(NNPA) - Brazil has long been the best kept secret of the Black Diaspora. Its population of more than 100 million Blacks (51 percent of the total population) makes it at least the second largest Black population in the world. This nation has been a sleeping giant in the global arena but is taking big steps to enter into the distinction of a First World Nation. Right now it is a leader of the emerging Second World nations and takes the leadership role with India at all global and United Nations conferences and summits. Brazil's President Lula da Silva proudly considers himself the leader of "People of Color". On the other hand, Brazil's bid via Rio de Janeiro was a super winner. It vowed to rebuild the slums of Rio and empower the masses. The infrastructure, job opportunities and contractual bidding would be thoroughly diverse and would make the Olympics Committee proud. It was a slam dunk! In the end it was Rio de Janeiro in first place, Madrid in second, Tokyo is third and the stinky Chicago bid dead last.
"I say that I'm Haitian first, and then we go from there," said Patrick Marcelin, the U.S.-born son of Haitian immigrants who raps in Creole and English as "Mecca a.k.a. Grimo." "I just happened to be born in America, but really I'm a Haitian brother. And Haiti is the direct daughter of Africa." The Black History Months he remembers studying never mentioned Haiti's history, even though Haiti was a destination for Black Americans searching for their cultural roots. Marcelin now also teaches in the Haitian Heritage Museum's school outreach program, exposing students to the American history he never learned. For example, when talking about writers from the Harlem Renaissance, Marcelin points out that [Zora Neale Hurston] wrote her novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" in Haiti in the 1930s, and the poet [Langston Hughes] wrote admiringly of the Haitian peasants who walked down mountain roads barefoot, balancing baskets on their heads, to sell their wares. "They should have been teaching this in school, that soldiers from Haiti came to fight in the American Revolution," Marcelin said. "I read about [Frederick Douglass] in the history books but I don't remember anything about him being the ambassador to Haiti. Or that the founder of Chicago was a Haitian brother."
