The Racist Sunglasses Theory of Michel-Rolph Trouillot
Did colonial white people in French Haiti, on the eve of the Haitian Revolution in 1789, wear special eyewear that obscured the potential for independent action of colonial slaves? Did this eyewear, worn exclusively by whites, blind the wearer to the possibility that slaves could participate in either malevolent or benevolent conduct? Was this eyewear so powerful that, when worn, it blinded the wearer to the potential that a hand of labor – pressed to the sugar cane or the coffee plant- could ever become a hand of aggressive violence? According to Michel-Rolph Trouillot, the answer to all of these questions is a resounding “yes.” A tower of theory still stands tall in Haitian historical scholarship, but I, a skeptical observer, declare The Theory of Racist Blindness to be The Racist Sunglasses Theory. To Michel-Rolph Trouillot, in Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995), French colonial whites were self-deluded into a false sense of security, believing the overwhelming majority of Haiti’s colonial population – enslaved blacks- could never take independent action, least of all coordinated revolution. The crux of Trouillot’s argument, in the opening of Chapter 3, is supported by a handful of quotations (whose authenticity is not in doubt) revealing an innocent belief of selected whites that Haiti’s slaves were too peaceful to rebel. From these selective quotations, a tower of theory is hastily constructed: self-emancipation of slaves was “unthinkable” to whites. The tower rests on a shaky foundation: could these selective excerpts (among them the thoughts of the French colonial La Barre) have revealed an isolated innocence or foolishness of particular whites, whose published thoughts may have been unrepresentative of general white opinion? No alternative interpretations are pursued. To Trouillot, whites were simply wearing racist sunglasses. The tower of Trouillot’s theory is embellished as the chapter proceeds. In defiance of evidence, with weak support, Trouillot presumes to know the minds of colonial whites ( every last one of them). The African, in the imagined mind of the colonial white, could never “envision freedom.” If Michel-Rolph Trouillot had only opened Code Des Colons De Saint Domingue, the record of laws regulating French colonial Haiti (from its founding to the year 1789), this tower of nonsense would have collapsed before it could reach even higher into the skies of over-reaching presumption. The colonial white administration never wore sunglasses that magically obscured the potential of slave rebellion: slave movement was regulated, slave ownership was prescribed, and precautions were routinely taken to limit the independence of slaves. Was slave rebellion “unthinkable” to the royal French government when, in June of 1736, masters of slaves were proscribed from freeing their human property without the written permission of the colonial governor? Was slave rebellion “unthinkable” when the Council of Cap Francois, in 1738, forbade the possession of chemical substances, under penalty of death, in the hands of slaves? Was independent action of colonial slaves “unthinkable” in 1778, when a royal ordinance forbade the transportation of slaves in France without strict prior registration of these individuals? It’s an interesting touch of Michel-Rolph Trouillot, as with so many Haiti scholars, to reduce independent forces to a blur of “white” colonial power. Rarely does he distinguish between laws of the King, those regulations of colonial assemblies, and the conduct of landless whites of lesser influence. Cracks in the Tower of Trouillot The white man simply did not understand the aspirations of the African slave for freedom. This is the conceit of Trouillot, as developed in the section “Prelude to the News: The Failure of Categories.” So fervent is the author to underline the slave-tolerant hypocrisies of Western liberals (think:Thomas Jefferson), so avid is he to deplore the complacency of 18th century Europeans in the face of slavery, so righteous is he to indicate the racialist vocabulary in which the pens of these men were steeped, that Trouillot conveniently neglects the voice of French Haiti’s most prominent free man of color, Julien Raymond. This is a convenient omission for Trouillot. When the published words of this non-white slavemaster are disclosed, it appears that even free people of color resisted slave emancipation with the same ferocity of reaction and intolerance as their white counterparts. Raymond speaks loudly in Chapter 2 of The Devil Lives in Haiti, and I here reproduce some of his most memorable defenses of the slave system that had made him as rich as any white colonial of Saint Domingue. This free man of color abhorred the slave insurrection unfolding before his eyes, and he addressed the rebel slaves in the following terms: The submission to laws, and the good order which must result from it, are the only things that the nation demands to unite you to the benefits that the nation is preparing. Return promptly to good order, lost men, and wait in respectful silence for the laws which must regenerate you. If only Michel-Rolph Trouillot had opened the published proclamation of Raymond, the author of Silencing The Past would have discovered the self-deluded elitism of this colored prince of slaveholding: How many of you would not be happier than them? You, situated under a sky forever pure; You, having never to suffer the rigors of winter, with all the miseries and needs that accompany it; You, lastly, who cultivate with half the trouble a land that produces for you a hundred times what they cultivate [in France]. If self-delusion is the theme of Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s tower of theory, the self-delusion of free people of color, such as Julien Raymond, enjoys convenient inattention. The Rhetorical Twister Game of Trouillot If a white man referred in a figurative sense to colonial oppression as “slavery,” such as Diderot did when he celebrated the American rebellion against King George III, this means he was blind to the racialized slavery of the European empires. If the French national anthem, The Marseillaise, referred to Old Regime France as a time of figurative slavery, this also means Europeans could not tell the difference between the slavery
Selective Memory, Selective Injury, Selective Justice:
The Haitian Revolution Timeline at Brown University From the citadel of academic prestige, installed on the east side of Providence, Rhode Island, the Africana Studies Department of Brown University has reproduced the narrative of convenience prevailing among historians of Haiti. The narrative enshrined in the online timeline is the citadel of an academic orthodoxy whose shake-up is long overdue. This post will illuminate the one-sided moral outrage of historians of revolutionary Haiti, the omission of historical witnesses whose reports challenge the myth of Haitian noble revenge, and the suppression of the full picture of non-white colonial slaveholding prior to 1791. The sweep of colonial and revolutionary Haitian history is the subject of Kona Shen’s online timeline, which relies at times on primary documents (See 1750s) and heavily on secondary narratives such as those of Carolyn Fick (see September, 1791). Though the ostensible purpose of the project is the reconstruction of events and movements leading to Haitian independence in 1805, the true agenda is revealed in the selectivity of sources and the privileging of black martyrdom to the suppression of black opportunity and complicity in the colonial order. The narrative of convenience, attacked by myself in The Devil Lives in Haiti, enjoys perfect dignity in the citadel of academic myth. The blood of massacre appears faded and obscure when viewed from a safe distance. The aversion of academic historians to the documentary witnesses of the 1790s sustains the distance that keeps the narrative of convenience alive. Absent from Shen’s timeline are the first-person accounts of Michel-Etienne Descourtilz (1795) and Bryan Edwards (1802), both of whom speak with the volume they deserve in Chapter 3 of The Devil Lives in Haiti. The massacre of children and the weaponization of rape and mutilation, documented abundantly in the 1790s, defeat the myth of noble revenge to which Shen and her academic supporters are still attached. Non-white slaveholding in colonial Haiti is recognized by Shen in a brief introduction to “French Rule and Tensions in the Colony: 1750-1784.” This inconvenient subject is soon buried in a selective narrative of the French colonial order. The truth of non-white slaveholding in fact deserves volumes instead of passing recognition. Absent from the timeline are the names of Julien Raymond, Jean-Baptiste Mongol, Marthe Guillaume, and Depas-Medina. These are among thousands of colonial, free people of color, featured at length in Chapter 2 of my work, whose slaveholdings rivalled the most prosperous whites, and whose wealth humiliated the petty ambitions of landless colonial whites. The standard of moral outrage in Kona Shen’s timeline of history is simple to decipher: atrocities against those of color are deplorable. The same atrocities against whites are the necessary costs of a revolution in pursuit of noble revenge. The martyrdom of Ferrand de Baudière, a white judge who paid with his life for the advancement of racial equality, receives anonymous, fleeting, pathetic recognition in the opening segment of the timeline (1750-1789). The massacre of ex-slave “noncombatants” in January of 1792, however, is reported in gruesome detail. The “ruthless violence” of Rochambeau, in November of 1802, again merits an expansive condemnation, relying on the secondary narrative of Carolyn Fick. The only martyrs honored by Shen, whose agenda enjoys the implicit support of Brown University, are those martyrs whose blood feeds the narrative of convenience. If a double standard prevails in academic interpretations of the Haitian Revolution, no leader enjoys the benefits of this standard more than Jean-Jacques Dessalines. When the documented violence of this successor to Toussaint Louverture, a successor whose atrocity is too baldly documented for even the most ardent apologist to ignore, it is bathed in a mitigation and exoneration which Dessalines is uniquely privileged to enjoy. Dessalines’ massacre of dissident revolutionary leaders in January of 1803 is acknowledged, to the frustration of Shen’s pursuit of the narrative of convenience. Dessalines’ extraordinary privilege in the eyes of academic historians is revealed in the justification that follows the description: those dissidents, in the secondary interpretation of Carolyn Fick, were enemies of liberty. No attempt is made to investigate the truth of this claim, either by competing descriptions of the massacre or by competing historical accounts (however rare they may be). If Dessalines did it, then he must have had a good reason. For those still attached to the image of Jean-Jacques Dessalines as a noble avenger, I encourage all readers to view “The Vault” page of this website. I will be discussing a fascinating diplomatic dispatch, whose English translation is long overdue, which puts the myth of noble revenge into the same inglorious resting place reserved for the victims of Dessalines’ persecutions.
The Limits of Crisis Journalism and the Need for History
The Devil Lives in Haiti salutes the bravery of reporter Romeo Langlois and the Haitian police officers featured in this report. The Haitian state of this year is skeletal in its strength and scope, and this report proves the state a feeble enemy of the unofficial government of gang coalitions engulfing the nation. The central topics of this broadcast, typical of the genre, are the paralyzing effects of gang violence on desperately needed economic activity, the imminent deployment of Kenyan police, and the endemic corruption of the Haitian state. The historical dimensions of the Haitian crisis are precisely where the limitations of crisis journalism are on display. A multilateral neglect of public health, education, and industrialization must be faced and reckoned with before a productive conversation of reform and change may begin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEx40JWE6ZA&t=1842s Le Diable vit en Haïti salue le courage du journaliste Roméo Langlois et des policiers haïtiens présentés dans ce reportage. L’État haïtien de cette année est squelettique dans sa force et sa portée, et ce rapport prouve que l’État est un faible ennemi du gouvernement non officiel des coalitions de gangs qui engloutissent le pays. Les thèmes centraux de cette émission, typique du genre, sont les effets paralysants de la violence des gangs sur une activité économique désespérément nécessaire, le déploiement imminent de la police kenyane et la corruption endémique de l’État haïtien.C’est précisément dans les dimensions historiques de la crise haïtienne que se manifestent les limites du journalisme de crise. Il faut faire face à une négligence multilatérale de la santé publique, de l’éducation et de l’industrialisation avant qu’un dialogue productif de réforme et de changement puisse commencer.