Haiti And Springfield, Ohio – OpEd
Haitians are unforgiven for waging a successful Black revolution. Racism follows wherever they go, even in a state like Ohio, which is in need of a labor force and a larger population. Of course, Ohio is like the rest of the nation in having a racist history.
It is strange for this columnist to see Springfield, Ohio become a focus of national news stories. Springfield was my late mother’s hometown and aside from having the most popular city name in the country, never received media attention. My grandparents came north from Alabama during the first great migration and like millions of others made their home in cities which offered a degree of economic opportunity and some relief from the worst of Jim Crow segregation.
The state of Ohio was a manufacturing colossus for many decades. Small cities like Springfield thrived until finance capital defeated manufacturing capital and the loss of a tax base and living wage jobs devastated the lives of millions of people in that state and in others. The term “rust belt” is quite apt and tells us why Ohio lost a total of three congressional seats due to population loss in the 2010 and in the 2020censuses. The largest Ohio State University alumni association outside of the state is inNaples, Florida, an indicator of Ohio’s misfortunes.
But one person’s loss is another’s gain, as Haitian immigrants discovered. They began moving to Springfield just like immigrants of past generations where neighborhoods have names like Irish Hill. Population loss created a labor shortage and, just as it did with past generations, the city declared itself aWelcoming Cityin 2014 in order to secure more workers. This time the immigrants weren’t white or Latino, they were Black people from Haiti.
From its very beginnings as a nation that ended slavery by force of arms, Haiti has been the focus of racist hatred. The Haitian revolution stoked fear across the Americas, fear that Black people would rise up and end slavery. The French colonizers returned and held the nation hostage and stole billions of dollars for nearly 100 years. The United States invaded in 1915 and the marines didn’t leave until 1934. The invaders also stole from the national treasury, and sent millions of dollars to what is nowCitibankin New York City.
The attacks didn’t end there. The U.S. kept the Duvalier family in power for decades and when the Haitian people had the possibility of real democracy, the U.S. supported two coups against president Jean-Bertrand Artistide. In the second coup George W. Bush’s administrationkidnapped Aristideand sent him into exile to the Central African Republic. Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, forced Haiti to redo a presidential election in 2011 in order to ensure a result more to her liking. They intervened again and forced Haiti to change its plan for a 61 cents per hour minimum down to 27 cents so that sweatshop owners would earn higher profits.
Joe Biden is no different from his predecessors, and deported thousands of Haitians in 2021, depriving them of their right to make the case for asylum. Haiti is still in U.S. crosshairs as Washington uses Kenya, or the Caribbean Community to support a new invasion plot with what Black Agenda Report refers to as Blackface Imperialism.
Haitian immigrants in Springfield and elsewhere behave the way most immigrant communities do. They work hard, and usually for very little money. Yet they are industrious and create their own small business and associations. At the same time they are exploited and Springfield landlords rent single family homes to two, three and even four Haitian families, using theirhousing vouchersto turn a profit.
Of course the newcomers are viewed with suspicion, in this case mostly because they are Black. When rumors surfaced that Haitians were stealing dogs, cats and wildlife for food, the more upfront racists chimed in and made hay out of the libel. Donald Trump even repeated the claim during hisdebate with Kamala Harris. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”Eventually some version of sanity prevailed but only after bomb threats closed schools in Springfield.
Ohio’s republican senator J.D. Vance is Trump’s running mate and bragged about raising the disproven story. Why shouldn’t he? Anti-immigrant vitriol is one of the reasons that Trump won the 2016 presidential election. If anything the rhetoric has even more power now that thousands more asylum seekers from all over the world have entered the country. Like Haiti many of those countries are victimized by U.S. policies of destabilization that force people to leave their homelands.
Domestically, politicians like those in Ohio carve out safe seats for their parties. Ohio is a state suffering from gerrymandering, the practice of giving one party, in this case republicans, power to draw district lines which disempower their opposition. A voter referendum,Issue 1, could end gerrymandering by creating an independent and bipartisan commission. Vance knows that red meat rhetoric can get his voters to the polls and keep rural, republican control of the state intact. If he has to sacrifice truthfulness, so be it. Headmittedas much himself.“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.” Concern for anyone’s suffering has little to do with the racist narrative. Using hate speech to maintain political control is the point.
My mother would often describe Ohio as being “up south” where she and other Black people were denied jobs and other opportunities when racial discrimination was legal. Now firmly in the hands of the Republican Party, the state’s Black population has little voting power locally. Although Obama won Ohio twice with the help of high Black voter turnout, any opportunity for democracy was lost when the democrats chose not to capitalize on those efforts and instead were content to win the presidency but lose electoral seats there and across the country.
The so-called suffering of white people in Springfield make headlines, while little is said about the state of Black people there and across the country. Black workers in Ohio and other states went from being living wage workers to being impoverished, forced to leave their homes in search of the opportunity which originally drew their ancestors north but that was destroyed by capitalism. Despite the precarity they endure they are not confused about the hatred directed at Haitians.Denise Williamsof the local NAACP summed up their feelings. “An attack on you is an attack on us all … we are here, and we are supporting you.” She spoke not only for Black people in Springfield, but for us all.