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Comment by blueline | Hacker News Reader

Do you mean to suggest they’d be better off as slaves?

I think it's completely reasonable to look at the country which they share an island with, Dominican Republic, and ask questions about why one has fared so much differently than the other. The countries share almost identical geographical attributes, yet the average Dominican is 10x richer than the average Haitian.

Central American colonial history is incredibly fascinating but also very tragic.

Did the Dominican Republic have to pay outrageous reparations to their former enslavers? You know, the thing this article was about?

Obviously, and it's pretty juvenile and reddity to imply I hadn't even read the article, thanks. It might surprise you that there's actually a lot more to Haiti's post-colonial history than just the debt the French tried to call in.

30 years of rule under the Duvalier dynasty held Haiti back in the 20th century much, much more than the country's central debt, but I understand the urge to direct the blame the struggles to one specific cause instead.

And the Duvalier regime is entirely on the Haitian people? The history of Haiti in the 20th century is impossible to separate from the major world power next door. The US has been nearly constantly involved in controlling Haitian politics, including literal invasions, and absolutely not for the benefit of the Haitian people, but to ensure that no other powers grew in the Caribbean region that could threaten its power.

There are many possible suggestions, why did you pick that one?

Maybe the suggestion is that they would've eventually gained freedom, like all slaves in Western countries, and that in that alternate history, they would've fared better. After all, the black population in the USA is richer than the black population in Haiti.

They would have fared a lot better if … France didn’t saddle them with reparations for their independence … like what the entire article posted was about

Maybe, playing counterfactual history is just a game. Would they have fared better had they never been brought to Haiti as slaves and had they remained in Africa?

Maybe they would've been taken as slaves to the Middle East. By the way, where are the black descendants of the African slaves taken to the Middle East? How do we pay them reparations?

There are some [0], but Arabs tended to castrate male slaves.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Iraqis

The article is about Haitian slaves having to pay reparations to their enslavers. Nobody brought up reparations being paid to slaves except you.

Fine, but you didn't address any of my arguments

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