September 18, 2024 — The Fellowship of Reconciliation, an interfaith organization that has worked to end violence and hatred in America since 1915, condemns in the strongest of terms possible the dangerous, bigoted conspiracy theories against Haitian immigrants. The blatantly false claims by President Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, that Haitian Americans are eating household pets in Springfield, OH has resulted in families keeping their children home from school due to safety concerns, vandalism, bomb threats, and evacuations of schools and City Hall.
Trump’s repulsive and untrue remarks follow his reference in 2018 to Haiti as being a “shithole country.” They perpetuate the historical racist false narrative of Black people being dangerous and “other” while spreading hateful anti-immigrant sentiment. “Jews know well the dangers of spreading false conspiracy theories,” said Fellowship of Reconciliation Executive Director Ariel Gold. “The Tree of Life Synagogue massacre followed incitement by Trump that a caravan of “gang members and “very bad people” were coming to invade the country. We cannot allow Trump and Vance to continue to endanger the lives of people for political gain.
“The claims by Trump are not only baseless but are calculated and racist, designed to stir up his base with irrational fears and paranoia that always has resulted in the murders of Black people,” said FOR Senior Advisor Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler. “Trump and Vance’s pushing of a false narrative has the same intentions and earmarks of the false claims offered in Tulsa, Oklahoma on 1921 that resulted in the destruction of the prominent Black community in that city, or his continued claims against youth in the Central Park jogger case that was entirely debunked. The intention is to galvanize power based upon the panic of White people at the image of being taken over, overrun, and dispossessed by a constant and growing wave of Black and Brown people.”
The Fellowship of Reconciliation, resolute in the knowledge that all people, regardless of skin color, ethnicity, religion, or nationality, are created equally in the image of G-d, calls on houses of worship and people of faith and conscience to gather around Haitian families in their communities in expressions of support, solidarity, and protection.
The United States has a long history of Anti-Black racism being directed at Haitians from US asylum laws being changed during the rise in Haitian immigration in the 1970s and 1980s as Haitians fled the US-backed Duvalier dictatorship.
Rather than scapegoating Haitians or other immigrants, we should be celebrating the contributions they bring, from a unique and delicious Afro-Carribian cuisine to a history that includes historical revolts against enslavement.
