<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<font size="+2"><b>Trump’s Racism Toward Haiti Is not an Aberration
</b></font><b><font size="4"><br>
<font size="-1">by <a href="https://www.niaimara.com/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Nia Imara</a></font>
</font></b><font size="2">- <a
href="http://progressive.org/dispatches/trump-racism-toward-haiti-is-not-an-aberration-180123/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">January 24, 2018<br>
http://progressive.org/dispatches/trump-racism-toward-haiti-is-not-an-aberration-180123/</a></font><br>
<div class="moz-forward-container">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr"><br>
Trump’s racist comments about Haiti and African
countries—made January 11 on the eve of the eighth
anniversary of the terrible earthquake in Haiti—were vulgar
and unacceptable, but they are not an aberration. Rather
they reflect the reality of U.S. policy toward so-called
“underdeveloped” black and brown nations.<br>
<br>
In the wake of Trump’s comments, politicians and media
figures rushed to defend Haitian and African immigrants,
asserting how hardworking they are; what unique, important
contributions they make to America; and reminding us of the
hackneyed fallacy that “America was built by immigrants.” By
reasoning on these grounds, commentators allow Trump and
those with similar anti-immigration rhetoric to dictate the
terms of the argument.<br>
<br>
<b>U.S. policy toward Haiti has been consistently racist,
violent, oppressive, and exploitative.</b> Trump’s
particularly crude brand of racism is only the most recent
manifestation of timeworn, bipartisan discrimination against
black and brown people.<br>
<br>
<b>The exclusion of Haiti by the United States began with
the Haitian Revolution, more than 200 years ago.</b>
Between 1791 and 1810, more than 25,000 whites and free
blacks who supported the old regime <a
href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-united-states-first-refugee-crisis-180957717/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">fled the island</a>
to port cities like New Orleans and Philadelphia, sparking
an early American refugee crisis. The free black migrants
were viewed with suspicion by slaveholding politicians,
including President Washington and his Secretary of State,
Thomas Jefferson.<br>
<br>
After Haiti defeated France in 1804, President Jefferson
refused to give the new nation diplomatic recognition.
France’s coffers were drained by years of war to preserve
its most valuable colony, and Jefferson exploited this
opportunity by acquiring the Louisiana Territory (stolen
Native American land) for a song. The United States,
predisposed to be conciliatory toward a fellow slave-holding
nation, aided France and other European powers in
implementing a diplomatic quarantine of the new black
nation.<br>
<br>
As noted by Robert Lawless in Haiti’s Bad Press and Paul
Farmer in The Uses of Haiti, the United States prevented
Haiti’s participation in the Western Hemisphere Panama
Conference of 1825. U.S. slavery continued for more than
half a century following its abolition in Haiti; it wasn’t
until 1862 that the U.S. Government recognized Haiti’s
independence.<br>
<br>
Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, <a
href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/11/20/9766896/woodrow-wilson-racist"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">widely known as a
racist,</a> sent the U.S. Marines to invade Haiti in 1915.
The Marines transported Jim Crow customs to the island,
instituted forced labor, and <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/self-determining-haiti/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">massacred thousands
of Haitians</a>, all in the name of “stability.” In 1919,
the troops murdered thirty-two-year-old Charlemagne Peralte,
leader of the Cacos peasant movement that resisted the
occupation. As a warning against continued rebellion, they
attached his dead body to a wooden door for public display.
Washington’s lasting legacy was the creation of the Haitian
Army.<br>
For decades after the official end of the nineteen-year-old
occupation, dictators used the American-made army as an
instrument of repression against the people.<br>
<br>
The infamous dictator, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, <a
href="http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/87701:an-open-letter-to-david-brooks-on-haiti"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">was given</a> tens
of millions of dollars by Washington during the first four
years of his reign, which coincided with the Eisenhower
Administration. In his book, An Unbroken Agony, Randall
Robinson discusses how Papa Doc and his notorious Tontons
Macoutes killed an estimated 50,000 people during his rule.
Later on, in Paul Farmer’s words, JFK “provided the
bloodthirsty killer with military assistance as part of the
general program of extending US control over the security
forces in Latin America.”<br>
<br>
After Papa Doc died in 1971, U.S. support of the
dictatorship under his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier,
became even more entrenched. In the 1970s, both Haiti and El
Salvador—another poor Latin American country maligned by
Trump—were ruled by U.S.-backed regimes that violently
repressed their populations, in order to ensure a
submissive, cheap labor force for U.S. companies.<br>
Under the repressive Duvalier dictatorship, which denied
labor rights, the assembly sector proliferated in Haiti, and
by 1980 the country became the ninth largest manufacturer of
assembled goods for U.S. consumption.<br>
<br>
Under the repressive Duvalier dictatorship, which denied
labor rights, the assembly sector proliferated in Haiti, and
by 1980 the country became the ninth largest manufacturer of
assembled goods for U.S. consumption. Today, Haiti’s export
economy is dominated by apparel manufacture—such as cheap
clothes sold at Walmart, and even parts of U.S. military
uniforms. More recently, after the earthquake, the State
Department under Hillary Clinton <a
href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/haiti-needs-electricity-hillary-gives-them-sweatshop-foundation-noon/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">pushed to build</a>
a new sweatshop in Haiti with money from USAID.<br>
<br>
Even after the Haitian masses successfully ousted Baby Doc
in 1986, the momentum of Duvalierism persisted, as the
American-trained and -armed military continued its brutal
terrorism against the people.<br>
<br>
In the next two decades, Washington sponsored and actively
participated in two coup d’états against the democratically
elected governments of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Each resulted in years of violence and repression; each
resulted in the killings of thousands of people; tens of
thousands more were imprisoned without due process or were
forced to flee their homes.<br>
Soon after the first coup in 1991, President Bush ordered
the Coast Guard to return refugees to Haiti. As a
presidential candidate, Clinton denounced Bush’s handling of
the crisis, but upon taking office he further extended the
blockade. In a cynical move, he conveniently defined fleeing
Haitians as “economic refugees,” in order to deny them
political asylum.<br>
<br>
In early 1992, acclaimed dancer Katherine Dunham <a
href="http://people.com/archive/hunger-strike-vol-37-no-12/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">went on a
forty-seven-day hunger strike,</a> urging George H. Bush
to change U.S. policy toward Haitian refugees who, under his
administration, were being held in deplorable conditions at
the U.S. base on Guantanamo. Among other actions, a series
of hunger strikes by students and faculty, as well as one by
Randall Robinson that lasted nearly a month in 1994, were
undertaken to pressure President Clinton to change U.S.
policy toward Haitian refugees.<br>
<br>
Many gains made under President Aristide’s second
administration were reversed after the allegedly U.S.-led
coup in 2004. The Aristide government, for the first time in
Haiti’s history, implemented a universal schooling program.
Between 1994 and 2000, more public schools were built in
Haiti than during the entire period following the 1804
Revolution—195 primary schools and 104 high schools.<br>
In 2001, Aristide mandated that 20 percent of the government
budget go toward education. The aborted Aristide
administrations also dedicated a greater percentage of the
national budget on health care than any previous
administration. His government advocated for improved labor
rights and, in 2003, it doubled the minimum wage to 70
gourdes a day (about $1 today), affecting the livelihoods of
more than 20,000 assembly factory workers.<br>
<br>
But after the 2004 coup, many considered Haiti to be under a
continued state of occupation. The country’s infrastructure
steadily worsened over the next several years, and the 2010
earthquake was devastating. Far too many homes and lives
were lost, and the Haitian people continue to suffer the
consequences.<br>
<br>
Obama’s response to the initial natural disaster was to send
troops to Haiti. Let’s recall how the U.S. military held up
thousands of tons of life-saving aid at the Port-au-Prince
airport, since its first priority was to provide
“stability.” Let’s remember, too, the stories and
images—reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina—in which Haitians
searching for food and supplies were depicted as “looters”
or as members of “gangs.” But ultimately, perhaps, the more
significant parallel between Katrina and the Obama
Administration’s response to the earthquake is that the U.S.
Government used reconstruction as a tool to aid the Haitian
elite and multinationals.<br>
<br>
If we consider Trump’s racism in the light of history, it is
quite in keeping with that of his forty-four predecessors.
Black and brown immigrants do not have to prove their
worth. When people try to defend them by asserting how
hardworking and deserving they are, these assertions
conveniently skirt around the looming truth that centuries
of American and European colonialism, neocolonialism, and
capitalist exploitation are responsible for the
impoverishment that is so widespread amongst today’s black
and brown nations. <b>It’s as if a band of robbers looted a
home, set it on fire, and then magnanimously defended the
fleeing family’s right to sanctuary.</b><br>
<br>
Additionally, the idea that “America was built by
immigrants” conceals a larger, racist myth about the origins
of this country. This country was built, in the first place,
on genocide. It was built on stolen labor, on centuries of
kidnap and the brutal separation of families, on the
systematic oppression of the descendants of Africa.<br>
<br>
It is not an accident that Trump mentioned Haiti and Africa
together; the exploitation of African nations and Haiti by
the United States and European allies is historically
inseparable. Haiti has always proudly identified with its
African roots, and the Africa in Haiti is still evident
today.<br>
<br>
In order to forge strong, meaningful bonds of solidarity
with movements in Haiti and Africa struggling to rebuild
their nations, after centuries of exploitation, let’s model
ourselves after Katherine Dunham, who understood that our
ties to each other go far deeper than any man-made borders.<br>
---------<br>
<i><a href="https://www.niaimara.com/" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Nia Imara</a> is an artist, an
astrophysicist, and an activist working with the <a
href="http://www.haitisolidarity.net" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Haiti Action Committee</a>.<span
class="m_2481839737192876570HOEnZb"><font
color="#888888"><br>
</font></span></i><span
class="m_2481839737192876570HOEnZb"></span><br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="m_2481839737192876570gmail_signature"
data-smartmail="gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr"><span>
<div>
<div>sent by Haiti Action Committee<br>
</div>
<a href="http://www.haitisolidarity.net" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">www.haitisolidarity.net</a><span></span></div>
</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://freedomarchives.org/">https://freedomarchives.org/</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>