PERRY, PH.D

Haiti as Trauma Porn: U.S. Media and Narratives of Haiti

by Charmane M. Perry, Ph.D. Assistant Professor African American Studies Program The University of Alabama at Birmingham

I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when it’s at its extreme. And that’s what they end up knowing about it. – Edwidge Danticat

Discourse on Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora has been a relatively constant topic in the mainstream news cycle and the dispersion of information across social media over the course of 2021. While many Americans may not have been paying attention earlier this year to disputes and protests in Haiti over President Jovenel Moïse’s refusal to resign, Haiti was catapulted onto frontpage news and across social media over the summer (Delaney, 2021; Porter, Santora, & Robles, 2021). In the early morning hours of July 7, 2021, President Moïse was assassinated in his private home in Port-au-Prince. Shortly afterward, more information was learned and various questions arose as a man hunt for an alleged 28-member group of mercenaries consisting of Columbian, Haitian, and U.S. nationals ensued, during which they were sought, captured, and/or killed and politicians and businessmen were interrogated. Many questions remain unanswered, and Moïse’s murder has yet to be solved. In the weeks and months since July, Haiti and Haitian migrants have appeared and reappeared in the news and social media. On August 14, 2021, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck southwestern Haiti, affecting over 800,000 people and resulting in over 2,000 deaths and 12,000 injuries (UNICEF, 2021). Roughly a month later, thousands of Haitian migrants made a very dangerous journey from Central and South America to the U.S./Mexico border. While Dominican, Cuban, and Venezuelan migrants were also within the group of migrants camped at the border by an international bridge near Del Rio, Texas, most were Haitian migrants (Debusmann, 2021; Miroff, 2021). While the migrant “crisis” at the border was definitely newsworthy, it was the images of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback chasing and using whips on Haitian migrants that caused outrage and allegations of racism as these photos conjured narratives of American slavery. As if this were not enough, in late October, Haiti once again made the news after the 400

Mazowo gang demanded $17 million in ransom after the kidnapping of 17 U.S. missionaries from the Christian Aid Ministries (Al Jazeera, 2021). Like most countries, Haiti is beautiful and complicated. However, if you ask the average person about Haiti, they are more likely to reinforce the complicated narrative. Discourse on Haitian people, history, and culture is generally negatively and inaccurately represented in the news and Hollywood films. A one-dimensional narrative of Haiti has been created and repeated for decades, and that narrative is often ahistorical and embedded with racism and anti-Blackness. Instead of media coverage on various news and events in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora, the public only hears stories that reinforce narratives of violence, poverty, political instability, chaos, and danger. Analyzing over 700 articles from five newspapers from 2004, Potter (2009) found that “violence” was the most common word used to describe Haiti. “The media has described Haiti as a politically unstable place, full of violence, turmoil, chaos, corruption, and a multitude of other problems, ” she writes (p. 216). Haiti is represented as, in the words of the former U.S. President Donald Trump, a “shithole” country (Vitali et al., 2018). The popular narrative of Haiti invokes an image of constant suffering, and this suffering has been packaged and repackaged for widespread consumption. Thus, representation of Haiti in the news and social media is akin to trauma porn. “Trauma porn” refers to the mass consumption or exploitative sharing of traumatic, distressing, or disturbing images via the media. As Johnson (2020) explains: Trauma porn is media that showcases a group’s pain and trauma in excessive amounts for the sake of entertainment. Trauma porn is created not for the sake of the marginalized group, but instead to console or entertain the non-marginalized group. . . . Trauma porn at its core is exploitive and emotionally provocative for unethical reasons that lack compassion for anything other than the society ruled “default,” aka those who are white, straight, cisgender, able-bodied, able-minded and neurotypical. (para. 4) The term gained more widespread usage with the increased recordings of Black men being murdered by police and the circulation of those recordings across social media and other media outlets. While it is not limited to Black bodies but the exploitation of marginalized groups’ pain, the theme of trauma porn for Black people is one of state violence. When I awoke the morning of President Moïse’s assassination, I was met with an overload of information on social media concerning the president’s assassination. In the hours and days that followed, I perused the various Haitian and Haitian Diaspora-based social media pages I follow to stay up to date with new information as well as to stay connected with what residents of Haiti and members of the Haitian Diaspora were feeling, thinking, and discussing. As with any story associated with Black death and suffering, I quickly became exhausted. A few months later, images of Haitians being chased and whipped by U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback were circulating through the media. As I am a child of the Haitian Diaspora, this news was shared in a family WhatsApp group chat, to which a cousin replied, “I can’t even look at it.” Her response started a conversation around the difficulty of consuming and digesting media on Haiti and Haitian people. On the one hand, you want to be informed, but at the same time, the constant narrative of Haitian suffering is traumatic and exhausting. The history of biased and racist portrayals of Haiti in the U.S. dates back to the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). Stereotypes about Haiti being the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, violent, filled with devil worshippers, and a failed state have been reinforced and perpetuated by the U.S. government, films, television shows, books (fiction and nonfiction), travelogues, and newspapers (Potter, 2009). For example, like many African-based religions, Vodou was and continues to be falsely depicted as satanic, evil, violent, and dark. Even the

revolutionary spirit of enslaved Africans has been demonized, racialized, and misunderstood, and it continues to stigmatize Haiti. The August 1791 Vodou ceremony at Bwa Kayiman, officiated by early revolutionary leader Dutty Boukman, consecrated by Cecile Fatiman, and attended by dozens of enslaved Africans from nearby plantations, which preceded the beginning of the Haitian Revolution, has been grossly misrepresented (Polyné & McAlister, 2017). In 2010, Evangelical Christian Pat Robertson stated that the cause of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti, which killed over 200,000 people and catapulted the migration of Haitians to South America, was the result of a “pact to the devil” Haitians made at the 1791 ceremony in return for their freedom from France (CNN, 2010). During the 19th century, Haiti was associated with cannibalism (Potter, 2009), and this continued through the 19-year U.S. occupation of Haiti from July 28, 1915 to August 1, 1934. Again, Vodou was demonized and the racist distortion of the religion, people, and culture was used as a political tool to gain support for the occupation. Vodou practitioners and Haitians who resisted the occupation were viewed as cannibals and devil worshippers. During this time, Hollywood also reinforced and helped create false narratives with the fetishization of zombies, “Voodoo,” “Voodoo dolls,” and drums in movies about Haiti, Haitian people, and Haitian culture (Polyné & McAlister, 2017). Hollywood has played a key role in cementing representations and circulating messages about Haitian people and culture that continue to be proliferated today. The one-dimensional narratives are endless. In the early 1970s, there was widespread coverage of Haitians fleeing Haiti as political refugees despite the U.S. referring to them as economic refugees because of its support of the Duvalier dictatorship. However, these images created the narrative of Haitian “boat people,” a derisive term used to refer to these migrants seeking political refuge. In the 1980s, during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Haitians were associated with the epidemic, and it was stated that being Haitian could make one more susceptible to the virus. In fact, in 1990, a federal policy recommendation by the Food and Drug Administration resulted in the exclusion of Haitians from donating blood to protect against the spread of AIDS (Lambert, 1990). This information was widely circulated on the front pages of newspapers; however, when evidence arose that proved this information false, that news received little coverage or exposure (Potter, 2009). This narrative has been damaging and long-lasting. Shortly after the humanitarian crisis at the border, Trump, without evidence, stated that many of the Haitian migrants probably have AIDS and that “Haiti has a tremendous AIDS problem” (Chamberlain, 2021).

Narratives of poverty, devastation, violence, Satanic worship, and the inability to govern have resulted in the stigmatization of Haiti and Haitian people and culture. These stereotypes continue to be produced and reproduced by various media outlets, and news coverage plays a critical role in the fixation, accessibility, and circulation of Haitian death and suffering. The consumption of these narratives has aided in the dehumanization and “othering” of Haitian people and a continued history of paternalism and justification for foreign intervention to “help” Haiti. Further, these narratives have created a fear of the country resulting in the decline of the tourism industry and the hesitancy or refusal to travel there to visit or vacation (unless for missionary work, which continues the narrative of Haiti needing saving). As argued by Gina Athena Ulysse (2015), Haiti needs new narratives that represent the complexity and beauty of the country and people. There is no easy solution. And while I advocate for new narratives, that does not mean the negation of information on the political economy and environmentalism. Rather, it is a call to offer a complete picture that contextualizes current events for the average person while ensuring that Haiti appears in the news cycles outside of stories on suffering and death. For example, the coverage and treatment of Haitians at the U.S./Mexican border in August must be placed in the context of the historical legacy of U.S. intervention in

Haitian affairs, anti-Blackness, and migration practices and policies concerning Haitian people. The mass deportations of Haitians is not new. In 1993, President Bill Clinton quickly abandoned his campaign pledge of offering asylum to Haitians and continued the policy of forced deportations and interception at sea conducted during the former Bush Administration, a policy Clinton had criticized previously (Sciolino, 1993). Further, there is a history of journalists being sent to Haiti who often cannot speak Kreyol. How can one thoroughly cover and report information if they cannot speak the language of the people? Because of this, journalists can only interview Haitians who can speak English or use a third party to translate, and in some of these cases, interpreters have been former members of the Tonton Macoutes (Potter, 2009). It would be more responsible for journalists covering Haiti to be fluent in Kreyol and have familiarity with the history and culture. These practices would better ensure complex rather than simplistic reporting, providing viewers with a more nuanced understanding. It is also important to read news stories (and other works) by Haitians and circulated by Haitian news sources and access these sites not just when it concerns a catastrophe. However, this brings up the challenges of freedom of the press in Haiti (Charles, 2021). Last, in an age of “fake news” and algorithms narrowing diverse perspectives, people must also educate themselves. There are numerous books, articles, and other resources available for people to seek out more information about Haiti. Education is a tool that will dismantle and deconstruct stereotypes about Haitians in the media. The desire to learn more and critically think about media coverage of Haiti will help unravel the obsession and consumption of Haitian death and suffering.

References

Al Jazeera. (2021, October 19). Haitian gang demands $1m each for kidnapped US missionaries. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/19/haitian-gang-demands-1m-each-forkidnapped-us-missionaries Chamberlain, S. (2021, October 8). Trump suggests Haitian migrants heading for the US “probably have AIDS.” New York Post. https://nypost.com/2021/10/08/trump-suggests-haitianmigrants-heading-for-us-border-probably-have-aids/ Charles, J. (2021, February 11). Haitian journalists injured as nation plunges deeper into turmoil amid constitutional crisis. Miami Herald. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nationworld/world/americas/haiti/article249163765.html

CNN. (2010, January 13). Pat Robertson says Haiti paying for “pact to the devil. ” CNN News. http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/01/13/haiti.pat.robertson/index.html Debusmann, B., Jr. (2021, September 24). Why are so many Haitians at the US-Mexico border? BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58667669 Delaney, R. (2021, February 15). Dispute over Haiti presidential term triggers unrest. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56069575 Johnson, B. (2020, November 15). What is trauma porn? The Mighty. https://themighty.com/2020/10/trauma-porn/ Lambert, B. (1990, March 14). Now, no Haitians can donate blood. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/14/us/now-no-haitians-can-donate-blood.html#:~:text=

In%201988%2C%20no%20one%20from,regardless%20of%20when%20they%20 immigrated. Miroff, N. (2021, October 1). Most of the migrants in Del Rio, Tex., camp have been sent to Haiti or turned back to Mexico, DHS figures show. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/haitians-border-deportations/2021/10/01/bfa 38852-222a-11ec-8fd4-57a5d9bf4b47_story.html Polyné, M., & McAlister, E. (2017, March 17). Haiti and the distortion of its Vodou religion. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/17/opinions/believer-haiti-vodou-polyne-mcalister /index.html

Porter, C., Santora, M., & Robles, F. (2021, July 7). Public anger had been rising over Moïse’s attempt to stay in office. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/ world/americas/haiti-president-killing.html Potter, A. E. (2009). Voodoo, zombies, and mermaids: U.S. newspaper coverage of Haiti. Geographical Review, 99(2), 208–230. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2009.tb00427.x Sciolino, E. (1993, January 15). Clinton says U.S. will continue ban on Haitian exodus. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/15/world/clinton-says-us-will-continueban-on-haitian-exodus.html

Ulysse, G. A. (2015). Why Haiti needs new narratives: A post-quake chronicle. Wesleyan University Press. UNICEF. (2021). Emergency response Haiti earthquake, August 2021–February 2022. https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/reports/emergency-response-haiti-earthquake-august-2021february-2022 Vitali, A., Hunt, K., & Thorp, V. F. (2018, January 11). Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole” countries. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/whitehouse/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-shithole-nations-n836946