Ive Been Blessed to Spend Most of My Life in 'Shitholes'

I've been blessed to spend most of my life living and working in "shitholes."

I was born in New York, moved to Kenya when I was three and spent the next 12 years there. My parents are from Trinidad and Tobago – a country that's likely on President Trump's "shithole countries" list – and I reported in Haiti in the four years following the 2010 earthquake. My initial response to President Trump referring to Haiti, El Salvador and some African countries as "shithole countries," in a discussion on giving legal status to undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children, was fatigue. Dealing with racism is exhausting, and the fact that it comes from the leader of our country, delivered in such tired, simplistic narratives – "Haitians have AIDS," "Nigerians live in huts" – makes it doubly so.

Trump's supporters say he's simply speaking the truth: "Those places are dangerous, they're dirty, they're corrupt, and they're poor, and that's the main reason those immigrants are trying to come here," was Fox News host Tucker Carlson's explanation.

There are indeed places in these countries that are dirty and dangerous, and there is poverty and corruption. But those words do not describe the whole, and they don't provide context. These are countries that have had to undo the damage done by colonization, slavery and U.S. policies. Haitians not only fought for their freedom from the French, overthrowing them in 1804, but then had to contend with the American occupation from 1915 to 1934. American leaders seem to have always had a very dim view of Haiti. During the occupation, then Secretary of State Robert Lansing said: "The experience of Liberia and Haiti show that the African race are devoid of any capacity for political organization and lack genius for government. Unquestionably there is in them an inherent tendency to revert to savagery and to cast aside the shackles of civilization which are irksome to their physical nature."

American governments actually helped fuel the very flight to the U.S. that Trump is now grousing about. Many of my Haitian-American friends are children of those who fled the country during François "Papa Doc" Duvalier's dictatorship. The American government initially supported Duvalier, giving him millions in economic and military aid, as he presented himself as an ally in the fight against communism. Duvalier used much of this aid to fund his lavish lifestyle, and created his personal army, the infamous Tonton Macoutes, who collected unofficial taxes from people and brutally disposed of thousands of his critics.

When I reached out to friends in Haiti on January 10th, the day after Trump's derogatory remarks were reported, they were all on their way to services to mark the eighth anniversary of the earthquake, which left over 220,000 dead, about 300,000 injured and 1.5 million displaced. Gary Lubin lost a cousin and his best friend in the earthquake, so he woke up feeling the weight of that grief. And then he checked his phone and saw an article from Le Monde with Trump's statement. "I was shocked because he just doubled my pain," says Gary. "It was shameful and racist and at the same time I said 'Well, it's not the first time that he has attacked the Haitian people's dignity.'"

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