Haiti is Black! Racial Essentialism and United States Involvement in the 2004 Removal of President Aristide

Authors

Jordan E. Dollar, Catholic Legal Services

First Page

642

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Through this paper I seek to interrogate the United States' policy toward Haiti as one based on racial essentialism. This paper will track the historical evolution of racial essentialism towards Haiti by the United States and the culmination of this essentialism through the removal of populist president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. I will show the common theme in U.S. policy towards Haiti, beginning with the successful slave rebellion in 1804, and ending with the 2004 removal of Aristide; the suppression of popular movements in Haiti based on racial essentialism. I also will attempt to provide an analysis of key actions taken by the United States preceding the removal of President Aristide. The first section of this paper will give a general overview of the historical relationship between the United States and Haiti and explain why the United States may have directly involved itself with the internal affairs of Haiti and the removal of President Aristide in 2004. The second section describes a series of U.S. supported "interferences" with the internal affairs of Haiti in the years preceding the 2004 overthrow of Aristide. These are policies based not on overt racism of the past, but a more discrete, but equally dangerous, unconscious racism of the present. The third and final section presents the implementation of these modem-day racially essentialist U.S. policies, and the lack of recourse available though international law.

Recommended Citation

Jordan E. Dollar, Haiti is Black! Racial Essentialism and United States Involvement in the 2004 Removal of President Aristide, 20 St. Thomas L. Rev. 642 (2008).
Available at: https://scholarship.stu.edu/stlr/vol20/iss3/14