This semester at Virginia Tech, I am in a class that has been studying the history of the Caribbean. The history of this group of islands is incredibly complex. From the moment Europeans discovered the “New World,” the Caribbean has been wrought by hegemony and the capitalistic motivations of imperial powers. Typically regarded as merely a vacationing destination, this narrow, western characterization of the Caribbean falls miserably short of the true nature of the region. Our final assignment in Dr. Hidalgo’s “History of the Caribbean” class is to create a piece of public history, in order to display an authentic segment of the rich history that exists in the Caribbean.
With all that being said, this blog post is about "whiteness" and its affect on western decision making, specifically during the United States’ occupation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. By “whiteness,” I mean a socially constructed phenomenon that has been established as the racial standard in the Western World. Race is a constantly evolving characteristic of class and social stratification. The effects encompass a large spectrum that range from the justification of prejudice, to the definition of beauty. The concept of race is fabricated and has no objective reality; yet it affects almost every part of the world we inhabit. Whiteness has been glorified as the archetype of humanity, as well as the subject of pseudo-scientific research and the eugenics movement. The point I am trying to get across it this: Whiteness, insofar as my research concerns, is far more than skin color, it is shorthand for something much larger.
“Whiteness” permeates the island of Hispaniola. White privilege existed on Hispaniola far before the United States occupied the island in the early 20th century. In fact, racial polarization began on Hispaniola the moment the first Europeans stepped foot on the island during Columbus’ famous voyage in 1492. However, the U.S. occupations of Haiti in 1915 and the Dominican Republic in 1916 solidified the racial identities of the two nations as well as racial hierarchies within each country.
Whiteness was largely the determining factor for how the United States handled the occupation of each country. It affected how U.S. troops viewed and treated the people, the types of public works undertaken, and he ways each country was governed. A comparison of the U.S. invasions of Haiti and of the Dominican Republic uncovers two differing American objectives predicated upon whiteness. In Haiti, the United States saw a black nation with a
history seeped in slavery and revolution. Consequently, the United States wanted to create a docile, subservient, black nation. In the Dominican Republic however, the United States identified a nation with a strong desire for development; a nation that could be made white. While Americans did not view Dominicans as white, they did see the possibility of ‘whitening’ the country. Through the occupation of the Dominican Republic, the United States wanted to create a more advanced, pseudo-white nation, capable of self-government and modernization. The Dominican Republic could not be white, but it was far closer to whiteness than Haiti.
This distinction
between Haiti and the Dominican Republic can help explain U.S. marines’ actions after the invasions. Many of the marines hailed from a Jim Crow South ,noted for lynching African Americans. In Haiti, there was an incredible amount of unnecessary bloodshed. Newspaper headlines describing the state of the Haitian occupation exclaimed “slaughter,” and “shameful abuse of power.” On October 15, 1920, The New York Times published the writings of “Henry A. Franck, the noted traveler and authority on the West Indies” and his report of:
“How American marines, largely made up of and officered by Southerners, opened fire with machine guns from airplanes upon defenseless Haitian villages, killing men, women and children in the open marketplaces; how natives were slain for sport by a hoodlum element among these same Southerners…"
Marines in the Dominican Republic did carry out thoughtless acts of violence against Dominican civilians, although not to the extent they did in Haiti. Moreover, unlike in Haiti, the United States went to great lengths to cover up or deny the violence when possible. When confirmed cases of injustice or maltreatment of nationals became public, the Military Government heavily punished the perpetrators. “Black” Haitians could be lynched with impunity, while “pseudo-white” Dominicans, connected to international media could not.
The education systems implemented by the occupation forces mirrored the segregationist schooling in the US. White Americans applauded Booker T. Washington for championing industrial education for African Americans. Liberal arts education would be reserved for whites. Similar policies were followed on the island.
In Haiti, the education system was eventually remodeled in 1922, seven years after the initial invasion. The Americans emphasized vocational and agricultural education, while Liberal arts programs were eliminated. Gendarmerie Commandant Butler summed up the ambition of the U.S. in Haiti when he said the goal was to “make Haiti a first class black man’s country.”
The United States followed a very different plan for the Dominican Republic. There, the military government quickly undertook a plan to overhaul schooling industrial education took a back seat to the main objective, of eliminating illiteracy. In the eyes of American officials, the possibility of the Dominicans becoming more “white” gave them privilege to legitimate education. Haitians, mired in their blackness, were expected to simply develop economic skills.
Many other aspects of the United States occupations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, reveal the influence of whiteness, the perpetuation of whiteness and the western concept of race, as well as played -and one might argue continued to play- a crucial role in informing western decision-making and international policies. I am exploring many of these aspects in my senior capstone research paper. Please, if you have any input, questions, thoughts, or ideas, post them in the comments section. It may really help me as I enter the final stretches of completing my paper. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this post,
Merry Christmas and God Bless,
John Carr
Bibliography
Calder, Bruce J. The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic During the U.S. Occupation of 1916-1924. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984.
Calder, Bruce J.. “Some Aspects of the United States Occupation of the Dominican Republic 1916-1924.” PHD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1974.
"LAYS HAITI KILLINGS TO SOUTHERN MEN." New York Times, October 15, 1920.
Painter, Nell Irvin. The History of White People. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
Renda, Mary A. Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
SCHMIDT, HANS R., JR.. THE UNITED STATES OCCUPATION OF HAITI: 1915-1934. Ph.D. diss., Rutgers The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick, 1989.
Welles, Sumner. Naboth's Vineyard The Dominican Republic 1844-1924. Vol. II. New York, New York: New York Payson & Clark Ltd, 1928.
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