Repeating Islands

Randall Robinson, founder of Trans Africa, gave the keynote address at the African Identities in the Diaspora Conference organized to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the Africana Studies Program at Vassar. His talk, “Haiti, President Obama, and the African-World Psyche,” focused on the myriad ways in which the United States has impacted the nations of the Caribbean, from the burden of debt  through which Haiti has been “punished” to the Clinton Administration’s role in reducing the markets for West Indian bananas.

Here, in lieu of a profile of Prof. Robinson, I am including my introductory remarks about his life and career.

Searching for a way to convey to you the many impressive accomplishments of our keynote speaker, I was reminded of a passage in his poignant book on Haiti, An Unbroken Agony, where he writes of how Aristide the priest used to remind his parishioners of the Haitian proverb tout moun se moun (every human being is a human being). The passage, which speaks to Aristide’s recognition of the basic humanity that links us all, also speaks to why Prof. Robinson has found in the exiled Haitian President a kindred spirit. His founding in 1977 and long-time presidency of the Trans Africa Forum speaks to a commitment to social justice that has impacted directly the lives of millions of people across the globe.

To think of Randall Robinson is to remember his tenacious efforts to shame the government of South Africa into ending the pernicious segregation and discrimination of apartheid. It is to recall his readiness to put his body where his convictions lay through his hunger strike to pressure the US government into restoring Aristide to power. It is also to consider his indefatigable efforts to expose the brutality of the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia and the corruption during Nigeria’s period of military dictatorships. And of course, it would be difficult to forget the dumping of crates filled with bananas onto the steps of the United States trade representative in an effort to thwart US attempts to end the Caribbean’s access to the European banana market by the mid-90′s.

Neither could we forget his powerful role as a writer. His 2001 book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, tackled the controversial yet compelling issue of whether reparation should be offered to African Americans as a way to redress centuries of discrimination and oppression that continue to impact access to education, jobs, and wealth. Its sequel, The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other, spoke of how African American communities must combat the growing prison industrial system that he compares in its impact on black and brown communities to the slave trade. In 2001, Prof. Robinson left the United States for voluntary semi-exile in St. Kitts. He chronicles the personal agony of that decision in Quitting America, where he turns his gaze not only to the failures of his home nation but more hopefully to Caribbean societies whose toil and joys he embraces.

Since he is speaking to us tonight about Haiti, I want to return to An Unbroken Agony to read you a brief passage that to me encapsulates Prof. Robinson’s gift for being moved to action by actually “seeing” and caring for the individuals in the midst of the masses. He writes thus of his experience as an election observer in Haiti:

We chugged around a blind bend in the winding dirt road and glimpsed a file of people who were quietly waiting in the searing hot morning sun. The line snaked forward along the dusty road for the better part of a mile, or so it seemed to me. I remember that the people were standing very close to each other, their backs starched in a conspicuously formal posture. They gave the impression of sheltering one another from some unknown and nonspecific consequence they feared would befall them as a price for their democratic daring. They were old and young. They were dressed as though they had come to the polling station from church, the men in their threadbare suits, the women looking remarkably African in the bright primary colors of their wraps. It was not Sunday, however, but a weekday, around nine in the morning.

Rounding the curve and into view, there seemed something almost worth crying about in the sheer beauty of the vista-something so compellingly unforgettable in the pride and purpose written on the faces of these wretchedly poor people who were on that very morning, and in the remotest of places, coming, at long last, into ownership of their own country.

That Randall Robinson’s life and career has been dedicated to such an affirmation of everyone’s right to ownership of their country and their place in the world-to the passionately-defended notion that each human being is a human being worth fighting for-is the reason we are so proud of having him here today. Tout moun se moun.

The photo of Randall Robinson is reproduced courtesy of Vassar Alum Dennis Slade Jr.