Some of you might know that I’ve had some interest in learning a new language, Haitian Creole. The short story version of this is that after meeting a Haitian man on social media to chat, I made some ignorant statements about the language—he challenged me to learn the language to be better informed, and so in March of 2022 I began my first lessons.
It’s now almost three full years later, and I have enough knowledge of the language to be able to hold a simple conversation, listen to a news report and understand it, read a typical document or article, and write somewhat coherent paragraphs without too many egregious mistakes. I don’t know if I’m improving enough, but I’m improving at my speed, and my hope is to be able to hold adult-level conversations with Haitians and not feel like I’m constantly stumped for the next word.
But along the way in learning the language, I’ve had to learn about Haiti. The people, the culture, the history, current events, and all that goes into what we define as “a people and a nation and an identity.” And in learning about all that, I’ve come to know many Haitians who are delightfully unique in their outlook on life as they are in their accents and vocabulary (which gives me no end of headaches as I try to figure out yet another idiom or unique wordplay I need to understand so that I can grasp their meaning).
And I’ve come to know them as individuals with their own talents and character and hopes and dreams, and I’ve come to see something about the Haitian character that seems to run through them all as a streak: there is such a tremendous will to do whatever it takes to survive, to thrive, and to make a better future for themselves and their families.
Of course that also means that I learn about the enormous roadblocks to success that seem to thwart their every effort. Haiti’s government is, to my eyes, disconnected from its people, staffed by people who seek to use their positions to grab just a bit more of the pie even if that means that the people under them get no pie at all, not even a few crumbs. That’s not limited to Haiti, of course: we know that people will abuse their power whether they are government officials, church leaders, business owners, or celebrities. I hope I don’t have to list any examples, but they are right there in my mind, wanting to get out.
But the roadblocks aren’t just the indifference of their government. There are roadblocks from the thievery and gangsterism that rises up in the vacuum to where Haitians who could do so much more with their resources are kept from success by literal roadblocks when they try to transport their agricultural products to market or take a bus or taxi to a job or when they themselves are kidnapped and held for ransom & then killed when no one can come up with the money. So many parents want to send their children to schools in Haiti, but the random violence and kidnappings keep them at home. People want to bring stuff to market to sell or want to go to markets to buy, but the gangsterism plagues their social connections.
That’s just in Haiti. Outside of Haiti, Haitians are badly treated and despised nearly everywhere in the world, from their underground existence in the Dominican Republic where they serve the role in that country that Latino migrants serve in the United States of doing the terrible jobs no one wants with the continual threats of violence or theft of wages or arrest and deportation, to their legal existence in the United States and suffering abuse and violence directed at them by a political party seeking to use their appearance as Black migrants to scare white people into voting for a candidate.
I see this, I hear this, and I feel this because I’m in daily conversations with my Haitian friends. Some are here in the states, living in anxiety and watching the looming election with great fear. They’ve followed the laws to come to the U.S. (no easy task to jump through all the hoops which I know because it’s a lottery when it comes to deciding whom to allow to migrate into the U.S.) and they do their best to work hard and become productive, and yet they are scorned and abused and spat upon. Some are in the Dyaspora (the Haitians who live abroad) in other countries such as Peru or Brazil or Nicaragua or Mexico and trying to stay alive in hostile circumstances.
I hear their prayers in Creole. I listen to them talk about their desperate straits. I see them barely holding it together.
I see them.
Now, I don’t know if it’s something that most people do or don’t do, but when you see someone in trouble, it seems natural to want to help. To find out what’s going on. To provide immediate assistance. To help them get back on their feet. To give them support and encouragement. To do what needs to be done to help another human because we are all human.
So it just continually surprises me even though I should know better that so many people are pleased by their hatred of Haitians. It hurts to see it from people I know in my life who are delighted to know I’m learning Haitian Creole but who hope that Haitians will somehow just . . . disappear. It hurts to see it from people who would not hesitate to fund someone to go to Haiti to “help” them convert to their religion, but who speak vile curses because those people are here and more easily able to hear that same message told to them directly and not through the works of distance missionaries. It hurts to see people I hear talk about the goodness of their god and the love their god has for everyone just take a breath and then continue on with the most vile statements and complete lies about the behaviors and intentions of Haitians who are here, I remind you, to live out their lives legally so that they and their families can be in peace with their neighbors.
I don’t get that people can see them, my Haitian friends, and not also see them as human beings who carry the same image of God that they themselves claim for themselves.
What is it about our own selves that we are afraid of our siblings in this world? Why do we claim to love people in general and yet spout vile obscenities about them when they show up in person? Where is the dynamic transformation of our hard hearts by the truth and power of our religions that claim to give us a connection to God who made us all and who wants us all to live in peace?
I don’t know.
I don’t know why people don’t stop enjoying their hatred. I don’t understand why they don’t let go of their anger and fear. I don’t believe people want to be bound up in their worst impulses.
I want people to do better. I want them to be better.
I want them to be open to the people that they hate as the individuals and families that I’ve come to know as the wonderful, fun, hopeful, complex, unique creations of God that they are.
I want them to see them.