White Nativism, Haitian Immigrants, and Black Solidarity

In a recent appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, former president Donald Trump claimed his opponent in the presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris, had only recently claimed to be Black. Harris, while identifying as a Black American, is child of Black immigrants. Trump’s targeting of her foreign ancestry, Blackness, and belonging as well as his claim of ownership of her identities are legacies of white nativism, which has erased the success stories of the Black immigrant while attempting to define and control Blackness.

The Black immigrant story is very similar to the “more well-known” immigrant story of the early twentieth century, which Harris’ success represents. However, a major difference in the experiences of the Black immigrant versus the European immigrant is how the Black immigrant experience is disrupted by white nativism – the belief that the U.S. is an exclusively white nation, and anti-Black racism. The white nativist impulse has led many Black immigrants to quickly identify with and be embraced by Black Americans.

This disruption in the Black immigrant experience is evident in the experiences of Haitian immigrants. When Haitian immigrants began migrating to the U.S., they brought with them different understandings of race, class, and ethnicity that did not conform with beliefs already incorporated into U.S. society. Haitians could not simply assimilate into the pre-existing definition of Blackness in the U.S. Also, maintaining an identity as a Haitian worked to differentiate Haitians from other Black people. In this way, few Haitians immigrants identified with Black Americans and other Afro-Caribbeans. Sometimes, Haitians even viewed Black Americans as racially and socially inferior.

Conversely, Black Americans also had their preconceived opinions of Haitians. Sociologist Alex Stepick has shown how Haitians in the U.S. have faced racial prejudice from Black Americans based on stereotypes of Haiti as a backwards and uncivilized country. However, not all Black Americans felt this way. During the height of the Haitian “Boat People” crisis in the early 1980s, Black politicians such as Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, and others linked the Black civil rights movement to the plight of Haitian refugees and worked to help Haitians gain fair access to asylum in the U.S.

These Black politicians recognized what the Haitian refugees were going through – being detained without due process and denied asylum in the U.S. – was very similar to the issues facing Black Americans through racial segregation and police violence. And, although there were cultural and linguistic differences between Haitians and Black Americans, they were prompted to act based on racial identification.

This burgeoning racial solidarity was evident in 1990, after a Haitian woman, Giselaine Fetissainte, was accused of stealing $3 worth of plantains and limes from the Red Apple grocery store in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. According to witnesses, who were primarily Black Americans, the store manager, Chang Bong OK, and two other Korean employees beat Fetissainte while shouting racial slurs. The incident sparked weeks of protests, including a boycott of Korean owned grocery stores by members of the Haitian and Black American communities.

Initially, the boycott was led by Haitian community leaders who demanded justice for Fetissainte. But over the next few weeks and months, the boycott would, as political scientist Claire Jean Kim notes, articulate and pursue “a Pan-African political agenda for which the immediate merchant-customer altercation was only a departure point.” For many Black American people in the community, the assault against Fetissainte represented the systemic racism and white nativism that had kept themselves and their communities underserved for decades.

The boycott attracted the attention of Black Americans who had experienced systemic racism for decades such as activists like Sonny Carson and the December 12^th Movement. Within a week of the beginning of the boycott, flyers proclaiming that “It’s Time! Black Power Strike” began circulating through the community. The rhetoric around the boycott shifted towards a more militant Black nationalism and self-determination that was reminiscent of the Black Power movements of the 1960s. Because of the broader Pan-African themes now employed within the rhetoric of the boycott, mainstream media labeled the boycott as racist and anti-Korean.

Lost in the media’s coverage was the Haitian immigrant experience. The real victims, some journalists argued, were the Koreans immigrants who were “trying to advance into the American mainstream.” ¹ On the other hand, the media implied Black activists and their Haitian allies, were bitter and it was their own fault for the economic predicaments – a racist stereotype that Black people only seek welfare and refuse to work.

Within the imagination of white nativism, the Haitian immigrant community, as a unique ethnic immigrant group, was redefined as simply Black. They were lumped together with Black Americans on the bottom of the United States’ racial hierarchy pyramid.

The boycott ended amicably in 1991 after the owner agreed to sell the store. However, in 1994, law and order politician Rudolph Giuliani became mayor of New York City. Giuliani, who as Associate Attorney General of the United States was a key figure in the U.S.’s interdiction policy towards Haitian Boat People during the 1980s, took a more proactive and punitive approach to policing in the city that was focused on quality-of-life issues, securing urban space for financial investment and the removal of undesirables. Giuliani’s strategies would disproportionally affect the poor and people of color punitively through Broken Windows policing. Under Giuliani, Haitians would become high profile victims of police violence, most notably Abner Louima’s torture and Patrick Dorismond’s murder–both at the hands of the NYPD. Giuliani would use Dorismond’s Blackness to justify more punitive law and order responses in Black neighborhoods.

What this boycott demonstrated is how white nativism disrupts the Black immigrant experience. Originally, the boycott focused on Haitian immigrant concerns about respect and acceptance. However, as white nativism redefined the Haitian immigrant as Black and erased their immigrant status, Haitian concerns were absorbed into broader concerns in the Black community. As Haitian activist Sabine Albert noted, the boycott, along with the partnership with the December 12th Movement gave her a new perspective to articulate her and other Haitians’ positions within “this massive state of (racial) oppression on all levels.”² And as Black American Daisy Kirkland observed about the attack on Fetissainte, “I just knew that she was black. And so that allowed me to associate her with me and my Black American community. So, it was an attack on all of us.”³