American Profiteers Have Always Hated Haiti
In November, voters will decide if they want a American reenactment or a renaissance.
For those thrilled to receive two newsletters in a row—and those decidedly less so—this is a debate special! I’ll be taking the rest of the week off, but hope to see some of you in Brooklyn on Monday, DC on Tuesday, and/or next time in these parts!
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs — the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
—Former president Donald Trump’s consistently debunked claim during his abysmal performance during the presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump has embraced the role of ghostwriter for a dystopian narrative in which Haitian immigrants are marauders storming the bastions of America. Once on shore, they unleash untold terrors on innocent Americans—and their beloved pets.
Like "Pizzagate," a viral conspiracy theory that falsely claims Democrats ran a pedophilia ring out of pizza parlors, the allegations against Haitian immigrants are utterly bizarre—but unlike Pizzagate, this isn’t new. Haitian immigrants have been cast in the role of the villain because of their history and American fear of Black autonomy and success—a tension as old as both countries: America was the first independent nation in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti, the world's first black-led republic, was the second.
Trump and Vance’s allegations are dense with fears ignited by the Haitian Revolution. In 1791, news of a revolution in Haiti cast a specter of doom for Americans profiteering from bondage; that included George Washington, then president of the United States, who enslaved hundreds of people. If America became a model of independence, inspiring an age of revolutions, would Haiti serve as a symbol of freedom for enslaved people, inspiring uprisings across the, as Washington called it, “infant nation?”
American enslavers had long feared the people they held in brutal bondage would murder them. That’s why Martha Washington, after hearing rumors that he late husband’s enslaved population was going to burn down her house in order to secure their freedom, chose to emancipate them. For Americans, the Haitian Revolution offered a nightmarish template. It was the opposite of, as I write in my Washington book, the first president’s wish for “imperceptible abolition.” He didn’t deny that abolition was likely in America’s future, but the process he envisioned would be so gradual and subtle that it would not disrupt the societal and economic structures of the day.
In September 2021, the xenophobic rhetoric surrounding Haitian immigrants was reignited by the arrival of Haitian refugees, including roughly 12,000 Haitians encamped at the U.S.-Mexico border. Partisan news outlets fed the flames of old racial fears, with alarmist headlines sharply contrasting with the nostalgic treatments afforded to European immigrants or contemporary white, Christian refugees—like Trump and Vance’s ancestors. The ominous shadows they cast on Haitians aren’t defined by the immigrants' actions but by America's ancestral fears and prejudices.
The ghost of the Haitian Revolution still haunts modern-day political theatrics, morphing into a spectacle that would border on comedy if it weren’t so tragic. As America nears its 250th birthday, Trump-Vance appears keen ruling a country dedicated to “imperceptible” progress. This November, voters aren’t just choosing a president for the next term—they’re deciding whether America is celebrating with a reenactment or renaissance.
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