Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper published on the Internet
Biden and the Haitian-Africans: different strokes for different folks?
By Chido Nwangwu
“Our security, our prosperity and our very freedoms are interconnected, in my view as never before,” were the lofty words he spoke as factual affirmations of our world.
While President Joe Biden spoke so eloquently, on Tuesday September 21, 2021 on the grand and powerful stage at the United Nations General Assembly, meeting in New York, those “horrific” videos were awash across the social media. Especially, too, the powerful picture by photographer Paul Ratje which showed a border agent on horseback rough-handling and grabbing one of the migrants on Sunday September 19, 2021.
Those images had gone viral, globally. They compelled to set a context. There and immediately, the videos and photographs countered President Biden’s important vision — whereby, at best, he delivered a made-for-diplomacy, saccharine speech; and worse, he merely engaged in another routine delivery of target audience-tested verbosity and humanitarian philosophies that meant little “on ground”
Sadly, the more I watched the video and pictures of the handling of distrust and desperate migrants, mostly Haitians at the Texas’ Del Rio border, President Biden’s very well-crafted first speech at this United Nations encountered very difficult contrasts for me and millions of other Americans.
Watching the dedicated public servant, Biden, who I recently characterized in my USAfricaonline.com and ThisDay weekly columns as “ a decent man” speak and not have the gumption at his UN speech, the will and the empathy to say to those mostly Haitian Africans who had travelled and risked everything through the valleys and rivers and roads for a very long time, and set foot inside America, against all odds, that you deserve well-known American empathy and have earned the initial privilege of being under the protection and care of these United States… No such words of embrace and succor from Biden.
Which leads me to the very important question: if as President Biden said on September 21 that “Our security, our prosperity and our very freedoms are interconnected”, are the those mostly Haitian-Africans [as I prefer to identify most of them] part of that global garment of our interconnectedness?
Or, pray, are those the forsaken children of a lesser God?
The truth remains that the images, pictures and videos of the border guards’ treatment of those Haitian-Africans we’ve seen the past 100 hours on American television news are demeaning, inhumane and a disgrace to the expectations of millions of people around the world.
Why should any agency of the United States government insist on hurriedly flying [deporting] these Haitian Africans back to the theatre of their agony and impoverishment [Haiti] — even while they have reached “heaven’s gates”? While the Afghanis who are still in their own country are hurriedly — however inadequately implemented — flown to the U.S and other countries!
As an analyst with 30 years professional experience on public policy, security, diplomacy and business interests of Africans and Americans and Africans [USAfrica] who wrote and voted against the hideous and giddy instinct for racialist divisiveness, mendacity and howling falsehoods, the perennial crudities and unpresidential crassness of Biden’s Republican predecessor Donald J. Trump, I am surprised at Biden’s insensitive and evidently inadequate handling of the issue regarding Haiti.
Sure, I do know that Haiti is not America’s 51st State!
The most blunt condemnation has come from the U.S special envoy to Haiti who resigned on Thursday September 23. That’s only two months after his appointment by Biden.
“I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti,” Daniel Foote wrote in his letter to the U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Foote stated that Haiti is a place where US diplomats “are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life.”
“Mired in poverty, hostage to the terror,” the country’s feeble and weak infrastructure “simply cannot support the forced infusion of thousands of returned migrants lacking food, shelter, and money without additional, avoidable human tragedy…. More refugees will fuel further desperation and crime.”
The unavoidable question about different strokes for different folks, necessarily arise. And, it has arisen. This September 2021 inhumane mishandling of the mostly migrants from Haiti by the Biden White House and the State of Texas will reverberate and follow the legacy questions regarding the Biden and Texas Governor Abbott for years and decades to come. Especially, more so for the man who was Vice President to the first African-American President of the United States, Barack Obama.
Although, Biden has done well regarding the African-American presence in the current U.S government, it needs be said without mincing words, he has failed millions of African-Americans who understand the place of Haiti in global African history. Particularly, their connection and shared heritage with the 38 million Igbo of southeastern Nigeria.
Biden has disappointed the progressives and the demographics that I’ll characterize as “the other pro-Life” Americans.
CBS anchor Gayle King, Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin (both of ABC’s The View, and a few Black folks are speaking up, clearly and strongly, in the dominant media.
Somehow, the civil rights folks who should be agitating and demanding better by going to the border in Texas, are not there; at least, yet…
U.S border agents on horseback were using whips and aggressive horses on Haitian migrants who are simply seeking a better life from their earthquakes shattered island country, and all manner of violence and starvation due to a terribly poor economy. Only a few months ago, the Haiti president was brutally murdered. They beckoned on the President, a liberal Democrat, to come to their immediate help.
Only some modest support and assistance were given to Haitians.
Clearly, it is the prerogative of any President of the United States or any other country to determine his or her priorities and choices. Yet, I do believe, contextually and realistically, that What is good for the Afghan goose should be good enough for the Haitian gander!
*Dr. Chido Nwangwu, author of the forthcoming book, MLK, Mandela & Achebe: Power, Leadership and Identity, serves as Founder & Publisher of the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet, USAfricaonline.com, and established USAfrica in 1992 in Houston. He is recipient of several public policy and journalism excellence honors, civic engagement and community empowerment awards and has appeared as an analyst on CNN and SKYnews. He served as an adviser on Africa business to Houston’s former Mayor Lee Brown. @Chido247
