The most recent fabricated, false and fear-mongering ranting by Trump, Vance and various other MAGA advocates and allies, claiming Haitian immigrants are eating White peoples’ pets is another Hitlerian lie that has its roots and twisted rationale in the social virus and pathology of anti-Black racism. Like all viruses and opportunistic and persistent pathologies of the heart, mind and body, it attacks most viciously the weak and vulnerable.
And we who have experienced and resisted it since we were forcibly brought here know that in the face of this species of human hosts, defined by their self-deforming hatred and hostility and the varied forms of oppression they pose, there is no reliable remedy except radical refusal to be like them and righteous and relentless resistance against them at every site and source of degradation and oppression.
But let’s be honest and morally courageous enough, my fellow Americans, patriots and flag wavers all, to face the fact that this is the country we live in, and in spite of our rally and convention calls and claims about America the beautiful, there is an ugly, even monster side of America, and Trump is only the most visible activist and advocate for it.
Indeed, it is the height of hypocrisy and bad faith self-blinding to refuse to see and concede that Haitians are the current focus for such hatred and hostility, but that all Blacks are each day vulnerable and victims of these and related patterns and practices of anti-Black racism. And it is difficult, indeed ethically impossible, for any moral person to delink our oppression from the oppression of other people of color who have suffered similar racist and anti-immigrant viciousness and violence.
Thus, it is important to recognize and concede quickly and honestly that the problem is not just Trump, Vance and the craven crowd of GOPers, genuflecting and groveling in fear and favor-seeking ways. It is also millions of Americans who support him and his radically evil ideas and policies, enable and defend him, and ultimately turn this racial hatred and hostility into legislation, public policy and socially sanctioned practice.
And it is also liberals whose selective morality allows them to exclude, indict and harm others different and vulnerable who they too deem unworthy or to protect and support their own immoral interests, allies and arguments.
The righteous struggle going on now in communities, in Congress, in the presidential campaign and on campus against genocide in Palestine and resistance to those who would keep silent about it or vulgarly and immorally try to justify it, recalls Nana Dr. Martin Luther King’s call during the war against Vietnam to conscience and commitment to our shared humanity and shared human rights even in times of war.
Indeed, he declared that “We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls ‘enemy,’ for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers (and sisters).”
Trump and company’s vile and vicious attack on the Haitian immigrants is also a reflection of a general anti-immigrant sentiment and savagery which also has a history in this country. But the hatred and hostility toward Haitians represents an extra measure of sadistic meanness as expressed not only in popular American culture with its Hollywood so-called “voodoo” priests who deny Haitians’ Christian identities and reductively translate the religion of Vodun and its adherents in sick and sinister ways, as well as in the harsh and racist treatment of Haitian immigrants by virtually every administration.
Indeed, these administrations have routinely refused Haitian immigrants the right of asylum without a hearing, classified them as dangerous, diseased, disruptive and unworthy, mercilessly turned them back, and detained them as prisoners even at the notorious Guantanamo. So, Biden is right to condemn Trump for his racist lies, but he must also criticize himself and the country for how he and other presidents have treated Haitian immigrants and laid the basis for them being seen as a threat and unworthy of the human rights of other asylum seekers and human beings and provoking mob violence against them.
But there’s still another deep and enduring reason Trump and company attacked and whipped up hatred and hostility toward the Haitian immigrants. It is what Nana Dr. W.E.B. DuBois called their unforgivable Blackness. But here I want to conceptually expand the concept of it as meaning not only hatred and hostility toward them because of their race, their and our beautifully blessed Blackness, but also because of their historic revolutionary self-liberation, their continuing resistance and their radical refusal to be defeated. Indeed, there was from the beginning of the world historical Haitian revolution a commitment of the White nations, especially France and the U.S., to reverse the revolution and perpetually punish Haitians.
It was a liberation struggle of world historical significance in the interest and expansion of freedom in the Western Hemisphere and the whole world. It is the only revolution made in the world by an enslaved people. It was the first modern state to abolish enslavement, and it was the first Black republic in the world and the second republic in the Western Hemisphere, and it supported the liberation struggles of other peoples in the Western Hemisphere.
Thus, it incurred immediate and enduring hatred and hostility from its former enslavers, France and France’s fellow enslavers in the U.S. and Europe. It was for them a radical reversal of the world order of things causing cognitive dissonance. It was unimaginable that enslaved Africans could free themselves or strategize and win a war against several armed forces, the French army, the colonial army, the Spaniards, the British, and the Aryan hand of sabotage of the Americans. It was an unforgiveable expression of Black agency and excellence in strategy and struggle and thus Haiti had to be punished; its revolution reversed, and its model erased so that it could not offer an example to aspire to and emulate by other enslaved Africans and others.
Given this, France recovered and blockaded Haiti and with support from the U.S. and European countries put a price on Haiti’s freedom, charging them for having the unforgivable Black audacity to free themselves and lend others assistance in their struggle for freedom. As Haji Malcolm taught, they turned the formerly enslaved victim into the criminal and the enslaving criminal into the victim. In addition, the U.S. took over France’s role as the keeper of European dominance, invaded Haiti several times, seizing its resources, changing its constitution in order to steal its land, establishing segregation during their occupation, propped up a series of puppet dictators and dancers to colonial tunes, and has been disrupting the economy, politics and life of Haitian people since the beginning.
Having overthrown the first and only democratically elected president, President Jean Bertrade Aristide, it is now controlling Haiti along with France, Canada and other European members of the so-called CORE group. And it is trying to camouflage its control by using the UN and continental African troops as convenient cover and the Organization of American States as compliant co-signers. But Haiti must and will be free and we as African Americans and Africans all over the world must play a vanguard and vital role in supporting their self-determined liberation struggle.
Finally, it is important to note here that the attacks on Haiti and Haitian people, whether in Haiti or in this country, are an attack on us also and African people everywhere. And we African Americans have a special obligation to resist and strive constantly in conscious and audacious ways to end racism and oppression of us all. For we are, as we used to say in the 60s, the frontline of struggle deep in the belly of the beast, in the entrails of the oppressor.
We must, thus, dare to be ourselves, free ourselves, continue the struggle, keep the faith and hold the line and emulate Haiti and Nana Harriet Tubman who understood that freedom is a shared and indivisible good, and thus self-consciously join in expanding and securing the realm of human freedom and good in this country and the world for all.
Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture and Introduction to Black Studies, 4th Edition, www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org.
