{"id":18253,"date":"2022-05-30T13:55:03","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T13:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barazalab.com\/?p=18253"},"modified":"2023-09-04T05:44:53","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T05:44:53","slug":"no-one-is-talking-about-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tuwele.com\/baraza_update\/no-one-is-talking-about-this\/","title":{"rendered":"No One Is Talking About This"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Greetings, friends:
The New York Times last weekend published a front piece spread, \u201cHaiti\u2019s Lost Billions<\/a>\u201d (headlined in print as \u201cThe Ransom\u201d) chronicling how for generations, the descendants of enslaved people in Haiti paid the descendants of their former slave masters, with money that could have been used to build schools, roads, clinics or a vibrant economy. Haitians are the only people in the world who were forced to compensate their former owners with hard cash for the audacity of demanding their freedom, or as the French put it, the loss of \u201ctheir property\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Times piece is harrowing to read: The demand was for 150 million French francs, to be turned over in five annual payments, far more than Haiti could pay. So France pushed Haiti to take a loan from a group of French banks to start paying. Imagine that double debt – a bill on Haitians own bodies, plus an interest-bearing loan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the Times claimed that no one had ever uncovered this story or told this story before, which wasn\u2019t true – numerous Haitian historians, journalists and activists had been doing the work over the years, and little of that work was cited in the Times article. It also made plain the politics of what is considered \u201ca story\u201d and what isn\u2019t: as Amy Wilentz writes <\/a>in The New Republic: \u201c[It seems] that still today, nothing is considered true until the Times says it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, the big lesson here is never to claim that \u201cno one\u201d is talking about this or paying attention to that. Chances are, someone \u2014 usually those directly affected by an injustice \u2014 are obviously talking about what they are living through, because they are experiencing it everyday. Journalists are frequently latecomers to an issue. The difference though, is who gets listened to. Quoting Wilentz again: \u201cHaitians\u2014including some of Haiti\u2019s foremost historians and political scientists\u2014have felt for years, decades, and centuries that their voices are unheard, their country ignored, their ideas and analyses about Haiti disregarded.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As media practitioners, we must always be careful making declarations that we are the first or the only ones \u201craising awareness\u201d through our work. The best we can do is perhaps document it more thoroughly and amplify the voices of those already doing the work. My years in journalism have taught me that very seldom is work truly groundbreaking, in the sense that we are the first to\u00a0ever talk about this.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, here\u2019s:<\/p>\n\n\n\n