#PrayForHaiti
Can we talk about this Haiti hashtag?
I love Haiti as much as the next person, if not more. Both of my parents are from the island and as a kid I spent every summer running barefoot around my uncle's house and gardens. For me, it's a magical place rich with history and culture. But I have no problem admitting that it can also be a devastating sort of place. So I would never miss an opportunity to pray for my country: for peace, public health, a better education system, an end to the extreme poverty...the list goes on. But while there's no denying that Haiti needs prayer, this week the hashtag should really read #PrayForDR.
D.R., that's the Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighbor on the singular island of Hispaniola, though relations between Haiti and DR are anything but neighborly. The two share a history that is marred by racial discrimination, violent occupations and the 1937 massacre of Haitians ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. But it's 2015 now, so one would hope that we as human beings have evolved past behaviors like overt racism masked as nationalism. But it seems we have not.
Last week, a new ruling went into effect in the Dominican Republic stripping anyone who couldn't trace their Dominican roots back to at least 1930 of their legal status. That means someone born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents who bad been living in the Dominican Republic their whole lives, might actually get deported to Haiti, a place many of these people have never even been.
This would be like if my own American citizenship was revoked based solely on the fact that my parents are immigrants. Even though I was born in the United States, I would be deported to Haiti just like the 200,000 people affected by this ruling. But at least in my case, I have close family on the island and I know how to speak the language. I could make a vacation out of the situation and sip Haitian Cola on the beach until my lawyers sorted out the situation.
But that's definitely not the case for all of the people about to be exiled from their home. I am hesitant to refer to these people as "Haitian" despite their ancestry because to call people who were born and raised in the Dominican Republic "Haitian" is to be a part of the problem. They have lived their whole lives in the Dominican Republic and many have never even visited Haiti. Most don't understand French or Kreyol, and speak Spanish with perfect accents that could easily pass any of Trujillo's "perejil tests." They are Dominican, even if they are of Haitian descent, and the Dominican Republic needs to recognize that.
Not that these distinctions should matter when you are sharing a small island. Dominicans like to think they are the fair-skinned descendants of Europeans whereas Haitians are the dark-skinned descendants of Africans. But the truth is that it's pretty impossible to tell who belongs where just from looking. I have seen Haitians with blonde hair and blue eyes and I have seen Dominicans with dark skin and kinky hair. Everyone is mixed because everyone has been mixing for hundreds of years. It's too late to undo the mixing, but it seems that the Dominican Republic is going to try (again).
And yet the hashtag reads #PrayForHaiti. Because we're used to that. Praying for this poor, unfortunate nation. Even my Dominican friends are using the hashtag on Facebook. And while I appreciate the sentiment, it also makes me want to scream, "look in the mirror and pray for yourself!" Because this is some seriously backwards stuff. And everyone who is paying attention to this particular series of events agrees that the writing is on the wall for a full-blown genocide. And as long as we're keeping track, that genocide would be in the Dominican Republic. And make no mistake, they would be killing their own people.
Maybe they think no one is looking, but this isn’t the day of three television channels and only a handful of news reporters. We live in a highly connected world and people are talking (even if only between commentary on Caitlin Jenner and the white NAACP lady...) But for once, the conversation shouldn't be about how bad "the Haiti situation" is. This has nothing to do with shaky politics or the mismanagement of relief funds from the 2010 earthquake. We need to be talking about how fucked up messed up race relations are in the Dominican Republic before the river that serves as a natural border between the two countries starts to run red with the blood of people who for all intents and purposes are related to each other.
So please, let's get together and pray. But let's just make sure we remember for whom. #PrayForDR
