Hti: Enough of that black power crap!

Haiti's interim prime minister said yesterday that opposition to his U.S.-backed government is being fomented by black Americans more interested in "black power" than in the plight of the Haitian people.

Speaking to reporters at the Harvard Club in Manhattan, Gerard Latortue also called exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide an inveterate "liar." Latortue was in New York to appeal to the United Nations for economic and development aid.

Latortue charged that African-American politicians organizing protests against his government are making the question of who should rule Haiti "a racial issue that doesn't correspond with the aspirations of the Haitian population today."

"This has been promoted more by Afro-Americans than by Haitians, in the name of black power," Latortue said, referring to a Brooklyn rally last month attended by 1,500 Aristide supporters, who see him as Haiti's only legitimate ruler.

"The fact is that many African-Americans simply believe his government came to power in an illegitimate manner," said Ron Daniels, executive director of the Manhattan-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

One of these days, blacks in these United States will realize that knowledge is power and wisdom is force; that a fist raised to the sky means nothing; that having one's own doctors, lawyers, teachers who actually know what the hell they're teaching cuz they know their bloody subject, physicists, computer scientists, students who prefer a book to a bloody ball, all mean a whole lot more than prattling racial pieties about blackness, authenticity, and racism.

In the meantime, to Latortue, if they want to pull the blackness and authenticity crap, blow them off and move right along. Groove with the ones who will provide constructive help to you and yours.