By Bertin M. Louis, Jr. | @MySoulIsInHaiti | with thanks to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Wednesday, May 20,
2015.
In communities across the
globe, thousands of Haitians celebrate Haitian Flag Day every May 18 at
concerts and ceremonies, on the Internet and at festivals and parades. The flag not only
reflects pride in Haitian roots but it is the flag of the first black republic
in the world. The Haitian flag takes on renewed meaning as an anti-racist
symbol of revolutionary blackness and freedom in a continuing time of white
supremacy and anti-blackness. Its inception was from the Haitian Revolution
(1791-1803).
On
May 18, 1803, in the city of Archaie, not far from Haiti’s current capital of
Port-au-Prince, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the leader of the blacks and the first leader of an
independent Haiti, and Alexandre Pétion, the leader of the mulattoes, agreed on an official
flag, with blue and red bands placed vertically. Haitian heroine Catherine Flon, who also served as a military strategist and nurse,
sewed Haiti’s first flag. However, the flag was modified on Independence Day
(January 1st) when the blue and the red bands were placed horizontally with the
blue band on top of the red band. Haiti used the red and blue flag until 1964, when
President-for life François “Papa Doc” Duvalier used a vertical black and red
flag and added a modified version of the arms of the republic during the
Duvalier regime, which lasted from 1971 to 1986. On February 25, 1986, after
Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier fled Haiti on an American-charted jet and the
Duvalier regime fell apart, the Haitian people in its vast majority requested
that the red and blue flag be brought back. The red and blue flag remains the
official flag of Haiti.
Haiti
was the French colony of Saint-Domingue before the revolution. A 1697 treaty
between the French and the Spanish created the colony on the western third of
the island of Hispaniola. Saint-Domingue was known as “the pearl of the
Antilles” because the industrialization of sugar in the region enriched its
French absentee owners and made it one of the most successful sugar colonies in
history. The arduous labor required for sugar production resulted in the
virtual eradication of the indigenous Taino Arawak population and an average
seven-year life span for Africans who were brought against their will. In an
area roughly the size of Maryland enslaved Africans produced indigo, tobacco
and at one point in history two-fifths of the world’s sugar and almost half of
the world’s coffee.
Physical
and psychological violence were used to maintain plantation production
processes. As sociologist Alex Dupuy writes it was not uncommon for slave masters to “hang
a slave by the ears, mutilate a leg, pull teeth out, gash open one’s side and
pour melted lard into the incision, or mutilate genital organs. Still others
used the torture of live burial, whereby the slave, in the presence of the rest
of the slaves who were forced to bear witness, was made to dig his own
grave...Women had their sexual parts burned by a smoldering log; others had hot
wax splattered over hands, arms, and backs, or boiling cane syrup poured over
their heads.” Within this violent and dehumanizing environment, many enslaved
Africans resisted and fought against their captors and participated in the most
radical revolution of the “Age of Revolution.”
The
Haitian Revolution was more radical than the American Revolutionary war
(1775-1783) and the French Revolution (1789-1799) because it challenged chattel
slavery and racism, the foundation of American and French empires. As the late
anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote: “The Haitian Revolution was the ultimate test
to the universalist pretensions of both the French and the American revolutions.
And they both failed. And they both failed. In 1791, there is no public
debate on the record, in France, in England, or in the United States on the
right of black slaves to achieve self-determination, and the right to do so by
way of armed resistance.” The Haitian Revolution led to the destruction of
plantation capitalism on the island where both modern-day Haiti and the
Dominican Republic are located.
Through
the efforts of black people and the leadership of Toussaint Louverture, British
and Spanish forces were defeated and independence from the French colonial
master was achieved. The only successful slave revolt in human history resulted
in the formation of Haiti as the world’s first black republic, which extended
the rights of liberty, brotherhood and equality to black people. Unlike the
United States and France, Haiti was the first country to articulate a general
principle of common, unqualified equality for all of its citizens regardless of
race unlike the United States where only propertied white males had the
privilege of full citizenship.
The
Haitian Revolution would spawn uprisings among captive Africans throughout the
Caribbean and the United States. The revolution also influenced other Western
Hemispheric liberation movements. Haitian blogger Pascal Robert observes that Venezuelan military and political
leader Simon Bolivar went to Haiti to receive the military assistance and
material support from Haiti's then president Alexandre Petion. Bolivar used
those Haitian connections to liberate colonial territories from Spanish rule.
The Haitian flag reflects and symbolizes this unique and promising moment for
people of African descent – black freedom in a world dominated by white
supremacy.
Haitian
Flag day celebrations take on renewed meaning when we recall the recent
treatment of Haitians in the Western Hemisphere. In February 2015 a young Haitian man was
lynched in the Dominican Republic. This lynching occurred at a time where the Dominican
state has revoked the citizenship of Haitian-descended Dominicans. Essays from
sociologist Regine O. Jackson’s edited volume Geographies of the
Haitian Diaspora (Routledge 2011) discusses how Haitians serve as
repugnant cultural “others” in Jamaica, Guadeloupe, and Cuba. In Haiti a
post-earthquake cholera outbreak introduced by Nepalese soldiers from the United Nations
Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has claimed 9,000 Haitian lives and
affected more than 735,000 people. This preventable tragedy is in addition to
earthquake aid that did not go to Haitians but mostly went “to donors' own civilian
and military entities, UN agencies, international NGOs and private contractors.” A recent essay from Latin Correspondent reporter Nathalie Baptiste recognizes anti-Haitian policies in Brazil, Canada, the
Dominican Republic and the United States.
While
we must attend to the differences in the local histories, varying socioeconomic
factors and political situations of each country mentioned, a pattern of
alienation, expulsion, elimination, marginalization and stigmatization of
Haitians is evident when reviewing recent news and scholarly
publications.
Anti-Haitianism
is also prevalent in the Bahamas where I conduct anthropological research and
where a new immigration policy adversely affected Haitians. A brief anecdote that I
discuss in my book My Soul Is in Haiti: Protestantism
in the Haitian Diaspora of the Bahamas (NYU Press 2014)”illustrates this fact. Towards the end of ethnographic
research in New Providence, I was invited by a Bahamian friend to speak about
the importance of education to elementary school children at an afterschool
program. The children, who all sat around me in a circle, were black. As I
spoke to them about the importance of reading, studying, doing well on tests,
and getting help when they encountered difficulties, one girl was struck with a
look of astonishment when I mentioned that I was of Haitian descent. After my
speech I took the opportunity to ask her why she was so stunned. She replied
that I didn't look Haitian to her but that I looked Bahamian. So I asked her
“so what does a Haitian look like?” Replying in Bahamian Creole she and her
friends replied that Haitians were “scrubby,” meaning that they have an uneven
or mottled dark complexion. They also said of Haitians that “Dey (They) black,”
“Dey smell bad” and “Dey look like rat.”
These
comments came from children who are of African descent (85 percent of the
Bahamas is black) and the darkest black-skinned Bahamian child in that group
said that Haitians were “scrubby.” This story from the field reflects the
current crisis in Haitian identity in the Western Hemisphere and why it is
necessary to celebrate Haitian Flag day as a way to resist the dehumanizing
effects of anti-blackness. Anti-blackness is a key component of white supremacy “an historically based, institutionally perpetuated
system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of
color by white peoples and nations of the European continent, for the purpose
of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power, and privilege.” In this
example, young Bahamian children do the work of white supremacy through their
use of anti-Haitian and anti-Black stereotypes.
The
stigmatization of Haitians in the Western Hemisphere should alarm other black
people because Haitian instability also reflects the current insecurity of
blacks around the globe. The deaths of West African migrants in the Mediterranean on their way to Europe, Ethiopian Jews who are
encouraged to either leave Israel or be imprisoned, police brutality against blacks in
favelas in Brazil, and attacks against African immigrants by black South Africans should remind us of this ongoing crisis, which many
people view as normative (i.e. there’s always death and destruction among
Africans and in the African Diaspora). But we do not have to look outside of
the borders of the United States to understand the deprivation of the humanity
of black people. The current #BlackLivesMatter movement against police killings of unarmed black
people is another reminder of the disposability of black life in the modern
world which continues a pattern of anti-blackness that harkens back to the
transatlantic slave trade.
Anti-blackness
began with the forced marches of Africans from the interiors of the continent
to African coasts where they were sold as chattel and would become the engine
that fueled European colonial wealth. It continued during the Middle Passage
where white captains tightly packed blacks together on slave ships and threw black bodies into
the Atlantic Ocean
with the hope that large numbers of human cargo would offset increased deaths.
Anti-blackness was codified in the colonies and territories where the legally imposed
identity of slave was passed from mother to child and became associated with
blackness.
Anti-blackness
is prevalent during this contemporary period in the media coverage of the
killings of Walter Scott and Eric Garner as corporate news channels show their
video-recorded killings at the hands of American law enforcement on a loop and
refer to the black youth of Baltimore rebelling against unequal treatment under
the law as “thugs.” Anti-blackness is also reflected in the current relations
between Haitians and the nations they live in as well as how other countries
treat people of African descent.
In
closing, the Haitian flag reminds us that white superiority and black
inferiority are fallacies and have no basis in biology and that white supremacy
can be challenged and defeated as the Haitian Revolution demonstrated. Due to
the poor treatment of Haitians throughout the Western Hemisphere we should also
understand why Haitians are proud of their heritage and celebrate the
anniversary of their flag. But the Haitian flag is also a flag that belongs to
people of African descent around the globe, as do other flags. It is one of many symbols that Haitians and other
people of African descent should utilize in resistance to the dehumanizing and
deadly effects of capitalism, state power and white supremacy on black bodies.
Overall, Haitian Flag Day should remind all of us to celebrate revolutionary
blackness and to continue to challenge white supremacy in the struggle to
create dignified lives for black people worldwide.
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Bertin M. Louis, Jr. is the author of My Soul Is in Haiti: Protestantism
in the Haitian Diaspora of the Bahamas (NYU Press 2014) and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology
and Africana Studies at
the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is also the creator of #ShamelesslyHaitian, a Twitter event where Haitians express pride and
educate others about their history and culture on Haitian Independence Day and
Haitian Flag Day. Follow him on Twitter @MySoulIsInHaiti.