Читать книгу The Seven Year-Old Pilot - Capt. Steven Archille - Страница 8

Children notice a lot more than we would ever imagine, even such things as the subtleties of social dynamics involving race, culture, and class. My indoctrination into the racial history and socio-economic issues present in my new country were a rude awakening to my young mind. Things were very different here than they had been in Haiti. The church we attended was a Kreol speaking church attended by Haitian immigrants and their children, some of whom, like Betty had been born in the States. Sunday provided the only time I was around a majority of Haitian people. Most Haitians are black people of African descent, with a multiracial minority and an even smaller minority of white Haitians, all of whom share the Kreol language. Haitian Kreol is a hodgepodge of French and the various native languages spoken by the indigenous Taino Indians who lived there prior to the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. It also has elements of the various African languages spoken by the imported slaves, along with a smattering of Spanish and English. While both Kreol and French are the official languages of Haiti, schooling is conducted mainly in French in the private schools, but more often in Kreol in government schools. Prior to leaving Haiti, I had been enrolled in one of those primarily Kreol-speaking government schools, so I did not learn French since my grandparents had only spoken Kreol in the home. In Haiti, French is generally considered as the language of the upper class, and many Haitians carry this idea with them even after they leave the country.

Unfortunately, Haiti has a high incidence of illiteracy, and although schooling is compulsory, many children never have the chance to attend due to dire poverty. As a result, many never learn to read any language, never mind French. This helps to perpetuate the idea of French being the language of the upper class, as normally, only educated people speak it. Having been a French slave colony, Haiti like the US, Brazil, and other European colonies in the new world with slaves, had many instances of slave owners having children with their slaves, which led to a small population of lighter-skinned, mixed race people. As happened in the other New World colonies, an unfortunate color-based class structure developed. The people with the most money, influence, power, and education often were the lighter-skinned ones. The closer to white someone was, the better his or her chances of moving up in society.

While growing up in Haiti, both sides of my family were relatively well-off compared to the unfortunate majority of the Haitian population: all the adults were educated and all the children went to school. Everyone had a maid (which is still very common in the Caribbean, Latin America, and many other parts of the world outside the US), and there was always plenty of food on the table. I lacked for nothing. My Uncle LaMartine, who was my mom’s older brother and who like most of her brothers was a Christian minister, was married to Aunt Patricia, a white American missionary. My Uncle Raoul (also my mom’s elder brother and a minister) was married to my Aunt Elsie, who was half-black and half-Japanese (her father was a black American soldier who had served in Japan during WWII where he had met his Japanese bride, Aunt Elsie’s mom). As far back as I could remember, there had always been people of different races in my family, so I had grown up thinking that people of different races living happily together was normal.

With all this as my background, I noticed differing depictions of the different races in my first few months living in the US, in favorite medium of television, be it in comedies, dramas, or the evening news. In watching shows like Good Times and What’s Happening, it seemed that black people were often shown as coming from broken families, living in the ghetto, or just struggling to get by from day to day. This was in stark contrast to the depictions of white families in television shows, the news, and in movies (including the pilots in the airline movies I loved to watch), where white families were usually depicted as living middle, or upper class lives. It was sometimes a subtle distinction, but even at that young age, I noticed that overall, movies and shows with majority white casts were not about the fact that they were white. Instead, they were about people living life and dealing with whatever dramas came up. This was in contrast to the shows and movies with majority black or Latino casts, where it seemed that their color or ethnic background was usually the primary issue. I wondered, even at that young age, why the black families couldn’t just be shown as living middle-class lives in the suburbs, without the fact that they were black being front and center.

In the years that followed, when The Cosby Show came out, I finally got my wish. I finally saw a happy, functional, successful, educated black family depicted as living life and dealing with family issues, without their skin color being the star of the show. As I grew older and learned more about American history with slavery, Jim Crowe laws, segregation, Martin Luther King, and the Civil Rights era, I was sometimes saddened by how unfair it all seemed. I often wondered why people couldn’t just treat one another equally. All these things: the media depictions of blacks and minorities, the racial history of the US, as well as personal experiences I would have growing up, served as further motivation for me to become a pilot one day. Even at the tender age of seven, I realized that my captain’s uniform would in some ways, be able to speak louder than I ever could, to say that we are ALL equal in the eyes of God.

In Harlem where we lived, I noticed that most people in my neighborhood were indeed black and while our neighborhood was just fine, it was nothing compared to the elegant, immaculate neighborhoods around Central Park, which invariably seemed to have mainly white people living in them. Thus, the disparities I saw on television seemed to echo what was going on in real life. I also noticed that as my mom, sister, and I were exploring the city, that depending on where we went, there were concentrations of people from similar backgrounds all living near each other. There were ethnic neighborhoods, such as Little Italy and Chinatown, whose names were self-explanatory, along with Spanish Harlem with a majority Latino population and many others. In our travels around the city, I heard many different languages being spoken and saw many different kinds of clothing from different nations being worn. This fascinated me because I realized that all these different kinds of people had to have originally come from other countries, which stoked my curiosity about the world and increased my desire to travel to those other countries one day to see how life was.

I was naturally very curious about other cultures, languages, customs, religions, and food, and I wanted to know all I could about all these different kinds of people, so it struck me as a bit odd that most people I saw seemed to socialize pretty much exclusively with people from their own background. It seemed that with such a huge variety of people from virtually every country on the planet living in the city, that people would’ve interacted with each other more, but with a few exceptions, that was not the case. It was plain to me that people were missing an amazing opportunity to spend time with, and to learn from those different from themselves. I felt that while it was important to be proud of whatever country or background one was from, it was equally important to try to find common ground with people from different backgrounds. That outlook would serve me well in my future flying career and world travels. I also realized that ultimately, even all these so-called “different” kinds of people were actually not so different after all. We all had two eyes, (although of varying colors) we all had hair, (although of differing textures) we all had skin, (although of differing shades) etc, but MOST importantly we ALL had dreams. It was clear to me then, as now, that in the end, there is only ONE race that truly matters, the one to which we ALL belong: The Human Race.