“We are here, but our hearts are in Haiti”: temporal and racialized emotive existences of ethnically identified Haitian Americans

ABSTRACT

This study argues that three racialized emotive existences – nostalgia, fear, and hope – mark ethnically identified Haitian Americans’ temporal and cultural narratives of Haiti. First, nostalgia highlights Haiti’s significance as the first independent Black nation in the Western Hemisphere and the pride it evokes for Haitian Americans who grew up in a society that shunned them. Second, fear emphasizes the growing concern for safety as political instability, economic deprivation, and natural catastrophes undermine Haiti. Fear and anxiety prompt the need for physical safety and distance, while Haitian Americans also desire the emotional security of their parents’ presence in response. Finally, Haitian Americans anticipate a future that permits Haiti’s history and beauty to be the focal point. Much of this focus is on their children, but hope draws Haitian Americans back to Haiti. The findings suggest that racialized emotive existences frame Haitian Americans’ (dis)connection and reveal tenuous ties to Haiti. This study demonstrates how regimes of power, anti-Blackness, and subjectivity shape discourses about the home country.

KEYWORDS:

• Haiti
• second generation
• homeland
• diaspora
• racialized emotions
• racial affect

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback, my colleagues Prisca Gayles, Lydia Huerta Moreno, and Guadalupe Escobar for their insight in shaping the framework of the manuscript, as well as Carlo Handy Charles, Karen Okigbo, and Dialika Sall for reading earlier drafts. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-1037525. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ‘Haitian American’ refers to the children of Haitian immigrants, including the U.S.-born and the 1.5. generation, born abroad and arrived in the U.S. by the age of 12 (Kim 2004).

2. Racial and ethnic groups do not experience or feel emotions similarly but rather move along an emotional spectrum that is shaped by their collective experiences, marred by white supremacy and racism.

3. Performed during the film Royal Wedding (1951), the song and dance number present a racial caricature of the Caribbean.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Division of Social and Economic Sciences [DGE-103752].