President Trump and s***hole countries

Earlier this month, President Trump was accused of making disparaging remarks about Haitian and African immigrants while discussing immigration reform. Trump is quoted as saying: “Why are we having all these people from s***hole countries come here?”

Trump denied the allegation. But if his track record is any indication, this racist comment should surprise no one. This is the same Trump who came into political prominence questioning the birthplace of the nation’s first black president, who started his run for the presidency by labeling Mexicans as rapists and whose Muslin ban was “no different” from internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. It was Trump who declared that a federal judge presiding over a case about Trump University was unfit because of his Mexican heritage. He frequently refers to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as Pocahontas and thinks white supremacists who kill other Americans with automobiles are “very fine people.” If you don’t know by now that the 45th president of the United States is racist, it’s because you don’t want to know.

But what if Haiti and African nations are s***hole countries? That would be because the U.S. and European nations have played major roles in making them so. In 1791, the slaves of Haiti, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, took up arms against their French oppressors, and by 1804 had driven Napoleon Bonaparte into the Atlantic Ocean. This put the fear of God into slave-owning nations in the western hemisphere, and by 1825, French King Charles X imposed an “independence debt” upon Haiti to compensate France for the slaves it had lost. By the middle of the 20th century, Haiti was still paying the 150 million franc penalty for exercising its freedom.

In 1915, the U.S. military, under the pretense of national security, invaded and occupied Haiti until 1934. This destroyed the economy and wrecked the country’s political apparatus. Imagine the devastating effect if our own nation was occupied for 19 years. In 1963, the U.S. backed Haitian strongman Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who created a police force, the Tonton Macoute that rivaled Hitler’s Gestapo. Upon his death, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier continued his father’s legacy and stole everything but the palm trees when he fled the island in 1986. Add natural disasters to the equation and Haiti remains one of the poorest countries in the world.

In 1884, European powers convened in Berlin and decided to make the African continent their personal playground. Great Britain would control Egypt, Sudan (Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), Uganda, Kenya (British East Africa), South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) and Botswana. The British also controlled Nigeria and Ghana. France claimed most of western Africa, while Belgium declared hands-off the Congo. Portugal, Italy, Germany and Spain weren’t about to be left out — and countries like Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Guinea fell under European domination. Namibia was the last country to gain its independence in 1990 from a colonialism that raped the people and its resources. Haitians and Africans must be wondering who made the white man God.

When Trump says s***hole countries, he’s implying that its denizens are s***hole people. To the contrary. According to the Chicago Tribune, “of adults 25 years or older born in Africa and living in the U.S., 41.7 percent have a bachelor’s degree or more, according to 2009 data. For contrast, only 28.1 percent of the native-born American population has a bachelor’s degree or more, and 26.8 percent of foreign-born adults as a whole have a college degree, both well below the African rate.” Fourteen percent of Haitian immigrants have advanced degrees, compared with 11 percent for the general U.S. population, and Haitian Americans send approximately $2 billion back to their homeland each year.

Still, President Trump has expressed a desire for more immigrants from Norway, and other predominantly white countries. This conjures theories from the past of a blue-eyed, blonde-haired master race. The next time you see the president in the Oval Office don’t be surprised if he is sporting a cap that says: Make America White Again.

The first year of the Trump presidency has been governed by chaos. Every other day seems to be one of crisis, and the American people vacillate between anxiety and apathy. If the president serves out his full term or a second term, his comments about of s***hole countries could become self-fulling prophecy against a country that at one time begged the world for its tired huddled masses — and was proud to do so.

James E. Cherry is a poet, novelist and social critic from Jackson.

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