Posted on 02/22/2009 10:14:10 AM PST by Abathar
POINTE-A-PITRE, Guadeloupe – Protests that have nearly shut down the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are not just about demands for lower prices and higher wages: For demonstrators they are no less than a battle against the vestiges of slavery.
Afro-Caribbean islanders — most of whose forbears toiled in the sugarcane fields under the yoke of slavery more than 160 years ago — not only resent France's handling of the global economic crisis, they have long resented that slaveholders' descendants control the economy on both islands.
They also suspect that businesses earn too high a profit on goods, most of which are imported.
This resentment against slaveholder descendants, known as bekes (bay-KAY) has lent an especially sharp edge to weeks of demonstrations that at times have erupted in gunfire, arson, looting, and the death of one activist in Guadeloupe.
"They've got the money, they've got the power, they've got Guadeloupe," snapped protester Lollia Naily. "This is not a race thing. It is a money thing and it is a power thing."
Protesters in Martinique also have rejected the bekes, with frequent chants of "Martinique is ours, not theirs!" Bekes own most industries in Martinique — but represent only about 1 percent of the island's 401,000 residents.
Deep economic and social disparities divide France from its overseas possessions: Unemployment in Guadeloupe is about 23 percent, compared with 8 percent on mainland France, and 12 percent of islanders live in poverty, compared with 6 percent of mainlanders, according to the most recent statistics.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Those poor people. If we could only put them out of their misery.
Move them to North Dakota in January and really give them something to b*tch about?
and ours as well.
it’s always the whites fault.
In areas that are really dark like Haiti, Jamaica and Domican Republic, it becomes blame the shades...the lighter the more blame worthy.
or blame Indians, Chinese, Maronites and Sephardic Jewish communities that often prosper in a sea of dark people.
The Negro race plays this blame gang everywhere they are and wherever it suits them.
Blame the colonial, blame the creole, blame the Mullatto and so forth
sometimes it leads to brutal hand wrought personal violence the likes we rarely see here in the US.
even Rwanda had shades of this...not so much color although some would argue the Tutsis were a hair lighter and less bush looking. the Tutsis were more successful, more educated, controlled more and had a history of being more compatible with the colonials and more “act white”
I’ve lived in and observed this sorta thing all my life and it ain’t pretty....
just look at America...rare is the “black leader” who is not at least 1/4 to 1/2 white or at least appears to be mullatto....they get scorned too with redbone and high yella and all that talk
The unrest has its roots in Marxism and the Marxist labor unions. They’re engaged in “miserification,” that is, making things so miserable (by driving away the tourist trade and creating a lawless country) that everybody will turn to Marxism as their savior.
That said, the French were not good colonists. Both Spanish and British colonies were moving ahead to devolution to the majority inhabitants - until the rise of modern Marxism (which has since swept both of those countries’ former colonies) threw everything off. But French colonies were always dysfunctional.
Haitians put an end to slavery on the island of Hispaniola. Their rewards and recognition for that are listed below on this post.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
...and so on.......
So politically un-correct of you, there are lib lurkers who would like to take you out behind the woodshed for what you just said.
And it was the spot on truth too.
Here' the actual demographics of the two islands....not as dark as this author tries to submit
Guadelupe
Black / Mulatto 69%
White 11%
from Tamil Nadu and other parts of India 14%
Lebanese / Syrians 4%
Chinese / others
Martinique
Ethnic groups:
African and African-white-Indian mixture 90%,
white 5%,
Indian Tamil or East Indian,
Chinese less than 5%
"They've got the money, they've got the power, they've got Guadeloupe," snapped protester Lollia Naily. "This is not a race thing. It is a money thing and it is a power thing."
I am so sick of these poor, downtrodden ancestors of slaves complaining about having no control.
Their ancestors had the entire continent of Africa under their control.
Whose fault is it but theirs that they didn't develop it into something other than huts, generational poverty, disease, superstition and corruption?
Funny, but have pity on ND; it sounds like they would be more at home in Vermont.
Exactly what “category” would that be?
Evidently the closest white man they can point to and scream at, wherever in the world they are living at the time.
Evidently the closest white man they can point to and scream at, wherever in the world they are living at the time.
White men have been "castrated" by jealous slackers because they worked hard to advance their lifestyles and society.
What a twisted, perverted world we live in.
Both comments are SPOT ON!
The first time I heard the "N-word" (God, how cowed we now are) in public was as a kid in NYC in the mid-'40s. My dad was in the merchant service then and from his experiences there, held a low opinion of Africans, calling them his own slur of "Blacks", which is what I used . The "N-word" was considered "po buckra" (white trash according to my Southern mom).
I was sitting in the john at school one day and heard two guys arguing and one guy says, "You think you're hot stuff when you ain't nuthin but an 'N'!" I thought, boy there's gonna be a fight between a black and white guy and looked out. The argument was between a black guy and a mulatto.
I was in Haiti in the '50s and even then the poverty was stunning as well as its hatred towards the lighter skinned natives, who as you point out, were the dominant class.
Go ahead and let them “take control”, just as mugabes supporters have “taken control” of the farms. Then let them starve because that’s exactly what will happen.
Exactly like South Africa.
Once a jewel of the continent, now it’s a hell-hole that any decent civilized person would flee in a heartbeat given the chance.
Odd, is it not, how cash is seen to be palliative of the supposed “wounds of slavery?” The pattern of course is all too familiar: a poorly educated, low skilled, insular minority makes demands in the name of grievances rooted in history. Since the past cannot be changed, such grievances are ever ready to be trotted out as the basis for new demands.
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