Thomas Craemer first traveled to Haiti in the aftermath of the country\u2019s devastating 2010 earthquake, as part of an aid group. Most of what he knew about the country came from the US media, which emphasized familiar themes: poverty, corruption, and violence.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Craemer<\/a>, who is an associate professor in UConn\u2019s School of Public Policy (SPP)<\/a>, expected to find the nation in a state of complete disrepair, with its citizens completely dependent on foreign aid to help rebuild from the chaos.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, what he found was \u201ca beehive of activity,\u201d filled with \u201cwell-dressed, active people walking the streets and going about their business.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cObviously,\u201d he says, \u201cpeople were working and doing business and building houses without any foreign aid. Neighborhoods were pulling together and rebuilding. And I saw this nowhere in the news coverage I had read. The coverage I had read did not prepare me for what I saw in Haiti.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He realized quickly that life in Haiti \u2013 even after a natural disaster \u2013 didn\u2019t align with the US media portrayal of rampant violence and squalor. People were actively organized in rebuilding their own communities, and the cities bustled with vibrant informal economic, social, and political activity.\u00a0<\/p>\n As he returned to Haiti many times over the next few years (with UConn students in tow), Craemer got curious about how US news coverage had gotten so far off course. Weren\u2019t the American journalists writing about Haiti walking the same streets he was? Couldn\u2019t they see the political complexity playing out in front of them?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Through the media\u2019s lens, Craemer noticed, the very same action \u2013 burning tires, for instance \u2013 could be interpreted as a bold, nonviolent protest when undertaken by French demonstrators in Paris, and as a symbol of unchecked violence when undertaken by Haitian demonstrators in Port-au-Prince.\u00a0<\/p>\n This year, Craemer has completed a decade-long research project investigating the stereotypical narratives embedded in US media coverage of Haiti. The 2010 earthquake provided an interesting case study for his work:<\/p>\n \u201cAn earthquake is a random event \u2014 it has no relevance to ethnic or racial stereotypes,\u201d Craemer says. \u201cSo, I was looking whether the coverage of the earthquake was biased in terms of these stereotypes, and I found out that yes, it was quite significantly biased.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Craemer analyzed American news coverage (newspapers, TV, and radio) spanning six years, looking for six stereotypes about Haitians: \u201cpoverty\u201d; \u201clack of intelligence\u201d; \u201claziness\u201d; \u201cbeing unfit for self-government\u201d; \u201ccriminality\u201d; and \u201cviolence.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, he found, a baseline of 66% of references to Haiti in all American news media conformed to these stereotypes; in newspapers, where the bias was most pronounced, the figure was 76%. The newspaper bias ratio increased to roughly 80% in the periods following the assassination of President Jovenel Mo\u00efse in 2021 and a period of heightened gang violence in 2022-2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n A Thorny History<\/p>\n To understand Haiti\u2019s place in present-day American consciousness, turn back a couple centuries: to the Haitian Revolution in 1791-1804. For scholars like Craemer, the Haitian Revolution represents a sea change in global politics \u2013 one whose impacts have been historically understudied.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Craemer\u2019s doctoral research focused on implicit and explicit racial biases in the United States, and how these biases influence people\u2019s opinions on race-related policies such as affirmative action and reparations. During this research, he found that all roads were leading him back to the Haitian Revolution.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was surprised that I knew so little about it and that it\u2019s so under-emphasized, when it is really an earth-shattering event,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was a turning point in the system of transatlantic slavery, which relied on false stereotypes of Black workers as docile, simple-minded, and lazy. Yet in Haiti, over the course of a thirteen-year struggle, this supposedly inferior group demonstrated their political consciousness and military might. This struggle emancipated the nation (and later, arguably, the world) from slavery, and left Haitians vigilant defenders of their hard-won freedom ever since. (For more information on this, Craemer recommends Jean Casimir\u2019s 2020 book The Haitians: A Decolonial History<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n I was surprised that I knew so little about [the Haitian Revolution] and that it\u2019s so under-emphasized, when it is really an earth-shattering event.<\/p>\n The Haitian Revolution exposed the previous stereotypes about Black people as the lies they were.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Haitians, as newly liberated captives, defeated the three colonial world empires of the day: the French, the Spanish, and the British,\u201d Craemer says. \u201cAnd they were successful. They defeated Napoleon 10 years before any European power matched that feat, and they maintained their independence with little means. They were clearly superior, there\u2019s no question. And the only way to deal with this fact was to write them out of history.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The victory of the newly self-emancipated Haitians caused the slaveholding Western world to scramble. In order to discount the significance of the Haitian Revolution, they had to forcefully revive the stereotypes of Black people as \u201cincompetent\u201d and \u201cunfit for self-government,\u201d and reinterpret Haitian success as inherent \u201cBlack violence\u201d and inherent \u201cBlack criminality.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n