Understanding whiteness part 28: the villain behind the villain

Telling a different story

Writing a counter narrative is difficult. It’s why lawyers get paid good money to argue with each other to convince a room full of people over what actually happened. Historically, the narratives written (and acted out) by white supremacy have proven difficult to undo. But not impossible.

In 1791, after 12 years of consistent fightback, Haiti successfully won a revolution to free itself from French colonial rule. Led by the so-called Black Napoleon, Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Haitian revolution marked the only uprising of enslaved people to form an independent state.

Historically, this is one of the biggest underdog hero stories of any generation. It’s a tale of overcoming the monster where  the victim wins, against the odds, writing a new chapter in the book of white supremacy in which whiteness was not very supreme at all. And yet, the fate of Haiti up until today has been marred by economic struggle and disempowerment. After independence, Haiti was made to pay reparations to France to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in today’s money. Between 1825 and 1947, these payments effectively kept Haiti in a state of poverty, disenabling the country from developing infrastructure and prosperity. It was only in 2016 that France decided to repeal the 1825 indemnity agreement, but nothing has been offered back to Haiti by way of reparation.

Haiti attempted to write its own story, but the wider story being told by white European colonialism had its own ending in sight. White supremacy has always wanted blackness to be in a degraded state, so it makes sense that white colonial powers would find ways of making this happen. Think about all the nations who have sought and won independence from colonial masters but  struggled to establish long-lasting security. All the African countries saddled with debt that prevents them from going forward, while their resources are exploited. It’s a story we’re so used to that many of us don’t question it. Black countries live a life of struggle in the ‘third world’, and everyone in the ‘first world’ lives happily ever after. (It’s worth noting that the phrase ‘third world’ -tiere monde- was coined by a French historian in 1952, describing countries with little influence on the international scene dominated by ‘first world’ countries of the western bloc.)

Plot twist