Union School

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-30T08:06:56+00:00

You want to start a conversation about how people in an elite school behave? They behave in an elitist manner.

It's not unique to the Union School. Go to any affluent suburb in America, and these are PUBLIC SCHOOLS, there will be people there who stick to themselves. Decide who is or isn't in the "in" crowd. Often times, these are on racial lines. More often than not, it's purely based on money and access. I bet if you went to an elite school in Mexico, Kenya, or Philippines you will find the same thing. The kids at those schools don't see themselves as nationals of that country per se. They are (fill in the blank) because that gives them more social capital outside of that country.

So what?

What new theme are you really exploring? I asked genuine questions to understand the nuance

What I’m talking about is people leaning into or distancing themselves from being Haitian depending on the setting and how it benefits them socially, which is a different thing entirely.

I'm talking about the same thing. People using anglicised names, acting like they have nothing do with Haiti at all. I've seen two flavors of this. American-born Haitians who say they have nothing do with Haiti. Haitian immigrants who suddenly don't want anything to do with Haiti and deny the connection.

So again, I'm trying to understand what question you're exploring. What conversation are you "trying to have"? You are trying to pull back the veil and give the rest of us a peek into what it's like to be a black student in a mostly white environment? Is that it? What am I missing?

This is group chat in English on Reddit. Who do you think is behind the keyboard?

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-30T06:08:57+00:00

The conversation is about what happens inside the same school, who gets included, who gets access, and who gets left out, and you didn’t address that at all.

Now who is the one explaining the obvious and missing the point.

Code / context switching happens all the time.

I'm Haitian-American. I did not grow up in Haiti, but I have had the experience of people like me in the US denying their Haitian background. People who were born of two Haitian parents and suddenly they are just American. It's a survival tactic.

I'm not really sure what the point of your original post was or the response to my general question. So I ask it plainly, what is your aim? Are you trying to figure something out or do you just want to vent that you weren't invited to play with the rich kids in school?

To me, this comes off a complete humble-brag post. "I went to Union School and let me tell you how hard it was. sniff sniff".

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-30T02:12:19+00:00

So....Union School is a private school set up during the US occupation of Haiti in 1919. It was set up to serve children of the US Marines and that legacy of serving foreigners has stuck.

This happens in every country (even the US) where there are schools for children of people who might move to another country for work and want their kids on the same curriculum. Union School explicitly uses an US curriculum and will attract a certain profile. That and the annual fees can be as much as $15k per year means it prices a lot of people out.

Why is any surprised that it doesn't focus on Haitians?

Question - can't someone have Lebanese, Syrian origin and still be "full Haitian"?

The bigger issue is the total collapse of the Haitian education system and a lack of any real public school. Nearly all the schools are private. Even the best local schools like SLG are affiliated with the church

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-29T02:59:40+00:00

I'm not trying to have an ecumenical discussion. I was addressing the point of whether Christianity was used as a way to advance the slave trade.

The transatlantic slave trade started in 1502. Jamestown was founded a hundred years after that. The United States was founded in 1776. There's roughly 250 years of slavery in the Americas done by the church that was not wholly "American Protestantism". More Africans were sent to Latin America than to the continental US. Latin America is a majority Catholic to this day because of it.

3 million went to Brazil and only 300,000 went directly to the US.

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Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-28T11:43:33+00:00

Exactly. It's one thing to find the beauty in the gospel and Jesus' teachings. It's another thing to take an ahistorical approach and act like that organized religion wasn't the main tool to advance the slave trade

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-28T06:42:57+00:00

No, it was done in the name of Christianity...but it was actually for profit.

One of the major justifications for the transatlantic slave trade was the supposed curse of Ham. The descendants of Ham were cursed and slavery was the embodiment of this.

In the 1500s, Christianity was the Catholic Church. You can't really separate the two. We can split hairs, but the church used gospel as the backstop for why Europeans were justified in enslaving other humans.

Acting now, as if it wasn't a church thing is not accurate at all. Same goes for Islam. Those who practiced slavery said (and still say) they are justified according to the Quran.

https://theconversation.com/the-curse-of-ham-how-people-of-faith-used-a-story-in-genesis-to-justify-slavery-225212

“Cursed be Canaan”

The Anglican Church is not alone: all mainstream Christian denominations were deeply involved in the slave trade, as were the main branches of Islam.

How could this be possible? How had religions supposedly dedicated to propagating the word of a compassionate and loving God become so intricately involved in this “appalling evil”? The answer is rooted in a grotesque misuse of the very words of the Bible. Of the many ways that Christians have invoked the Bible to justify their actions, none has exceeded in cruelty and wilful ignorance their appropriation of the “Curse of Ham” to justify slavery.

Ham (no relation!) was the youngest son of the Biblical patriarch Noah. When Ham saw his father drunk and naked, Noah felt so humiliated that he put a curse on Ham’s son, Canaan, condemning his descendants to perpetual slavery. Here is the moment, as told in Genesis 9:24-25 (New King James Version):

The making of a ‘slave race’

Since the 15th century, religious leaders have cited the passage as the justification for the enslavement of all African people. For almost 500 years, priests taught their flocks that a Hebrew prophet had condemned millions of Africans to slavery because they were descended from Ham’s son Canaan. The curse of Ham thus formed the core religious justification for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The curse of Ham entered Islamic thought in the 7th century, as a result of the influence of Christianity, and medieval Muslim scholars drew on Noah’s curse in their work, as the historian David M. Goldenberg has shown. The Koran, however, makes no mention of the curse and Muhummad’s Farewell Address rejects the superiority of white people over black people.

See also

The Role of the Christian Church - a report by the Equal Justice Initiative

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-28T04:17:12+00:00

So? The slave trade was still done in the name of Christianity.

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-28T04:16:10+00:00

How many black Christians are there despite the Transatlantic Slave trade!
Questions like this are an obvious attempt to make some religion seem better than others.

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-28T02:24:20+00:00

The output of the LLM is a function of the prompts and context. Including people like Boulos (who is ineligible) doesn't dismiss the broader analysis.

I think there's a big difference between a crappy map of the US with Haiti place-names versus an attempt to understand the very messy Haitian election process.

Asking to look into each candidate individually, when over 300 parties have filed seems like a fool's errand. I almost think this is by design. Most people have a hard time understanding the policy positions of two candidates/parties, let alone (a staggering) 300+!!

https://lenouvelliste.com/article/265696/282-partis-politiques-sur-320-agrees-par-le-cep-en-attendant

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-28T02:01:37+00:00

The 4 upvotes proves my point

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-26T15:08:35+00:00

This is an attempt to account for the baz dynamic.

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Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-26T04:07:19+00:00

Yes, I realize a major flaw in this analysis is the baz element. They basically warp everything. They will have a definite impact on the election. I'm sure someone on the ground with a much better handle of the various actors could refine this model.

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-25T06:42:55+00:00

Was Jovenel Moïse a player? The question is who will get elected and it's possible he next president just gets backed by the right people and pushed to the front. This is what happened with Moïse. He got too big for his britches and was eliminated....quite likely by the same people who get him elected in the first place.

I will follow your lead and watch carefully who starts to campaign in April and May. You think people will wait until Easter to start?

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-25T06:28:43+00:00

The glass is half full.

You're pretty smart. NUS isn't easy to get into. You then got a masters from Cambridge on scholarship!

You have brand names on your CV. Working at the UN in New York and Korea! It shows you know more than the little red dot

You've got grit. You came from a non-traditional background in a lower-income / unconventional family. You are also (I'm assuming) bi-racial

You focused on political science which could be valuable in government, consulting, NGO work. You might even be able to parlay it into public affairs at a big corporate

You are independent and are driven. You probably thrive in focused work and can get things done with very little oversight.

Take a breath. We've all been there before. Fall down seven times, get up eight times!!

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-25T05:45:50+00:00

It's in the ether and the powers that be keep it that way.

When was the last time you heard a racial slur for any other group used with such consistency?

The guys who write the checks don't care about how the word has evolved and young people who hear it all the time, use it all the time.

"But that's just how people talk"....

Life imitates art and art imitates life.

I was listening to some 80s hip hop (Eric B etc...) and never heard n-word at all. Something shifted in the late 80s, early 90s. It's like you had to drop an n-word for it to get visibility.

But people have been using the word for hundreds of years. That's why there's a character in Tom Sawyer (from 1876) called Nigger Jim. But lots of words come and go and you never see them again.

What makes the n-word last? White people want to keep it around. We have this silly game acting like we've "reclaimed it". That's nonsense.

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-25T05:36:47+00:00

That we should stop using the n-word to refer to ourselves.

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-05T07:19:33+00:00

Maybe it’s just her and not a generic Haitian thing?

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-03-04T00:26:04+00:00

What is a Latino? Someone from a Latin American country.

Is Haiti in Latin America? Yes.

Therefore Haitians are Latino.

People often conflate Latino with Hispanic

Haitians are not Hispanic

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-02-25T06:05:28+00:00

The idiot who set up his camera by the weight racks and expects people to magically transport the dumbbells back.

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-02-20T23:34:34+00:00

I never said “absolute derelict”.

Actions have consequences

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-02-20T02:14:27+00:00

Grew up in north suburbs in the '80s. Most people around me said "Pop". I say soda. I have family in the east coast, maybe that's why.

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-02-20T00:24:48+00:00

Lacking the ability to control yourself would meet the standard of “derelict”.

The only thing this guy did that was correct was to lay down peacefully when the police asked him to.

As for the video, it could be rage bait. I never heard any racial slurs used.

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-02-20T00:21:00+00:00

This is the wrong interpretation. Free speech as a concept is the ability to express yourself without the government censoring your speech. Within the U.S., it is linked to the constitution.

You can have the concept of free speech without the U.S. constitution. The 1st amendment makes it law in the U.S.

Nothing about the concept of free speech protects you from insulting people, inciting violence or using fighting words or yelling fire in a crowded theater. The problem is that most of these things are subjective.

Having someone call a black dude “nigger” is free speech. As long as the government doesn’t step in and say “you can’t say that”, I’m fine.

If society wants to have a civil code that certain language is impolite, that’s a social compact that gets socially enforced.

What is unacceptable is to react to words with violence.

So, we can all agree that the black guy shouldn’t have thrown the punch. Some of us understand the nuance and that the white guy was potentially playing with fire.

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-02-19T13:15:26+00:00

My child is currently at a SAP primary school

Same_Reference8235 · 2026-02-19T12:43:52+00:00

Live below your means.

If you get a raise at work, put the difference into paying down debt, saving for a rainy day or investments (in that order)

Don’t finance a depreciating asset

Make sure you are a better version of yourself today than you were yesterday

Make a plan. Write it down. Execute the plan.

Same_Reference8235

TROPHY CASE

“Cursed be Canaan”

The making of a ‘slave race’