Written by a member of the Black Haitian community, this book brings to life the mechanisms that shape Haitian immigrant identity and underscores the complexity of such an identity. Zéphir explains why Haitians define themselves as a distinct ethnic group and examines the various parameters of Haitian ethnicity. Through hundreds of interviews, the author gathered the voices of Haitians as they speak, as they feel, and most importantly, how they experience America and its system of racial classification. This work is a description of the diversity of the Black population in America and an effort to dispel the myth of a monolithic minority or sidestream culture.
In The Black Republic, Brandon R. Byrd explores the ambivalent attitudes that African American leaders in the post-Civil War era held toward Haiti, the first and only black republic in the Western Hemisphere. Following emancipation, African American leaders of all kinds—politicians, journalists, ministers, writers, educators, artists, and diplomats—identified new and urgent connections with Haiti, a nation long understood as an example of black self-determination. They celebrated not only its diplomatic recognition by the United States but also the renewed relevance of the Haitian Revolution. While a number of African American leaders defended the sovereignty of a black republic whose fate they saw as intertwined with their own, others expressed concern over Haiti's fitness as a model black republic, scrutinizing whether the nation truly reflected the "civilized" progress of the black race. Influenced by the imperialist rhetoric of their day, many African Americans across the political spectrum espoused a politics of racial uplift, taking responsibility for the "improvement" of Haitian education, politics, culture, and society. They considered Haiti an uncertain experiment in black self-governance: it might succeed and vindicate the capabilities of African Americans demanding their own right to self-determination or it might fail and condemn the black diasporic population to second-class status for the foreseeable future. When the United States military occupied Haiti in 1915, it created a crisis for W. E. B. Du Bois and other black activists and intellectuals who had long grappled with the meaning of Haitian independence. The resulting demand for and idea of a liberated Haiti became a cornerstone of the anticapitalist, anticolonial, and antiracist radical black internationalism that flourished between World War I and World War II. Spanning the Reconstruction, post-Reconstruction, and Jim Crow eras, The Black Republic recovers a crucial and overlooked chapter of African American internationalism and political thought.
Caribbean immigrants have now become part of the social landscape of many American cities. Few studies, however, have treated in detail the process of their integration in American society. American Odyssey assesses the development and adaptation, in both human and socio-economic terms, of the Haitian immigrant community in three boroughs of New York City. An informed and well-rounded portrayal of a Caribbean community in New York, this book offers a fresh theoretical view of the structuring of urban ethnicity and provides the ethnographic background essential to understanding the problems of the Haitian population in the United States.
An illustrated chronicle of the migrations--forced and voluntary--into, out of, and within the United States that have created the current black population.
In this groundbreaking work, Trenita Childers explores the enduring system of racial profiling in the Dominican Republic, where Dominicans of Haitian descent are denied full citizenship in the only country they have ever known. As birthright citizens, they now wonder why they are treated like they are “in someone else’s country.” Childers describes how nations like the Dominican Republic create “stateless” second-class citizens through targeted documentation policies. She also carefully discusses the critical gaps between policy and practice while excavating the complex connections between racism and labor systems. Her vivid ethnography profiles dozens of Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent and connects their compelling individual experiences with broader global and contemporary discussions about race, immigration, citizenship, and statelessness while highlighting examples of collective resistance.
Written by a member of the Black Haitian community, this book brings to life the mechanisms that shape Haitian immigrant identity and underscores the complexity of such an identity. Zéphir explains why Haitians define themselves as a distinct ethnic group and examines the various parameters of Haitian ethnicity. Through hundreds of interviews, the author gathered the voices of Haitians as they speak, as they feel, and most importantly, how they experience America and its system of racial classification. This work is a description of the diversity of the Black population in America and an effort to dispel the myth of a monolithic minority or sidestream culture.
The Haitian Revolution began in 1791 as a slave revolt on the French colonial island of Saint Domingue and ended thirteen years later with the founding of an independent black republic. Waves of French West Indians -- slaves, white colonists, and free blacks -- fled the upheaval and flooded southern U.S. ports -- most notably New Orleans -- bringing with them everything from French opera to voodoo. Alfred N. Hunt discusses the ways these immigrants affected southern agriculture, architecture, language, politics, medicine, religion, and the arts. He also considers how the events in Haiti influenced the American slavery-emancipation debate and spurred developments in black militancy and Pan-Africanism in the United States. By effecting the development of racial ideology in antebellum America, Hunt concludes, the Haitian Revolution was a major contributing factor to the attitudes that led to the Civil War.
What is the relationship between migration and politics in Quebec? How did French Canadians’ activities in the global south influence future debates about migration and Quebec society? How did migrants, in turn, shape debates about language, class, nationalism and sexuality? A Place in the Sun explores these questions through overlapping histories of Quebec and Haiti. From the 1930s to the 1950s, French-Canadian and Haitian cultural and political elites developed close intellectual bonds and large numbers of French-Canadian missionaries began working in the country. Through these encounters, French-Canadian intellectual and religious figures developed an image of Haiti that would circulate widely throughout Quebec and have ongoing cultural ramifications. After first exploring French-Canadian views of Haiti, Sean Mills reverses the perspective by looking at the many ways that Haitian migrants intervened in and shaped Quebec society. As the most significant group seen to integrate into francophone Quebec, Haitian migrants introduced new perspectives into a changing public sphere during decades of political turbulence. By turning his attention to the ideas and activities of Haitian taxi drivers, exiled priests, aspiring authors, dissident intellectuals, and feminist activists, Mills reconsiders the historical actors of Quebec intellectual and political life, and challenges the traditional tendency to view migrants as peripheral to Quebec history. Ranging from political economy to discussions about sexuality, A Place in the Sun demonstrates the ways in which Haitian migrants opened new debates, exposed new tensions, and forever altered Quebec society.
A systematic comparison of key differences and similarities in the experience of black people in the US and England amidst racial hostility. Small argues for an approach to combatting this built on shared racial identities.
