From the United States to the Dominican Republic to the Bahamas, the collective scapegoating and mass deportation of Haitians for political gain lays bare a particular kind of anti-Blackness.
As anti-Haitianism surges in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election, confronting the rise in xenophobia and hate requires a hemispheric approach to U.S. imperialism.
Old racist tropes demonizing Haitians as uncivilized practitioners of barbaric or mysterious rituals have been revived, once again casting immigrants from Haiti as dangerous outsiders unworthy of protection or empathy.
New expressions of ultranationalist violence censoring Black women and migrants harken back to the Trujillo dictatorship. Anyone deemed a threat to Dominican values is a potential target.
