history, to me it shows resilience, courage and never dying attitude that Haitian people have thru out the course of their history. I have made many trips to the big Island of Hispaniola - Domenican Republic & Haiti share it - very frequently for work in both countries, and still have timeshare in Punta Cana of DR. I own great deal of Haiti's bright colored art pieces - paintings and sculpture. Haitians handcraft art is one of the best African traditional art anywhere.

However, one thing always touches my heart about Haiti, that is whenever I land in Port Au Prince, I feel I am at home because of how this great people welcome visitors. Haitians are very polite people, contrary to what some Americans media wants you to believe, they are very proud of their African heritage and celebrate it all the time, unlike the Dominicans who went all out to eradicate Africanism under the late dictator Trujillo. This dictator set out to remove African heritage from Domenican Republic (DR). He ordered hundreds of Haitians be shot in the back as they fled DR into Haiti, crossing the river that divides the two nations. Trujillo was a sick man, he used to get up every morning, sat down in front of vanity mirror and his maids would paint him white by using baby powder for hours, because he wanted to white and hide his African skin. He was worse than Michael Jackson. Hollywood cannot make up staff like that. He was beyond weird, but that kind of weirdness stays in DR to this day. Whenever I travel to DR, people call me El Indio (the indian) given my dark complexion and hair. I find that to be weird, but again thru out my extensive travels into the Americas, I learned a lot how race is fluid in this part of the word. Everyone who went to Brazil knows that there are so many variations of color skins and people are grouped according to the hue of their color, which puts them in social category. The lighter the skin complexion the higher the social status. Brazil is extreme case compared to other nations in this hemisphere, but when I think of DR, we know there was no indians when Christopher Columbus landed Hispaniola first, unlike Brazil where there were Indians as the Portuguese landed. The blacks were brought later to work in the sugar plantations by the French on the Haitian sife, while the Spanish conquered the other half of the island and mixed with the African slaves there . So, I always wondered where did they come up with the name "Indio" when there were no indians. The simple answer is that they created a whole ethnicity out of no where, if you are not white and do not look like "negro" then you fall in the "indio" category automatically. Trujillo created this category from the main category of Mulatto which is white mixed. In contrast, the Haitians are mainly from one ethnicity and enjoy one African stock. Here is why the white European slave owners quarantined Haiti: the slaves in Haiti were the first to revolt, take independence and created a country on their own. The European powers who were trading slaves did not want freedom and liberty to ring for the slaves in this hemisphere, so they send pirates and military roam the area and put down Haitian freedom fighters. The US, Spanish, and English colonies all took part in punishing Haitian slaves for attaining their natural rights. From the get go nothing would go in, nothing comes out from Haiti - the idea was to leave Haiti to die.

In the end, the great Haitian warrior - Touseint Levretour- was an emancipate African ex-slave who refused slavery, his indomitable spirit led him to revolt, hid in the forest mountains (back then there was forest, now the hills are without trees, because in order to survive people cut trees for coal to make fire to cook). He recruited other like minded slaves, they formed small army, then drove out the French from the island twice at least. Napoleon sended reinforcement but Haitians have already decided not to go back to slavery, so they fought against Napoleon's army and won independence for good.

Put this in prespective, at the time, Haiti was the jewel in the French crown because it was producing most sugar in the world, back then a kilo of sugar was as expensive as kilo of gold, because the demand was so high in Europe that just had learned the taste of sweet sugar. The Haitian independence happened right around the US independence, so in order to keep the story of Haitians independence away from media, other stories were created for Haiti. Those stories continue to be defamatory, and provide a bad image for Haiti stemming out from false information. The truth is Haitians said no to slavery, fought against it, got their independance and they were pubushed for that. The country has seen some progress as of late, but there are some challenges that remain. A textile production free zone is created, it is functional and business is booming. The enviroment remains to be weak, Haiti is in hurricane zone and hurricanes are becoming stronger and more frequent because of climate change. The problem is Haiti is hilly country, those hills were used to be covered with huge tree forests that disappeared now, so when hurricane comes the hills turn to mud slides that devastate houses, roads and so on.