The United States is a paragon of equal opportunity when compared with Brazil. Even though Brazilians in power have always asserted that the nation is a racial democracy, whites possess all the high status and wealth while blacks struggle for survival at the bottom. Brazilians insist that blacks do not suffer because of their color but because of their poverty. However, the socio-economic data is so racially skewed that the government has recognized the necessity for massive intervention.
[Leon D. Pamphile], executive director of the Functional Literacy Ministry of Haiti, talked last week about his book, "Haitians' & African Americans' Struggle Against Racism Through the NAACP," as part of Harvard Law School's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice Lecture Series. "Haiti was able to fulfill what the American and the French Revolutions could not do," said Pamphile. "Haiti witnessed the fulfillment of equal rights for all men, and this is what made the Haitian Revolution such a powerful force."
