Racist Rhetoric And Anti-Haitian Actions In US Are No Joking Matter

By Human Rights Photos: YouTube Screenshots Social media has been awash with memes of dogs and cats since the United States presidential debate on September 10. Perhaps a good laugh is the best antidote to the grotesque stereotyping and fearmongering of Haitian immigrants. But the image that came to my mind was that of horses and mounted US Border Patrol agents in 2021 as they aggressively snapped their reins toward Haitian migrants near the border in Del Rio, Texas. I thought back to the disparate treatment I witnessed at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in the early 1990s when interdicted Black Haitian asylum seekers were held in tents on the sizzling hot tarmac while racially diverse Cuban asylum seekers were housed on a grassy field nearby. That is, until US authorities flew them to a nicer camp in the Panama Canal Zone. Meanwhile, the Haitians remained behind, until most were sent back to Haiti. I thought of David Joseph, a young Haitian asylum seeker I met at the Krome Detention Center in the Florida everglades in 2004. He couldn’t lift his head out of his hands. “How are you feeling,” I asked. “It’s a jail. It’s a jail,” he answered. Courts had...