WEBVTT

00:00:08.173 --> 00:00:11.811
me, I would say that most
of even contemporary views

00:00:11.811 --> 00:00:15.215
about Creoles are still
driven by the same racism that

00:00:15.215 --> 00:00:16.516
characterized slavery.

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And then they
conclude, and I want

00:00:18.885 --> 00:00:22.822
to take that conclusion very
seriously, that although we

00:00:22.822 --> 00:00:26.493
might use a label "Creole,"
but that label doesn't mean

00:00:26.493 --> 00:00:31.297
that we have a linguistic
structure or class of Creole

00:00:31.297 --> 00:00:31.898
languages.

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The term "Creole" is
just a historical term

00:00:33.833 --> 00:00:37.504
that applies to this
particular group of languages,

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but isn't referred to special
developmental or special

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structural patterns.

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They're just a language,
that's what the Creole is.

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But then, what we have to ask
is where do we go from here?

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What was the issue there?

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And in fact, we can do one
thing that-- and this is

00:00:58.958 --> 00:01:01.428
from Mufwene's work.

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I like this map
because what is shows

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is what we discussed earlier.

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The fact that if you really
look at Creoles without biases,

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and you think of
the development,

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and you go back in
time and you think

00:01:13.706 --> 00:01:16.209
of the development of
Romance languages--

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so this is the way
Romance evolved.

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So Latin conquerors going from
Rome into Gaul, Iberia, et

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cetera, that's how the
Romance languages were

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created, through conquest
and contact of populations.

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And the same way, if you look
at what happened to French when

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French went to North America,
the Caribbean, Africa,

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all the way to Asia, that's
also how Creoles were created.

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You got Haitian Creole,
[INAUDIBLE] Creole, Mauritius

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Creole, Seychelles Creole.

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And this is where you
get the Kreyolofoni,

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alongside Francophonie,
of course.

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But the claim I've
made so far is

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that you have similar
patterns, not only in terms

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of language contact
but also in terms

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of structural development.

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So from that
perspective, again, there

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need not be this divide,
this fundamental divide

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that linguists often draw
between language change,

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as in the history of French,
and then Creole formation,

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as in the history
of Haitian Creole.

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Earlier we talked
about these myths

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about the [INAUDIBLE] of Creole.

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So now what we could ask is--

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in case you want to
read more about it.

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So you can go to my website.

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And you find lots and lots of
arguments against this idea

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that you have this cycle.

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Let's go up to now.

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And here I'm going to be
using some of the slides

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that I showed at
the UN last week.

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So because what we
want to ask, connecting

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to the issues of
identity and education

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that were touched on
by Karen and Rachel is,

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why do these myths endure?

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Actually, now this, I
can go quickly, actually,

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because you've seen
all of these before.

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I just wanted to bring
them back there quickly.

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Again, you find this
myth in very well

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read, popular newspapers,
magazines, like Newsweek,

00:03:24.103 --> 00:03:28.841
The New York Times, Reuters,
even The New Yorker.

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And all of these share something
in common that we saw earlier,

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that now should be too
familiar, which is Creoles

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are French Patios,
broken French,

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they're like
primitive languages.

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Or, this one is the most poetic.

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And I like this one
because it makes me

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into a special
specimen of humanity.

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Because really,
that what it means.

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As I like to say when I give
this talk in public, when

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I switch from speaking
English to speaking Creole

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I go from being a modern human
to being a primitive human

00:04:03.676 --> 00:04:06.779
because I can all of a
sudden, on my tongue,

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I get to pronounce these
linguistic fossils, which

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are the equivalent of
the Galapagos to Darwin.

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This is spectacular.

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This is a spectacular claim.

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And this is Newsweek, this
is The New York Times.

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It's to show you how
acceptable these claims are.

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But then, again, to wrap up
from what we discussed earlier,

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this is very much in sync
with Michel-Rolph Trouillot.

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Now this is going back to
the early part of this class,

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where we were
looking at history.

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So what we see is that
the same way that Creoles

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have been silenced,
the fact that Creoles

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are normal languages
that has been silenced,

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is often the same way that
ancient history has been

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silenced for the same reason.

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Because how many of
you, before this class,

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knew about Haitian history?

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You because you have
a Haitian boyfriend.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And when I ask that question,
even in big classes like 24.900

00:05:07.874 --> 00:05:11.077
with hundreds of students, I get
maybe one or two people to know

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that the Haitian revolution
was even more dramatic in terms

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of its claims than both
the French and the American

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revolutions.

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It was the only one
in the 18th century

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to proclaim liberty
and equality for all.

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The only one.

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The French one, the
French still had slaves.

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The American one, Jefferson,
Madison, all these guys

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still had slaves.

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And Haiti was the
only revolution

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where there was this
claim for liberty for all.

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This is from Trouillot that
as Haiti was entering history,

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it was being written
about by people

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who did conceive of the Africans
as equals to the Europeans.

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So they could only read,
according to Trouillot,

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those 18th century scholars.

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They could only
read the news only

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with the ready-made lenses.

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And it meant that
African liberation,

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the fact that an African
army could win over Napoleon,

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they couldn't process that.

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It was incompatible with the
idea of [INAUDIBLE] revolution.

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And the same way for language.

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So the same scholars looking
at Haiti's revolution,

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they're also looking
at Creole language.

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They couldn't imagine.

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For them it was
impossible that Creoles

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would be no more languages.

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So you can just pass on that.

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So this is very familiar.

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So this is the root
of all these myths.

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So the root of these myths
is basically, the idea

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that the Africans were lesser.

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And whatever they could produce
as language had to be lesser.

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Therefore they could not be
part of this same kind of theory

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as normal language change,
as they [INAUDIBLE]

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So again, we can say
it's the economy, stupid.

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Meaning that the driving--

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in fact, this is not clear.

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So yesterday, Noam Chomsky
was in Black Matters,

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and I asked him that question
about what came first,

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the economy, empire, or racism?

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Because one could say that
racism is a result of empire.

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If you want to make the
Africans as slaves of labor

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in order to produce
wealth, then you

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are going to demean the color,
the culture, the language.

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Or was racism there
before, and therefore

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made it OK to make
them into slaves.

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That's a hard
question to answer.

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It's hard to know.

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Maybe the two, as
Chomsky puts it,

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the two reinforce each other.

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You see that in the
case of Haiti, though,

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we have all these documents
that show that clearly,

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one of the driving forces
behind the Black Code, which

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was a code to regulate the
slaves in the Caribbean,

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the driving force
behind it was economics.

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Something like that.

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So it's the idea that
the Creole Blacks

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are superior because they
are in the company of whites,

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something like that.

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"For all the tasks, it
is the Creole slaves

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that are preferred."

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And here, the idea is they said,
the Creole slaves are those

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who are born in the Caribbean,
they have African ancestry

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but they were born
in the Caribbean.

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And they have more worth.

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Why?

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Because they are
being assimilated

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into European culture.

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Talking about assimilation.

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So here, assimilation
comes with the benefits.

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As you're being
assimilated you acquire--

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and actually this guy, this
is the same guy, actually,

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who came up with this
[INAUDIBLE] pulse of blood.

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We could compute qualities
of different mixes

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based on the quanta of blood.

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White blood, this
is black blood.

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He also had quanta
in terms of the worth

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of Creole slaves versus those of
African slaves, a quarter more.

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So imagine.

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And of course, the idea
that what made them better

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is because they had
been assimilated.

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In this case, he used a
poetic term, "embellished."

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But the mysticity,
meaning slavery by whites

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would embellish
the black species.

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So this is some
of the background

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behind all these claims
about Creole languages.

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But of course, the other part
of the background that you know

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is the fact that there
was this revolution that

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had to be silenced.

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This is the book that
you read, actually,

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part of it that you read
about silencing the past.

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And so what I'm driving at
here is that all of this

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together creates the
roots of these views

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that Creole is so special.

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And again, just
for good measure,

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I want to stress
again, especially

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as we wrap up this course,
that these notions of Creoles

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being lesser and to
be excluded, actually,

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they've been fought against,
even in the 19th century.

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So this is Dessalines,
our first president.

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And now this that
famous quote in French,

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because it's written
by a French observer.

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But the key point
here is the fact

00:10:30.262 --> 00:10:36.435
Dessalines would get very upset
when someone was back then--

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well, they weren't Haitian
yet because it was still

00:10:38.938 --> 00:10:41.374
under the colony.

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But he would tell anyone
who spoke French to him

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that, why do you speak French?

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You have your own language.

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So this is Creole actually.

00:10:51.350 --> 00:10:54.487
[SPEAKING CREOLE],, you
have your language.

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And as he was looking
at them with disdain,

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why look for another language?

00:11:00.793 --> 00:11:02.895
Why look for someone
else's language?

00:11:02.895 --> 00:11:04.430
So the point here
is that Dessalines,

00:11:04.430 --> 00:11:08.334
even as he was technically
a French citizen

00:11:08.334 --> 00:11:10.269
as he was fighting
for independence,

00:11:10.269 --> 00:11:13.806
he understood the power
of the Creole language.

00:11:13.806 --> 00:11:17.376
Now that's [INAUDIBLE]
This is to remind

00:11:17.376 --> 00:11:21.013
you this line between your
politics and identity.

00:11:23.580 --> 00:11:24.950
So this is one of the first--

00:11:24.950 --> 00:11:32.391
1805-- law in Haiti
creating Haiti.

00:11:32.391 --> 00:11:33.492
So this is Article 1.

00:11:33.492 --> 00:11:36.662
"The people inhabiting the
island, formerly St. Domingo,

00:11:36.662 --> 00:11:39.632
agree to form themselves
into free state

00:11:39.632 --> 00:11:42.635
sovereign and independent
of any other power."

00:11:42.635 --> 00:11:46.939
So this was the most
disturbing part about Haiti.

00:11:46.939 --> 00:11:48.540
Slavery is abolished.

00:11:48.540 --> 00:11:54.046
This was 1805, at a time when
both Europe and the Americas,

00:11:54.046 --> 00:11:56.248
both North and South
America, including countries

00:11:56.248 --> 00:11:58.551
like Colombia,
Venezuela, Bolivia,

00:11:58.551 --> 00:12:00.286
who actually benefited
from Haiti in terms

00:12:00.286 --> 00:12:02.822
of their own independence,
they still had slaves.

00:12:02.822 --> 00:12:06.425
So slavery is forever abolished.

00:12:06.425 --> 00:12:08.994
But the part that,
remember, is also important

00:12:08.994 --> 00:12:14.266
is that excluding whites from
owning any piece of Haiti,

00:12:14.266 --> 00:12:16.268
which has now been changed.

00:12:16.268 --> 00:12:17.770
But that point that
I want to stress

00:12:17.770 --> 00:12:20.906
is the fact that
Dessalines understood also

00:12:20.906 --> 00:12:22.575
the power of identity.

00:12:22.575 --> 00:12:24.243
Now this is 1805.

00:12:24.243 --> 00:12:27.446
And he says that,
"all acception"

00:12:27.446 --> 00:12:30.316
means difference of color

00:12:30.316 --> 00:12:35.454
With [INAUDIBLE],, "The Haitians
shall henceforth be known only

00:12:35.454 --> 00:12:37.089
by [INAUDIBLE] of blacks."

00:12:37.089 --> 00:12:38.424
That's 1805.

00:12:38.424 --> 00:12:40.826
NICK: What's this
written in, English?

00:12:40.826 --> 00:12:43.729
MICHEL DEGRAFF: Well, remember,
this was at a time when--

00:12:43.729 --> 00:12:45.464
this was both in
English and French

00:12:45.464 --> 00:12:47.633
because Dessalines
understood that he

00:12:47.633 --> 00:12:52.404
had to let the world know
that this is my position.

00:12:52.404 --> 00:12:57.777
So this book here
answers this question.

00:12:57.777 --> 00:13:01.781
Why was Dessalines, since
he was so pro Creole,

00:13:01.781 --> 00:13:04.717
why was he writing in
French and English?

00:13:04.717 --> 00:13:07.620
And the point is that when you
he was speaking, like here,

00:13:07.620 --> 00:13:08.754
here was being in Creole.

00:13:08.754 --> 00:13:11.557
But when he had people
write for him, because most

00:13:11.557 --> 00:13:13.726
of the time he had
people write for him,

00:13:13.726 --> 00:13:16.028
he wanted the world
to understand what was

00:13:16.028 --> 00:13:18.631
his position about this issue.

00:13:18.631 --> 00:13:21.467
So he had to write
in French and English

00:13:21.467 --> 00:13:23.302
because he was speaking
not to Haitians,

00:13:23.302 --> 00:13:24.570
but he was speaking to the USA.

00:13:24.570 --> 00:13:26.338
This is opposition.

00:13:26.338 --> 00:13:29.175
So be aware.

00:13:29.175 --> 00:13:37.783
But then of course, this
is a book by Paul Farmer.

00:13:37.783 --> 00:13:43.255
So this part is moving
from 1805 to the present.

00:13:43.255 --> 00:13:45.624
And then to understand
why up to today

00:13:45.624 --> 00:13:48.494
there's still this struggle
around language and entity

00:13:48.494 --> 00:13:53.232
in the Caribbean,
especially Haiti.

00:13:53.232 --> 00:13:56.202
From the very beginning,
after independence,

00:13:56.202 --> 00:13:58.537
there was all this
pressure for Haiti

00:13:58.537 --> 00:14:00.906
to remain in the
French dominion.

00:14:00.906 --> 00:14:03.642
And then American dominion.

00:14:03.642 --> 00:14:09.081
As you know, America, the US
occupied Haiti for 15 years

00:14:09.081 --> 00:14:11.016
in the early part
of the 20th century.

00:14:11.016 --> 00:14:14.320
But even in 1825,
the French managed

00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:21.460
to extract this
indemnity from Haiti.

00:14:21.460 --> 00:14:23.495
This was huge back then.

00:14:23.495 --> 00:14:27.132
I think this is now worth
billions of dollars.

00:14:27.132 --> 00:14:32.137
Can anyone read this from here?

00:14:32.137 --> 00:14:34.874
Who wants to read this?

00:14:34.874 --> 00:14:35.841
OK, Karen.

00:14:35.841 --> 00:14:38.811
KAREN: "President Boyer
for 150 million francs

00:14:38.811 --> 00:14:42.414
and the halving of customs
charges for the French trade--

00:14:42.414 --> 00:14:46.018
all as indemnity for the losses
of the plantation owners.

00:14:46.018 --> 00:14:47.887
These conditions
accepted in 1825,

00:14:47.887 --> 00:14:50.589
led to decades of French
domination of Haitian finance

00:14:50.589 --> 00:14:52.992
and had a catastrophic
effect on the new nation's

00:14:52.992 --> 00:14:54.260
delicate economy.

00:14:54.260 --> 00:14:55.961
Despite its nominal
independence,

00:14:55.961 --> 00:14:59.398
Haiti could not escape from the
shackles of foreign domination.

00:14:59.398 --> 00:15:01.000
The very fact of
the debt to France

00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:03.135
strikes the modern
observer as odd.

00:15:03.135 --> 00:15:04.803
Why might a country
of former slaves

00:15:04.803 --> 00:15:09.408
feel compelled to remunerate the
plantocracy for losses incurred

00:15:09.408 --> 00:15:10.976
in a war of liberation?"

00:15:10.976 --> 00:15:13.145
MICHEL DEGRAFF: So the
answer is that the elite

00:15:13.145 --> 00:15:14.446
had to make this compromise.

00:15:14.446 --> 00:15:15.814
The elite wanted
to be recognized

00:15:15.814 --> 00:15:18.284
by Europe and by America.

00:15:21.050 --> 00:15:23.150
So that question here points
to this basic struggle

00:15:23.155 --> 00:15:26.592
in Haitian history, that
from the very beginning,

00:15:26.592 --> 00:15:30.863
the new elites that became
the leaders of the country,

00:15:30.863 --> 00:15:34.500
they in many ways repeated
what the French had done.

00:15:38.370 --> 00:15:40.600
This is now after
the earthquake.

00:15:40.606 --> 00:15:43.442
This is from The Boston Globe.

00:15:43.442 --> 00:15:45.311
And this is a
straight continuation

00:15:45.311 --> 00:15:48.247
of what Paul Farmer discussed
in that previous quote.

00:15:48.247 --> 00:15:52.618
So who wants to
read this part here?

00:15:52.618 --> 00:15:54.954
STUDENT 2: I can.

00:15:54.954 --> 00:15:55.854
STUDENT 3: Go ahead.

00:15:55.854 --> 00:15:58.390
STUDENT 2: "The question now is
whether the wealth elite that

00:15:58.390 --> 00:15:59.925
controls the bulk
of the economy will

00:15:59.925 --> 00:16:03.162
help rebuild Haiti and create
a thriving middle class.

00:16:03.162 --> 00:16:05.631
80% of Haitians live in
poverty, while a handful

00:16:05.631 --> 00:16:08.567
of often light-skinned
descendants of the French,

00:16:08.567 --> 00:16:11.937
who ruled the country's coffee
and sugar slave plantations

00:16:11.937 --> 00:16:14.473
until Haiti declared
independence in 1804,

00:16:14.473 --> 00:16:18.344
and other groups control
most of the wealth."

00:16:18.344 --> 00:16:19.745
MICHEL DEGRAFF:
So basically, you

00:16:19.745 --> 00:16:22.815
see the cleavage is still there.

00:16:22.815 --> 00:16:26.385
This cleavage-- and I think
here we can refer back to Karen

00:16:26.385 --> 00:16:28.387
and Rachel's presentation--

00:16:28.387 --> 00:16:31.156
this cleavage between
the elite and the masses

00:16:31.156 --> 00:16:34.693
also has this reflex,
this linguistic reflex,

00:16:34.693 --> 00:16:39.798
where French is a language
of power versus Creole

00:16:39.798 --> 00:16:43.469
being a language that's
still struggling to become

00:16:43.469 --> 00:16:46.038
a tool for liberation.

00:16:46.038 --> 00:16:49.441
So here, I think we have
this tight connection,

00:16:49.441 --> 00:16:54.546
this tight nexus between
language, power, and identity.