Final Blog- "Sadness in the eyes of my people"

           Gender, race, and class, are the definition to colonialism and imperialism by Europeans (the West), and the U.S. The United States of America is a country that profits from the “dependence” of other countries such as Haiti. The relationships built among other countries have been confused with the meaning of help and savior with control and profit.  Liberalism is a term that has been used extremely loosely when referring to natives of Haiti, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and many other countries in direct financial gain with the United States. Liberal means favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs. The U.S. is a nation that is rooted in political affairs transnationally through foreign and state affairs. It also is a country founded on Christianity. This correlation is given to stress the means of supposedly caring for individuals outside of the U.S. territory yet, inside their boundaries. Christianity is the moral belief of treating people with kindness, respect, and morality. If this is a nation that is supposedly engulfed in their people and well-being among themselves, why haven’t the same attitude been exerted among the neighboring countries to which they gain millions of dollars through goods and services? Haiti is a country not a part of the United States, but a part of the production and stability of the U.S.’s financial foundation.

            Women in Haiti seem to be the number one target of socioeconomic concern. In the research given by Schuller, women are the bodies dying from social and domestic violence as well as one of the deadly diseases known as HIV/AIDS. This cultural phenomenon is distinctly the discourse the West would like to promote. The NGO’s sent into Haiti were supposed to be labeled as “non-profit” organizations promoting abstinence and condom uses among women and men to help prevent this deadly epidemic of AIDS; however, these “non-profit” organizations were actually profiting through the government with certain criteria of promoting these teaching through a particular format. Encouraging Haitian females to practice abstinence was a start, but it was definitely not going to prevent AIDS. This is the same technique given to women in the states with privileged means, so what made Bush, Clinton, or the NGO’s for that matter believe this idea would work within a poverty stricken country who were rapped and or forced to become hypersexual beings for survival? This was a notion to brainwash the natives in accepting such environments and eventually blaming themselves for their inherited disease.

            “Killing with Kindness” as well as the Paul Farmer piece brought a realization to suffering, community education, and the nature of human decision. These episodes mentioned placed structural violence in a realm of eye-opening truth, and why left the pondering question of why the West participated in such horrific endeavors. The display of power dynamics almost made it seem as if these Black bodies positioned themselves in these experiences. Race and the gender politics of these women and men put these helpless individuals in the line of fire for complete failure and subordination under power. This notion placed disease, discourse, the UN, the U.S., Black women, and knowledge association in an origin of question for me as far as facts and capital T truth is concerned. Words can’t explain the mortality rates of the Black bodies’ still taking place as we speak at the hands of those who classify themselves as Christians.