by Dr. Lesly Kernisant
For a long time since 2016, we all have been exposed to Trump’s hateful and racist rhetoric around migrants, Over the years we have tacitly accepted the fearmongering, xenophobic incantations by politicians from the far right as a distasteful, but familiar Republican theme song. This past week, we categorically denounce the Trump/Vance strategy of targeting Haitians, a specific ethnic group with false claims of pets and animal being killed for foods by hungry Haitian migrants.
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To most decent Americans, particularly blacks and browns, this is one more sickening, hateful, offensive, and factually unfounded accusation that exceeds the limit of acceptable behavior from someone seeking to represent us, a melting pot of diverse, multicultural population of the world.
It is a fact that Haiti’s internal socio-political turmoil has driven the once brave men and women of Haiti into the widening camp of desperate refugees seeking personal assistance from “unneighborly” borders, but they are far from being “animal abusers” and “pets eaters”, a designation that has long been a trope that overtly and explicitly reveals the objectionable nature of racism, xenophobia, and discrimination in the “Trump/Vance” white nationalist presidential caravan . Most of the defamatory claims against the immigrant community, including alleged illegal activities, squatting, littering, stealing and harvesting animals are lies that have been concocted for political gains. It is not only degrading but insulting to the worldwide minority community of browns and blacks who are fleeing from the ravages of geopolitical warfare and the resulting internal conflicts that drive them out of their homeland. I suspect other international thugs, Trump-like demagogues, are spewing the same incendiary, false rhetoric about refugees seeking a better life from other minority communities of Africa, Palestine, Congo, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. Obviously, it is a double standard system where race and ethnicity determine responsible acceptance or outright rejection of the call for help like the Haitians in Ohio.
As a Haitian American myself, I am imploring all Haitian Americans everywhere in America to go to the ballot box within the next 50 days and let your grievances be heard loudly and decisively. Let Donald Trump and Vance know that you are not “cat and dog eaters”, you can instead act like “spoilers” by using your numerical power as U.S. citizens of Haitian descent with a population of 1,200,000 naturalized citizens and more than 750,000 siblings, all U,S born citizens to vote and vote in swing States like Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Florida to defeat bigots and elect true Democrats, the people’s candidates.
