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I have grown weary of arguing for Haiti’s wholeness. I have grown weary of arguing about Haiti in the face of the pervasive anti-Black insistence that the country is barren, broken, deficient of resources and culture, and unable to express the decidedly human impulse of stylish adornment. While presenting my work at universities and colleges over several years, I repeatedly faced a question that always caused me to furrow my brows and burn with frustration: What about Haiti’s poverty? And then, the inevitable follow-up: Why, if Haiti is so poor, are the participants in the ceremonies I describe so lavish in their dress?
Underlying these inquiries is a larger concern about Black people’s relationship to wealth that colors perceptions about Black communities. When Black people accumulate wealth and then choose to show that wealth via dress—a Black woman on the Southside of Chicago in a fur coat, Caribbean men wearing Gucci belts, Black teens sporting Jordans, or wealthy Nigerians leading opulent lifestyles in Lagos—they challenge the dominant White colonial social order on some level. The idea of conspicuous consumption, of lavish spenders who neglect their basic needs in the service of status, is frequently at the heart of anxieties about how Black people spend their money. These issues are complex, and I cannot claim to have explanations for all of them. Yet, when someone raises their hand at a university and asks me why Black practitioners of Vodou spend money to practice their faith when their country is so poor, I hear echoes of these anti-Black themes in their question.
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