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Anti-immigration sentiment is on the rise among American voters — butTrump’s obsession with Haiti isn’t just about that.
Trump’s comments at the US Presidential debate about Haitian immigrants were fact-checked on the spot as having no credible basis — but in a pattern that is now familiar, once the words were uttered, the truth no longer appeared to matter to his followers. Immigrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio where Trump leveled his racist attacks, are facing real life violence from manufactured hate-speech: authorities have evacuated sites in Springfield fearing bomb threats, some Haitian families have kept their children home from school out of fear, homes and cars have been vandalized and Haitians continue to share horrific stories of bullying and abuse with authorities.
I spoke with Pooja Bhatia Agarwal, a former human rights lawyer and journalist who has spent years covering Haiti. Agarwal told me Haiti is “the ultimate other” for America, and Trump’s racist rhetoric is a disservice that keeps grassroot communities from coming together for immigrants.
NJ: Immigrant phobia seems to raise its head every time election season comes around. Why do you think that is? Why this targeting of Haiti’s immigrants?
PB: Haiti, which is just 700 miles from the coast of Florida, is the United States’ ultimate other. Americans know very little about it. When I tell people that I lived in Haiti for a while, they’d be like, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to Polynesia!” And I’d say, no, not Tahiti, Haiti. This is the same Haiti that is a four hour flight from JFK. I think that geographical proximity stands in sharp contrast to the wild American ignorance about Haiti, and I don’t think that ignorance is unintentional. We’d rather not think about it as Americans. We would rather not know the manner in which the United States, our country, has subverted Haiti from the very get go.
Haiti is the only successful slave rebellion in history and what they managed to do was kick out Napoleon’s own army. They were the first republic in the entire world to abolish slavery. And this was at a time when Thomas Jefferson was president in the United States, and the US had 60 more years until they would have an emancipation proclamation. Haiti was way ahead of the United States on these issues, and it posed a terrible threat to these white imperial powers. These imperial powers built enormous wealth on ideologies of white supremacy — you saw this with England and India, France and Haiti and the United States with plenty of its own enslaved people. In that moment, the moment of its birth, Haiti was a pariah to the white imperial powers.
A lot of times there’s a kind of obsession with the things that threaten us. I’m no psychologist, but the neuroses and the racism of the United States says a lot more about the United States than it does about Haiti; about the ways in which we remain threatened more than 200 years after the founding of the first black Republic. We remain threatened by the idea of black people governing themselves. You can see this in the ways that over the past 35 years, and even over the past 15 years, the United States has really done quite a lot of meddling with Haiti’s democracy, which is what has led to its current state of violence and insecurity, and the complete dismantling of the state.
NJ: We see the same stereotypes and rhetoric each time this happens — foreigners and immigrants eat strange foods, they want your jobs, they are violent. Yet the American economy needs immigrant workers. When those workers express their cultural identity, or need health care, then immigration becomes an easy target for resentment. It’s like saying: come here, work in our factories, but don’t be visible or have needs. Is that a correct characterization?
PB: There’s this wonderful Haitian saying: If you want to kill a dog, say it has rabies. That’s what JD Vance is doing. What he’s really doing is trying to foment fear among Americans, right? Foment fear of change, of black people, of the other and galvanize that fear. And so a great way to do it is to say that Haitians, they’re diseased or they eat pets. These tropes have a very long history, of the third world being a place of diseases, or the savages.
NJ: “Savages” who are devoid of compassion for animals unlike civilized people, and only know how to hunt and kill.
PB: Exactly! And this idea of eating pets is also interesting coming from the Republicans, who pride themselves on eating meat. Like Vance who received some flak for being married to a vegetarian. I think for a lot of Haitians have felt, like, what the fuck do I need to say? Should Haiti’s Society for the Protection Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and all the Haitian pet lovers need to now come out and say, actually, we don’t eat cats and babies?
I know what you mean about the critical mass, it’s like saying — go ahead, you can be different in America as long as you act the same. But I have a feeling that a lot of the anti immigrant sentiment does not come from the people in towns like Springfield. It seems like the farther you are from actually knowing immigrants, the easier it is to scare you. These terrible lies are a great disservice to Haitians and immigrants, of course, but also to the people in towns like Springfield, even to those who might have voted Republican. These people do try really hard to welcome immigrants, to make room, make resources available, and try to do the right thing.
I’m thinking of the incredible grace of the family of the boy who was killed in a vehicular accident in Ohio some years ago, by a person from Haiti. His death was a terrible and tragic accident, and even now, his family is showing up to city council meetings and asking for his death not to be used as a political tool.
