Taking Haiti Response

Much of what I read in Mary Renda's "Taking Haiti" regarding the U.S. occupation of the island in 1915 reminded me of the U.S. response to Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake. Many people criticized the UN and American NGOs for their plans to rebuild Haiti without really involving the Haitian people themselves. Haitians were seen as poor, backwards people being lead by a brutal dictator who needed to be saved by a civilized Western nation like the U.S.

Unfortunately, this white savior narrative is being replicated in many countries similar to Haiti throughout the world. I know from my own studies in political science that the theories and policies surrounding development in the 'developing world' are all posited somewhat on the belief that the West has a duty to "fix" Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East because societies in these parts of the world do not know how to do it themselves. Not only were Haitians denied agency in the rebuilding process following the 2010 earthquake, there was no acknowledgement of the U.S. role in all of the economic and political challenges faced by Haitians. After all, it was the U.S. that occupied Haiti for nearly 20 years; it was the U.S. that installed leaders it felt were best to rule Haiti; and it was the U.S that destroyed Haiti's rice market through NAFTA.

In thinking about the implications of “Taking Haiti” for transnational feminism, I recalled Abu-Lughod’s essay about the tendency for Western liberal feminists to view women in the developing world as their own white savior projects. A prominent example of this is former First Lady Laura Bush promoting the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an effort to free Muslim women from their oppressive religion, symbolized by the veil. Of course, such a narrative ignores how some Muslim women use veiling as a means of resisting U.S. imperialism – similar to the way that black people used the black church to organize during the civil rights movement. If we are to be internationalist in our feminism, we must avoid the impetus toward universalism that regards all women as oppressed, all women as oppressed in the same ways, and all women as seeking liberation in the same ways.