Too Hard for the White Folks? Americans and the Haitian Revolution

[Blue_Tires]

By Jacqueline Bacon
Jacqueline Bacon is an independent scholar whose work focuses on African-American history and rhetoric. She is the coeditor, with Maurice Jackson, of the new book African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents, recently published by Routledge.



Scholars as well as religious and political leaders have rightly condemned Pat Robertson’s racist and absurd claim that the recent earthquake in Haiti was punishment because the Haitian people “swore a pact to the devil” during their revolution in the 1790s to gain freedom from the French. It has been ably noted not only that Robertson’s remarks were bigoted and heartless but also that the “history” he alluded to was a crude misrepresentation. But beneath the surface of Robertson’s remarks there is another underlying assumption, one both racist and ingrained in conventional American lore. In his bizarre and merciless condemnation of the Haitian Revolution, Robertson perpetuates an unfortunately all-too-common historical myth: that black people are incapable of freeing themselves, and must rely on outside forces to “save” them.

This illusion has long been promulgated in popular culture and historical texts, from the representations of abolitionist leaders as white men to the white saviors of Mississippi Burning. The reality is in fact quite different—African Americans were the primary founders and innovators of antislavery activism in the United States and the architects of the Civil Rights struggle—but the misconception endures. Within scholarly circles, many historians have finally begun to attend to the important work done by African-American scholars such as Carter G. Woodson, John Hope Franklin, and Nathan Huggins, but cherished myths die hard. Claims that white abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison “started” the abolition movement and influenced the thinking of his black colleagues (when in fact it was the other way around) can be found in books published in the last decade. It’s not difficult to figure out what is at play here and why these narratives persist: white supremacy depends upon the notion that freedom and rights, when attained, are “granted” to blacks by benevolent whites, who then can distance themselves from their racist history through their purported efforts at salvation.

The Haitian Revolution disturbs these comforting assumptions. The Haitian Revolution was, as C. L. R. James noted in his classic Black Jacobins, “the only successful slave revolt in history,” and it was planned and carried out by the enslaved blacks of the French colony of Saint Domingue themselves, who effected their own transformation from “slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a people able to organise themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations of their day.” African Americans and other oppressed people, from the time of the Haitian Revolution until today, have been inspired by its success and the Haitians’ attainment of freedom and, ultimately, an independent nation in 1804. White Americans, though, were threatened in the antebellum period by the implications that their own investment in a republic dependent upon slavery was insecure; ever since, they have ignored the Haitian Revolution altogether, denied Haitians’ own agency in their struggle or even . . . well, we have all heard Robertson’s comments by now.

Frederick Douglass, who served as minister resident and consul general to Haiti from 1889 to 1891, aptly described white America’s responses to the Haitian Revolution, their discomfort with the black self-determination exhibited by the Haitian struggle for freedom, and the importance of a true vision of its history. Speaking in 1893 at Quinn Chapel, an important African Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago, Douglass referred to the “coolness” toward Haiti by the United States, who refused to recognize Haiti’s independence until 1862 (after the secession of the Southern states), although France did so in 1825, with Britain following in 1833. “Haiti is black, and we have not yet forgiven Haiti for being black,” Douglass noted; “after Haiti had shaken off the fetters of bondage, and long after her freedom and independence had been recognized by all other civilized nations, we continued to refuse to acknowledge the fact and treated her as outside the sisterhood of nations.” He did not disguise his anger as he described how despite the slaves’ heroic struggle which “made themselves free and independent,” American leaders continued to doubt “their ability to govern themselves” and demand that they “justify their assumption of statehood at the bar of the civilized world.” And he clearly articulated what a full understanding of the Haitian struggle means to African American—indeed, American—history as well as to the meanings we give the past:

http://www.hnn.us/articles/122312.html

[Karenina]

1. Black=UNCIVLISED

Violent, incapable of civilized responses, predatory animals... THIS has been the meme pushed by M$M from DAY ONE used as cover for what I call out as INTENTIONAL INCOMPETENCE. That's my story from my vantage point. By now there are likely 50K boots and mercs on the ground. The PEOPLE of Haiti have seen scant relief. GUNS BEFORE WATER.

USA! USA! USA! :patriot:

[Number23]

2. Great article and spot on.

This sentence carries alot of weight: "African Americans were the primary founders and innovators of antislavery activism in the United States and the architects of the Civil Rights struggle."

Of course, this premise has been vehemently refuted in US history books and by white historians. :) One of the reasons that the theme of the White Messiah in books and movies endures is because of the watered down/whitewashed history we're taught in America that everything good, noble and just that has happened in this country has had a white patron.

RoyGBiv did a very nice article here in AAIG where he touches on the fact that Douglass had a far greater impact on Garrison than Garrison had on Douglass and discusses the racial paternalism indicative of so many relationships between whites and people of color, particularly during the time of slavery and abolition. And that Douglass, for all his idealism, was grounded by his pragmatism and brilliance which is why he is revered as a true leader and not merely a reactionary.