Joel Dreyfuss, a native Haitian and editor of the Black-oriented Web site TheRoot.com, said American Blacks easily “could have ended up in Haiti instead of the U.S., depending on where the slave ship stopped.”
“I think there is a connection,” Dreyfuss continued. “It's not unreasonable or racist; it's human nature, just as Jews identify with Israel. ... There's a natural sense of identification with people who look like yourself.”
Much of that connection revolves around racial issues, said Jean-Max Hogarth, a physician born in the United States to Haitian immigrants.
Haiti's status as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere “has a lot to do with the fact it has been independent since 1804, it had a long period of discrimination, it had to pay reparations” and had corrupt dictators, said Hogarth, whose medical practice donated a five-figure sum to send him and other doctors to Haiti to treat earthquake victims.
