From a Presentation Distant in Space and Time….

In this section we tussle with cultural assimilation and what that means for us as individuals.

Overall this essay made me realize the amount of ignorance that I am privy to and just how much I do not know.

But the central theme that made itself apparent to me was about the pain of cultural assimilation and how that is the most painful aspect to colonization. As it erases individuality the Caribbean experience necessitated self reflection for unity to come about.

The political structures that were present in the Caribbean did their best to replicate the European exploitation that came before them as an attempt have power over what was lost to themselves. But in doing this a rejection of their African heritage came to be seen.

The contradictions of society only came to grow louder and louder.

Ideas of self discovery, unity, and culture are all things that must be self imposed. The rejection of different aspects of ourselves rejects the culture that are inherent to us, our everyday self expression shows what cultures we align ourselves with whether we state it explicitly or not.

“Today the French Caribbean individual does not deny the African part of himself; he does not have, in reaction, to go to the extreme of celebrating it exclusively. He must recognize it. He understands that from all this history (even if we lived it like nonhistory) another reality has come about. He is no longer forced to reject strategically the European elements in his composition, although they continue to be a source of alienation, since he knows that he can choose between them. He can see that alienation first and foremost resides in the impossibility of choice, in the arbitrary imposition of values, and, perhaps, in the concept of value itself. He can conceive that synthesis is not a process of bastardization as he used to be told, but a productive activity through which each element is enriched.

The notion of Caribbean unity is a form of cultural self discovery. It fixes us in the truth of our existence, it forms part of the struggle for self liberation. It is a concept that cannot be managed by others: Caribbean unity cannot be guided by remote control.”

When I think about the culture I’ve been born into as a Haitian-American I feel like I’m stuck in decay. The norms that were readily available have been stifled and suffocated while living in the US. The language is fossilized and communication shifts to the language of convenience.
My past is eroded.

Recently I went to my great aunt’s 85th birthday party. An inadvertent family reunion. The room filled with people that are my family, but all strangers to me. My grandfather (her younger brother) the financier for so many to make their voyage from Haiti to the US.

I looked around the room, I see my little cousins, older family members I haven’t seen since before covid, and strangers, so many strangers. Some looked my age but I couldn’t tell you a thing about them.

Whatever cultural identity that existed because we were Haitian was slowly dissipating, not because we wanted to be rid of it but because it was fractured from within.

How is culture retained amongst the individual and community?

The United States has done an excellent job at ensuring that culture is understood through consumption when it is so much more. It’s our shared experiences, shining a light upon that which has been forgotten and coming to understand our past in individual and collective manners.