Former President Barack Obama on Saturday seized on what he described as cruelty and indecency coming from President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, stepping into one of the nation’s ugliest midterm fights as he worked to rally Democratic voters in two Midwestern battlegrounds.
First in Ohio, Obama took aim at Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has doubled down on an advertising campaign featuring the estranged mother of Democratic rival Dr. Amy Acton. Trump and Vice President JD Vance have also defended the ad, even as Republican leaders across Ohio, including Gov. Mike DeWine, have called for its removal.
Caused by the centuries of continuous violence brought upon the majority of the peoples of the world by European empire
You are only accounting for half the equation. Why are there so many refugees from Haiti coming to the USA? Because of what the French did over the course of several centuries and what English, Americans, Canadians, Spanish, Portuguese, and others decided to do in support of what the French did.
Had Europeans not gone out and raped the world they wouldn’t need immigration controls that allowed their most vaunted progressive leader to deport over 3 million people while drone striking weddings and funerals.
You are correct that European empires have done unimaginable harm. However, be careful not to strip agency away from the Haitian people themselves. To state that everything is a consequence of white people is to suggest that the Haitians have no control of anything and no agency. It’s almost like an accidental racism where nothing is attributable to people of color.
This is not meant to excuse anything the Europeans did, but evil can be found in all cultures. Immigration, economic disasters, and authoritarian takeovers would still happen without white imperialism.
Whether you intend it or not, this is a form of apologia.
The island that Haiti sits on would be completely inhabited by Taino right now if it wasn’t for the forcible European genocide. The people of Haiti today would not be descended from West Africa if not for the forcible human trafficking and enslavement of those people. The island would not split between Haiti and the DR if it were not for forcible European colonization backed up by overwhelming violence.
Obviously the people of Haiti have agency - they are the only successful slave revolt against Europeans. They have more agency than almost anyone else on the planet. But the fact that they are on that island, speak French, were human trafficked, split the island with the DR, and so many other things are absolutely the fault of the Europeans and the Haitians act with their agency within that forced context.
It’s almost like you’re saying that the Haitian people had sufficient agency to liberate themselves from their French slavers and therefore they also have the agency to take responsibility for the financial consequences, when France decided to levy a debt on Haiti for each slave they lost ownership of and every other European nation agreed. Haiti could have used their agency to say “fuck you we won’t pay such a debt” but then literally every single country around them was literally a European settler state and they would have no way to trade with anyone to feed their people. So they were forced, again, by Europeans to honor the debt they incurred by freeing themselves from forced European bondage. And then the US invaded Haiti and stole all of their banked gold reserves at gun point!
So yeah, the Haitian people are some of the most high agency people in history, but that doesn’t mean that the European globe spanning empire that has dominated the planet for 600 years and at its height dominated over 80% of the population of the world and forcibly trafficked, enslaved, genocided, assimilated, starved, and raped literally all of those people is somehow “just another example of evil that can be found in all cultures”
I understand all of this. Your take is still Eurocentric. The massive earthquakes, hurricanes, and the corruption found in the governments led by figures like Jovenel Moïse also played a big role though. I’m not excusing anything the Europeans did/do. It’s awful. But to only discuss the impacts of white people is a problem – even when it’s in a negative context. It makes it seem like the Haitian people have just been sitting there doing nothing for the past 200 years.
A holistic view is best, and this sort of view would be the only one accepted by contemporary historians.
My take is centering the European impact because we are discussing European policies. If we strip away your concern trolling, what you’re saying is that EuroCentric nations need to have a rule of law and strong immigration controls to deal with the influx of, in this case, Haitians because natural disasters there cause an influx of immigrants from there.
First of all, the idea that figures like Moïse and their impact is purely Haitian agency and has absolutely nothing to do with the long history of European oppression is totally ahistorical and attempts to paint a “both sides” sort of apologia for empire.
But second of all, bad leaders and natural disasters do not cause mass international migration in the imperial core countries, so why does it cause it in places like Haiti? It is because Haiti has been over exploited and had its ability to develop effective self governance undermined constantly by European intervention.
And finally, even in those situations where a self-governing, non-over-exploited Haiti experienced a natural disaster that caused significant displacement, is that really the reason the US needs strong immigration policies? And to be clear, strong immigration policies under Biden literally meant Haitians being whipped by white cops on horseback.
You can keep acting like what I’m saying is that Haitians are not self-determining, but that’s not what I’m saying at all. I am saying that the self-determination of Haitians is happening within a context of abject white supremacist violent domination and oppression by Europeans which has occurred over several centuries in a coordinated effort to subjugate the people of Haiti and their neighbors and friends and simultaneously insult the people of the imperial core from the backlash created by this domination and subjugation both physically and narratively.
I never said anything about immigration controls. I don’t even believe in borders. I also never said that Haitian people don’t live within a broader context. I’m simply saying that when we speak about people as if they’re only victims, we start to believe that’s all they are. It also makes you sound like a sophomore in a white, middle class college.
So you come in to a conversation specifically about immigration laws and law and order politics wherein my counter to the person I am arguing with was that the West is a massive contributor and maintainer of the causes of and driving conditions behind mass migration of poor and traumatized people into the West and you thought: “you know. I don’t want to get involved at all in the topic of law and order or immigration law, but I just think that if you’re going to talk about what the West did Haiti, it’s really racist of you not to also blame the Haitians for some of their own problems”
Do I have that about right?
You didn’t say the West was a cause of the problems. You said it was the cause. All I meant was, “this is a bit eurocentric, don’t you think?” We should keep discussions grounded in reality, is all. I wasn’t expecting it to upset you so badly.
The West played a massive role in Haitian history. All bad things pretty much. But the Haitians themselves have played a major role as well.
Again, with all due respect, Haiti doesn’t even exist without Europe forcing it to exist in the first place. It was cleansed of the original peoples, and of the names of the places and the governance and the ecology to the best of their ability and then populated, by Europeans, with trafficked humans who were beaten, murdered, and taught a European language. Literally everything about the situation is foundationally a European construct and the Haitian people are working within that context to liberate themselves despite all of the best efforts of the West to stop them and to limit them.
Do you understand the critique? The Haitian people are self determining, yes, but they are self determining inside of a historical context created by the West over centuries. Yes, it is true that every runner finishes the race on their own, but when the runner is trafficked into the race, beaten within an inch of their life, maimed, and then given salt water by the organizers along the route, it’s not exactly the conscientious thing to say “look, we have to treat them and all of their stumbles and scrapes and lost time as something they cocreated in order to respect their agency”.
It is appropriate to acknowledge, thoroughly, just how devastating the West has been to the world’s people.