In a classic example of political misdirection – or perhaps consciously focusing on the wrong shit just because — Donald Trump moseyed on the presidential debate stage Sept. 10 and referenced a debunked online rumor that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating household pets for sustenance.
“In Springfield they’re eating dogs,” Trump said on the debate stage in the midst of Vice President Kamala Harris bringing shame to his entire lineage on national television. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Pretty much er’rybody and they mama have called bullshit on Haitians in Springfield eating animals, including the Republican governor of Ohio and the Republican mayor of Springfield. Even the city’s police chief said it’s not true – and you know something wild was said when a police chief is defending a group of Black folks.
Trump’s statement was glaring nonsense statement from a man who has built his entire political career on saying things that don’t make no damn sense. Just the same, he’s doubled down on his foolishness, claiming that he will “mass deport” Haitians in Springfield, according to the BBC.
Problem is, members of our country saw fit to give this fool a platform and power, so his words have actual, real-world consequences…truth be damned.
There have been threats of violence in the city. Haitian parents have kept their children home because schools in the Springfield area have received bomb threats. A whole ass college (Wittenberg University) has cancelled sporting events and in-person classes because they fear for the safety of their students...all because a dude with a disturbing relationship with tanning lotion said something blatantly false on television.
Nearly all of the Haitians in Springfield are there legally, and because many fled a living situation the likes of which most of us will never experience: Gang violence runs rampant in Haiti, and the political leaders of the country seem unable to get a handle on it. After the July 2021 assassination of Jovenel Moïse, the 43rd president of Haiti, the country’s residents have dealt with food insecurity, displacement and constant threats to their life.
Many Haitians came to the small town of Springfield in search of normalcy – instead they find themselves victims of a rumor so ridiculous it barely merits repeating out loud.
But Black Americans already know what’s up: the Pan-Africanism movement of yesteryear demanded that we come together as part of the same diasporic community in the face of violence from our oppressors. Elders in the South put it a different way: Black folks is Black, no matter where you go. Many of us encounter the same struggles living in a country built on the myth of whiteness as an ideal.
Use whatever platform you can access to push back against this narrative plaguing our Haitian brothers and sisters in Ohio. Because if we don’t…who will?
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Lawrence Ware is a teaching assistant professor of philosophy at Oklahoma State University and associate director of its center for Africana Studies. You can reach him at law.writes@gmail.com.