When my brothers and I were growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, in the nineteen-eighties, we were the only Black kids at our school, let alone the only Haitian Americans. This wasn’t a problem until it was. Sometimes, the other students asked why my parents “talked funny,” which my brothers and I didn’t really understand, because we only heard the lilting cadences of their voices. There was a period when my youngest brother’s classmates touched his hair, because it was tightly curled, but he was light-skinned, and they couldn’t quite figure out what that meant. When my brother shared this with my mother, she called the school principal, who agreed to let her visit my brother’s class. She brought our globe, spun it around to show the kids where Haiti was, and told them about our culture. She made plantain chips, which, of course, the kids devoured. And after that they stopped touching my brother’s hair and understood a bit more about the world around them. Unfortunately, it is rare that someone has the opportunity—and the grace—to educate the ill-informed.
That newfound understanding of Haitian culture did not last long. When I was in second or third grade, and H.I.V./AIDS began to ravage the gay community in the United States, a narrative emerged that Haiti was the origin of epidemics and a hotbed of disease, an island plagued. My brothers and I were classified by our peers as high-risk, by nature of our ethnicity. Kids would ask us if we had AIDS and if we were going to die. They worried that they were going to catch whatever diseases we were carrying by being overly proximal. It was childish ignorance fuelled by something much more sinister: misinformation and bigotry they were learning from adults. Throughout the years, there were other Haitian-related taunts—about “HBO” (too infantile to explain) and about the age-old tale of Haiti’s extreme poverty and people eating mud cakes. The way people understood and weaponized our Haitian identity was hurtful, and then it was annoying, and then we mostly became accustomed to the various stigmas, factoring it in as the cost of freedom.
Little has changed between then and now. Every five years or so, there is a renewed effort to lodge ridiculous, deeply racist and xenophobic accusations against Haitian people. It feels disproportionate, given that there are probably only around sixteen million Haitians on the island and across the diaspora. But it’s important to consider our history. In 1791, Haitians successfully rebelled against the French colonizers, sparking a resistance that would lead to the country being the first free Black nation in the Western Hemisphere. In the ensuing two hundred and thirty-two years and change, the rest of the world has seemed hellbent on making Haiti pay, for fear of global Black liberation. There was the indemnity that France demanded from Haiti to recognize its independence, one that required most of Haiti’s wealth to go toward repaying the debt for a hundred and twenty-two years. The island’s poverty is not accidental—it can be traced directly to the reparations exacted by the French, so affronted were they that Haitians were not interested in being owned. In the United States, there was an immediate concern that enslaved people in the country might agitate for freedom, too. President Thomas Jefferson suspended aid to Haiti, and the U.S. did not recognize Haiti’s independence until 1862. In several states, enslavers did everything they could to keep enslaved people from learning about the Haitian Revolution.
Since his political ascendancy, former President Donald Trump has engaged in racist dog-whistling and flagrant bigotry with equal aplomb. Though he has demonstrated a general animosity toward people of color, especially Black and brown immigrants, he seems to harbor a particular disdain for Haiti. In 2018, when presented with a bipartisan immigration deal, he referred to Haiti and various African nations as “shithole countries.” He said, “Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out.”
More recently, Trump and his running mate, J. D. Vance, have given fuel to a new, particularly odious set of rumors about Haitians, this time centered on the town of Springfield, Ohio, which has seen a significant wave of Haitian immigration in recent years. Vance said that Haitians were “causing chaos all over Springfield” and that “reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” Never mind the fact that the Haitian immigrants he’s talking about are in the United States legally; Vance’s remarks were all predicated on a lie—one that was told and retold through an unreliable chain of friends, neighbors, and assorted acquaintances. Erika Lee, the woman who originally posted this grotesque tale on Facebook, alleging that Haitian immigrants were “eating pets,” has admitted that she heard the story from a neighbor, Kimberly Newton. “I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton later acknowledged.
Still, these accusations have gone viral. During his Presidential debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris, Trump tripled down on these absurd claims, saying that Haitian people in Ohio were eating dogs and cats and other assorted pets. It was a surreal moment to witness, the kind where you ask yourself, “Did he really just say that?” As is often the case these days, the answer is yes. Yes, he did.
The moderators, to their credit, actively fact-checked Trump. They stated, more than once, that there have been no reports of pets being eaten by Haitians. Every credible news outlet has also reported that this is simply not happening. Town officials in Springfield, and in the state of Ohio more broadly, have repeatedly stated that this is not happening. It is all a bizarre figment of the Republican political imagination. But people are willing to believe the implausible, or at least lend credence to it. Over the weekend, Vance said, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” The suffering of Haitian people, clearly, is irrelevant to him. When confronted with the truth, he and his fellow-Republicans have continued to hem and haw about wanting more information about what’s going on in Springfield and in other communities like it. And it’s not just Republicans. “Haitian voodoo is in fact real,” the failed Presidential candidate Marianne Williamson recently wrote on X, in a post that has since been deleted, “and to dismiss the story out-of-hand rather than listening to the citizens of Springfield, Ohio confirms in the minds of many voters the stereotype of Democrats as smug elite jerks who think they’re too smart to listen to anyone outside their own silo.” Not only was Williamson inexplicably defending Trump and Vance, she was saying, with her whole chest, that she wanted to hear out both sides—that a swarm of Haitians eating household pets is possible, and that it is somehow élitist to assume otherwise.
This is all ridiculous to hear. It is ridiculous to even speak of. And it is ridiculous that Trump and Vance’s lies, which in another era would be disqualifying, have seemingly propelled them. Some prognosticators are even suggesting that by inflaming xenophobic passions, Trump and Vance have secured a victory in November. Politicians have always lied, but now they run for office—and hold office—while shrouding themselves in ludicrous conspiracy theories, and they are lauded for it.
What’s even worse is how this story has, so quickly, become a cultural punch line among people of every political persuasion. This is often how extreme conservative rhetoric works. Republicans soften the ground by making outlandish or incendiary claims. They do it over and over until their narrative breaches the perimeter of their little enclaves and bleeds into the mainstream. The bad actors keep repeating these statements. We hear them so frequently that they become part of our vernacular. We capitulate and treat the discursive dominance of the extreme right as an inevitability that we cannot resist, even though we absolutely can. And then we joke about red hats and making America great again and “fake news” and tiki torches and seasoning pets. There’s an endless parade of memes—further capitulation, letting Republicans know that you’re fine with allowing them to dictate reality. You’re letting them know that you, too, believe Haitians are acceptable targets for mockery. You’re welcome to play by their rules. Anything can be fodder for humor. But this is not about having a sense of humor. It’s about having a sense of decency.
I can only imagine what this spectacle looks like to the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the Haitians in Springfield are trying to live their lives. Years ago, Springfield was a dying town, with a declining population. As part of a revitalization effort, the town courted new businesses, and as manufacturers opened up their facilities, they needed employees. Haitians, often by word of mouth, shared with other Haitians that there was good work and a good life to be found in Springfield. This is how most immigrant communities in the United States form; there’s nothing conspiratorial about it. Springfield was a safe place where Haitians could go and raise their children, and even though it meant leaving the only place they had ever known, there was also the promise of some community—the simple pleasure of sometimes being in conversation with other people who share the same cultural vernacular. These Haitians wanted to find home, even if it meant having to wander far afield.
There is a reason that so many Haitians are wandering. In addition to the hurricanes, earthquakes, and cholera epidemic, there is the political strife. In 2021, then President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his own home. Since then, the country has been without an elected leader. Gangs have filled that void of power, particularly in the capital, Port-au-Prince, where the gangs are well-armed and well-organized. They control large swaths of the city, reject outside intervention into Haitian affairs, and want to be included in any negotiations about the transition of power and return to democracy. As you might imagine, the political class is not especially keen on this. The United Nations recently sent Kenyan police officers to Haiti to support the beleaguered Haitian National Police in trying to bring a semblance of order to the capital—their success or failure in that project is yet to be determined. Currently, there is a transitional Presidential council, but there are no democratically elected officials in Parliament. The council must try to restore order, revive the economy, and chart a course toward a fair election. All the while, many Haitian people are desperate. They are starving. And few people outside of Haiti care. It is much easier to make jokes about mud cakes, or to dance to a remix of Trump saying, “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the dogs.”
Trump’s recent comments, and his “take them out” line in 2018, were neither the first nor the last time that American leaders and agencies have endeavored to keep Haitians out of the country. In 2021, Border Patrol agents on horseback menaced Haitian asylum seekers along the southern border. There are countless images of the agents, in all their costumery, astride their massive horses, trying to corral Haitians carrying their belongings in plastic grocery bags across a river. Forty years earlier, as Haitians tried to escape the tyranny of the Duvalier dynasty, an autocratic dictatorship, then President Jimmy Carter, perhaps one of the most beloved U.S. Presidents, instituted the Haitian Program. Haitian migrants were put in jails, denied work visas, and denied asylum claims. All the while, Cubans seeking asylum were warmly embraced as they walked onto America’s shores. Two years after the Haitian Program began, a federal judge struck it down because it was discriminatory. Ronald Reagan learned from Carter’s efforts and instead tried to intercept Haitian migrants as they crossed the ocean, in order to circumvent American law. Not to be outdone, George H. W. Bush later took up Reagan’s efforts, returning Haitian migrants to Haiti expeditiously. When protests about these brutal policies began, and Bush refused to let Haitian migrants enter the country, he conveniently housed them at Guantánamo Bay, where the U.S. government detains terrorists and other undesirables. The history of Haitian immigration to the United States is that of politicians and Administrations on both sides of the aisle fighting to keep Haitians out of the country, with equal cruelty. Only the names change.
There is something bittersweet in being part of the diaspora of a proud and beautifully complex country like Haiti—to be born and raised in America, but to take fierce pride in where I come from. I know the country, I have been to the country, but I am not of the country, not in the way of the nearly twelve million people who currently live there. Most of what I know and learn is via the news, with its various biases. The rest I get from my friends and family members who are still in Haiti, and who are trying to get through each day while everything is precarious. The elders are getting older without any of the infrastructure of more developed nations. The children are growing up not knowing what they should dream for themselves or even if they should dream. Every day, I live with the knowledge that the privileges I am afforded are endowed by luck, that my parents are some of the lucky ones who were able to immigrate to the United States without interdiction and then were able to carve out a good life for themselves and their children.
As the Haitians in Springfield bear the intense scrutiny of the world, their hopes for a good life are dwindling. Trump and Vance, with their comments, have brought a renewed and naked contempt for Haitians into contemporary American discourse. They have legitimatized this bigotry. Now these Haitian immigrants fear for their lives, and for the lives of their children. Springfield’s City Hall was recently evacuated after receiving a bomb threat. Several schools, too, were evacuated last week after receiving threats that specifically named Haitians as the target. Colleges and universities in the area are either holding classes online or cancelling all campus events. Haitian community members are keeping their children home from school and are dealing with vandalism, intimidation, and other forms of harassment from people who know they can likely get away with this kind of behavior, because they are targeting a vulnerable group. Meanwhile, Haitian ethnicity itself is becoming synonymous with barbarism and criminality. This is the ambition of these conservative narratives—to bully and intimidate. To make life here so unbearable that the Haitians in Ohio, and immigrants across the country, will go back to where they came from. Trump and Vance have tapped into something they are using to great effect—who needs to build walls when memes will do the job for you? There is a fly in the ointment, though. History has shown us that Haitians refuse to live with anyone’s foot on our necks. And, for better and worse, Haitians can endure absolutely anything. We aren’t going anywhere. ♦
