by Carl McRoy
Too cursed to pray for?
Boredom had me flipping through the channels until I paused to watch a popular senior statesman of the International Ecumenical Church of Televised White Evangelical Supremacy. During the prayer segment, his co-host shared a prayer request for Haiti, because they had just suffered a horrific natural disaster. The statesman deflected the importance of praying for the people of Haiti by explaining that they were cursed ever since their ancestors made a deal with the devil to gain their freedom.
There was something wrong about this tale from the religious right. I hadn’t yet heard of the French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, but this episode prompted my journey into the “hermeneutics of suspicion.” Ricoeur coined this term for critiquing literary works and I was challenging a narrative as well, but where should I begin?
A Pearl of Great Price
Modern Haiti resides on the western third of what Christopher Columbus “discovered” and dubbed Española [Hispaniola in English] in 1492. In 1697, French colonizers partially displaced Spanish colonizers and named their section of stolen land Saint Domingue. I guess these neighbors didn’t care much about originality, since the Spanish called their section of the island Santo Domingo.
Anyway, Saint Domingue was nicknamed the “Pearl of the Antilles” for nearly 100 years prior to the Haitian Revolution in 1791. What made it so profitable? It was the world’s leader in sugar and coffee production, and among the top producers of cacao, cotton, and indigo. The cost of generating all that long green was the short lives of the laborers. The brutal conditions of Saint Domingue’s 8,000 plantations required the import of 40,000 enslaved Africans per year. The French probably would’ve used indigenous people for their dirty work, but the Spanish had almost annihilated the Taino by then.
Jefferson Gets Jazzed by Napolean’s Blues
Since America had a revolution and France had a revolution, the people of Saint Domingue wanted one too. If Americans felt tyrannized by tea taxes, what about the people of Saint Domingue? Didn’t people who suffered the loss of life and limb to enable the rest of the globe to enjoy bittersweet drinks deserve their liberty and pursuit of happiness?
After 13 years of fighting the French, the Spanish, and the British, black people broke free, forming the first independent Black nation of the West. Scratching “Saint Domingue” from the map, they renamed the country after the Taino’s original word for it: “Ayiti,” which means “mountainous land.”
This successful slave revolt paved the way for the famous Louisiana Purchase. Napoleon was singing “ever since my Pearl left me” when Thomas Jefferson’s emissaries came by to pay him a visit. They were authorized to spend around $10 million to buy New Orleans. To their amazement, “The Antilles Blues” drove Napoleon to basically give away the 800,000 square mile Louisiana Territory for $15 million.
Instead of one city, they ended up with 15 states (and the pesky details of displacing the First Nations people in that region). Instead of gratitude for helping to double the land mass of the United States, the fear of a Black Republic kept Thomas Jefferson and his presidential successors from recognizing Haitian independence until 1862. Unfortunately, fear and slander still endanger Haitian immigrants in the U.S. today.
A close-up and back view of Haitian statue, Le Negres Marron (unknown slave). The slave is blowing into a conche shell, using it as a trumpet, to call the slaves together. This is a historic statue signifying Haiti’s slave revolution that resulted in their independence.
Reparations for Who? The Real Deal with the Devil!
Shouldn’t reparations should be a reasonable expectation after generations of people were uprooted like weeds, shackled like criminals, compressed and shipped in the bellies of wooden beasts, sold like livestock, crushed like cane stalks, and discarded like cotton bolls in order to fuel imperial economies?
Shouldn’t it cause universal outrage for enslavers to demand reparations from the enslaved? But, that’s what France did in 1825. They sent a fleet of ships with about 500 cannons to coerce Haiti into paying today’s equivalent of at least $21 billion. If not, France would reinvade and re-enslave them.
Agreeing to “the Indemnity” was Haiti’s real deal with the devil. Rather than building up their own economy and infrastructure, the new nation had to take out loans from French banks to repay French enslavers. This double debt had Haiti doubled over for more than 100 years.
Haiti’s Unpardonable Sin
In 1893, Frederick Douglass declared that America’s problem with Haiti is that “Haiti is black, and we have not yet forgiven Haiti for being black or forgiven the Almighty for making her black.”
More than 130 years later and the sin of black independence still consigns Haiti to colonial purgatory where each generation must pay indulgences with interest. Their economy and government have been manipulated by outsiders ever since 1825, yet they’re maligned as incapable of managing their own affairs. They have no gun and ammunition manufacturing, yet the gangs have guns galore. Several news outlets have pointed to the likely sources of illegal arms, yet what international cooperation is given to stop the flow of bullets from abroad?
We’re all Haitians
To borrow from Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us,” when they say Haitians, they’re talking about us too. When racists spread conspiracy theories about Haitians, they’re letting us know what they think about all black people.
Once that venom starts spewing, it doesn’t discriminate between your accent or country of origin. When they say one group of black people doesn’t belong, all black people are implicated. When we don’t see that, we unwittingly contribute to divide and rule tactics. As Martin Niemöller wrote in First They Came, when scapegoating gathers momentum, nobody goes unharmed.
Back to the Preacher’s Curse
Now we’ve gotten some context tracing back to Columbus and other professed Christians “discovering” stuff that’s not theirs. Let’s revisit the televangelist’s argument that bad stuff happens to Haitians because they’re cursed.
Had he ever done his homework to learn that Haiti has much higher rates of church goers than the United States? Why didn’t the preacher aim any curses at the colonizers who worked enslaved people into early graves to enrich themselves in the name of Jesus?
Didn’t Jesus say He came to give abundant life, unlike the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10)? When people asked Jesus about those who fell victim to calamities, did He say they deserved it because they were more sinful, or warn against making such judgments (Luke 13:1-5)? Where was the evangelical curse for those who get rich by cheating their workers (James 5:1-5)? What could be more devilish than masquerading as a lamb and acting like a dragon (Revelations 13:11)?
Double for Her Trouble
The last of book of the Bible gives a symbolic portrayal of a corrupt church, nicknamed Babylon, that has adulterous affairs with the kings and merchants around the world (Revelation 17-18). Together, they spiritually excuse their excessive materialism. Their value system places gold at the top of their priorities and degrades humans as commodities of lower value than metal, wood, perfumes, condiments, and even livestock.
These two chapters describe God’s reparation plan for this power-hungry, prosperity-preaching counterfeit that blesses the greedy and curses the needy. He will give them double for the trouble they cause others. However, the present generation can break from the examples of the past and choose a better future. Jesus is still pleading, “Come out of her [Babylon] my people” because “unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Revelations 18:4; Luke 13:3, NKJV).
See the original article here.