“We’re All Victims This Morning”: A History of Anti-Haitian Racism

I remember telling someone I was Jamaican only for them to crudely imitate a Jamaican accent in response. I remember being asked if everyone lived in huts in Jamaica. I remember the insistence that all Jamaicans smoked weed and that I was supposedly inbred.

Although seemingly small, isolated incidents, their presence in my ostensibly-progressive northern-New Jersey town has reflected a total ignorance and dismissal of my ancestry from my white American peers.

I remember being boxed in as a Black Caribbean, crushed by the weight of stereotypes that saw my heritage as not a vibrant source of culture, but rather an island that existed either as palm trees and resorts or total destitution in the minds of white Americans. I remember this, and I turn my mind to the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.

“We’re all victims this morning,” one Haitian immigrant said, after presidential candidate-slash-felon Donald Trump and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance (and Ohioan senator) spread the lie that Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets. This lie, while primarily spread and fostered by Republicans, has also been perpetuated by former Democratic candidate for president Marianne Willamson, who clumsily attempted to connect the baseless claim with Haitian vodou.

Although ridiculous, such a lie has had devastating effects. According to a community activist in Springfield, “People are very afraid for their lives. Many families are starting to think of leaving Springfield after last night and some kids aren’t even going to school because of fear of being attacked.” Springfield’s City Hall has received a bomb threat.

Make no mistake: people like Trump, Vance, and Williamson know they are lying. Vance admitted that he was willing to “create stories” about Haitian-Americans.

The denunciations of anti-Black prejudice do not fully encapsulate the depths of this issue. While, as public intellectual Ibram X. Kendi has noted, the hate against Haitians will likely extend to Black immigrants and Black Americans broadly, it is important to focus on the particular and dangerous racism against specifically Haitians and Haiti, and examine its storied history in the United States.

Haiti was, famously, the world’s first Black republic after a successful revolution led by formerly enslaved Black Haitians in 1791. Haiti won its independence from France in 1804, but it was devastated by France forcing the fledgling nation to pay 150 million francs for their freedom.

As for the U.S., President Thomas Jefferson worked to isolate Haiti on the world stage through an embargo that lasted from 1806 to 1808, and America did not recognize Haiti until 1862.

In 1915, the U.S. government began an occupation of Haiti that would last until 1934. American rule reinstated the brutal system of corvée indentured labor in Haiti, forcing Black Haitians into virtual slavery. The U.S. redirected $500,000 from the Haitian National Bank to New York. Marine Corps officer Smedley Butler admitted that he “helped make Haiti … a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues,” labeling himself a “racketeer for capitalism.” During the occupation, 15,000 Haitians were killed. The United States continued to control Haiti’s finances until 1947.

Under Jimmy Carter’s “Haitian Program,” Haitians fleeing political repression were jailed and denied asylum claims. A federal judge struck it down, deeming Carter’s program “part of a program to expel Haitians.” Nevertheless, a total disregard for Haitian people has continued to shape American politics and discourse.

Ronald Reagan turned away Haitian immigrants, detaining all undocumented Haitians without hope of bond. In the early years of the HIV pandemic, Haitian immigrants were stigmatized as vectors of disease, despite an absence of evidence.

While the U.S. has prevented Haitian immigrants from entering the country, it worsened conditions in Haiti: the U.S. supported the brutal father-son dictators “Papa Doc” (François Duvalier) and “Baby Doc” (Jean-Claude Duvalier), providing an estimated $900 million to the country under their regimes. As Baby Doc proclaimed, “The United States will always find Haiti on its side against Communism.”

Later American interventions in Haiti’s elections reflect the long-standing myth held by white Americans that Black Haitians are incapable of self-governance. Robert Lansing, the secretary of state from 1915 to 1920, claimed:

“The experience of Liberia and Haiti show that the African race are devoid of any capacity for political organization and lack genius for government. Unquestionably there is in them an inherent tendency to revert to savagery and to cast aside the shackles of civilization which are irksome to their physical nature . . . It is that which makes the Negro problem practically unsolvable.”

Republicans and Democrats alike have failed Haitians and Haiti. The current Biden administration has deported at least 20,000 Haitian immigrants. This crisis became dramatically visible with the horrifying images of Haitians being chased on horseback at the border.

Although the current smears have stemmed from the Republican party, we must recognize the bipartisan violence inflicted upon Haitian immigrants in order to undo the legacy of American-borne harm. This article is only a small selection of our country’s deeply-rooted anti-Haitian xenophobia, disturbingly reflected in the most recent wave of racist attacks on Haitians in Springfield.

As a Jamaican-American, I stand in solidarity with Haitian-Americans who have faced racist slander and violence from the politicians who are supposed to represent them. Our fates are intertwined, and our liberations are inseparably connected.