How Haiti Made the USA

Y’all know hateful politicians aren’t denigrating Haitian refugees at random. They aren’t even choosing them just because in the brain of everlasting racists they’re Black refugees. Haitians are being denigrated because they are Haitian. And y’all know why racists hate Haiti, right?

Haiti beat Napoleon.

Oh, come on, you scoff. No one remembers that. It happened way back in the 1800s. Truth is, racists in America have been trying to forget how Haiti humiliated the greatest European general of all time ever since it happened. Even worse, they long to forget how Haiti made the USA.

Toussaint Louverture led the formerly-enslaved in the battle for their freedom. When he declared a sovereign Black state, Napoleon invaded. In 1804, France surrendered. Lost its most lucrative colony; in fact, lost the most lucrative colony in the world. Haiti became the first independent nation in Latin America. Saddled, of course, by reparations owed to ex-enslavers for their “losses.” In the “greatest heist in history,” France demanded—a demand enforced by the U.S. syphoning off 40% of the Haitian nation’s income—that Haitians pay this debt until 1948, which bankrupted the country.

When word of the revolution on Haiti—then named Saint-Domingue— spread to the American South, particularly New Orleans, fear pulsed. The white people in what was basically the northern Caribbean quaked. Were they next? That fear warped United States history.

In Haiti, those valued only for the extraction of their labor and service to the mother country created their own free nation–sound familiar? The United States of America should have been cheering on its cousins in freedom. Instead, slaveholding President Jefferson refused to recognize the country and imposed an embargo on Haiti to help it fail. Why? Rather than identifying with people seeking freedom, the ruling Americans identified as white people.

You know who the first Haitian immigrants were? White people running from the freedom of those once enslaved. These immigrants were welcomed, supported, loved. That’s us. Love on white Haitian immigrants then, hate on Black Haitian immigrants now

Oh, and thanks to Napoleon’s funk following losing in Haiti, he gave up his imperialistic dreams and guess what–he offered us the Louisiana Purchase. So, yeah–we should celebrate the Haitian Revolution as the door through which we became continental America.

We don’t.

Wonder why?

Racist white people, we want to forget Haiti made the USA.