I’m using Threadreader to paste Jonathan Katz’s text here so it’s more accessible, because this is very useful information to arm yourself with if you choose to argue.
Lot of folks, from the alt-right to @RichLowry, think they’re making a great argument in the president’s defense tonight by noting that Haiti and El Salvador are, in fact, poor. But they’re just revealing their own racism.
Here’s why: In order to do a victory lap around the GDP difference between, say, Norway and Haiti, you have to know nothing about the history of the world.
That includes, especially, knowing nothing real about the history of the United States.You have to first of all understand nothing about the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade.
You have to not understand anything about the systematic theft of African bodies and lives. And you have to not understand how that theft built the wealth we have today in Europe and the US.You’d have to not know that the French colony that became Haiti provided the wealth that fueled the French Empire — and 2/3 of the sugar and ¾ of the coffee that Europe consumed.
You’d have to not know how rich slave traders got off their system of kidnapping, rape, and murderYou’d have to not realize that Haiti was founded in a revolution against that system, and that European countries and the United States punished them for their temerity by refusing to recognize or trade with them for decades.You’d have to not know that Haiti got recognition by agreeing to pay 150 million gold francs to French landowners in compensation for their own freedom.
You’d have to not know that Haiti paid it, and that it took them almost all of the 19th century to do so.You’d then have to not know that Haiti was forced to borrow some money to pay back that ridiculous debt, some of it from banks in the United States.
And you’d have to not know that in 1914 those banks got President Wilson to send the US Marines to empty the Haitian gold reserve. @RichLowry would have to not know about the chaos that ensued, and the 19-year US military occupation of Haiti that followed (at a time when the US was invading and occupying much of Central America and the Caribbean). He and others have to not know about the rest of the 20th century either—the systematic theft and oppression, US support for dictators and coups, the US invasions of Haiti in 1994-95 and 2004 …… the use of the IMF and World Bank to impose new loans and destructive trade policies, including the now-famous rice tariff gutting that Bill Clinton apologized for but had been a policy since Reagan, and on and on … And you’d have to understand nothing about why the US (under George W. Bush) pushed for and paid a quarter of the UN “stabilization mission” that did little but keep Haiti’s presidents from being overthrown and kill 10,000 people by dumping cholera in its rivers. Etc. In short, you’d have to know nothing about WHY Haiti is poor (or El Salvador in kind), and WHY the United States (and Norway) are wealthy.
But far worse than that, you’d have to not even be interested in asking the question.
And that’s where they really tell on themselves …Because what they are showing is that they ASSUME that Haiti is just naturally poor, that it’s an inherent state borne of the corruption of the people there, in all senses of the word.
And let’s just say out loud why that is: It’s because Haitians are black. Racists have needed Haiti to be poor since it was founded. They pushed for its poverty. They have celebrated its poverty. They have tried to profit from its poverty.
They wanted it to be a shithole. And they still do. If Haiti is a shithole, then they can say that black freedom and sovereignty are bad. They can hold it up as proof that white countries—and what’s whiter than Norway—are better, because white people are better.
They wanted that in 1804, and in 1915, and they want it now.So if anyone tonight tries to trap you in a contest of “where would you rather live”—or “what about cholera” or “yeah but isn’t poverty bad?”—ask them what they know about how things got that way.
and yet there is still something commanding in his gaze, and in the tone of his voice.
“Governor Rogers,” he greets. “Oh good. Everyone I want to shout at in one place.”
“You’re him.” Silver’s voice, Rogers thinks once again, is a sound he would be perfectly happy never to hear again.
“I believe you told me to shut up,” he snaps. “Allow me to return the favor. Shut -” (2/)
“You’re him,” Silver repeats, and he can hear the sound of the other man grasping hold of the bars to pull himself up, the chains he is in rattling as he does so. “You’re Thomas Hamilton.”
The man in the shadows steps forward, and Rogers inhales sharply. It is not possible –
“I see James has told you something of me,” Thomas answers, and Rogers can hear his wife’s knitting needles actually cease their clacking for a moment. Everything goes still, and then – (3/)
“I can explain,” Silver starts, and Thomas snorts. He is, Rogers thinks, different, somehow, than he had pictured. There is an edge to Thomas Hamilton – one that Rogers could not have anticipated, and against all odds, he seems to recognize it where Long John Silver patently does not. (4/)
Experience, perhaps – he had had the misfortune of encountering Alfred Hamilton once, and only once, and suddenly he is reminded that Thomas, for all that he had been accounted a good man by those who knew him, is also Alfred’s son. Rogers sits up straighter, gaze snapping toward Silver, suddenly awake and alert and quite completely terrified. “Shut up,” Rogers hisses. “For the love of God -”(5/)
“Shut up,” Rogers hisses. “For the love of God -” “I very much doubt that,” Thomas addresses Silver directly, and somehow – somehow, Rogers knows that he will not be sharing these cells with the ruffian on the other side of the bars for much longer. “Please, though – do tell me why you thought you could abuse and sell the man I love and not have me come for your head.” For the fanfic commentary thing?
ooooh, I am so excited that you’ve chosen this for fic commentary!
I really, really, really love this section. Rogers POV is one that I did NOT expect to have in this fic, but I realized that an outside perspective on Thomas would actually be really useful, because it gives us an idea of what the past ten years has done to Thomas in terms of how he’s perceived by others. It also gives us an idea of how Thomas is going to be seen by people in the next chapter – what it is that Thomas’ cousin Archibald sees when he looks at Thomas, and what Hennessey sees, because the Thomas who has come back from that plantation is not the Thomas that went away and I think it’s important to acknowledge that. He’s angry, here – really, absolutely furious, and I wanted to show everyone what an angry Thomas Hamilton looks like now that we’ve also seen frightened Thomas and joyful Thomas and a host of other Thomases that are equally related to the trauma he’s suffered and his sudden, unexpected removal from that situation.
As to Rogers and Silver and what’s going on with them emotionally – well, for starters, they hate each other. They were never going to do anything else, really – Silver’s a talker and Rogers is raving at ghost!Eleanor, and so I want everyone to imagine here that these two have been snarking at each other for days and driving everyone else, their guards included, absolutely mad. I’d imagine the guards are quite happy to let Thomas in – they’re hoping he can bring sanity or at least take a request to Madi for earplugs!
In all honesty, though, when Thomas reads him the riot act, I think Silver’s just seen the specter of what he was going to do to James and it’s really brought home to him that what he planned was horrifying. It is in no way a mercy – as Thomas tells him, there’s nothing about that plantation that is anything less than hard and soul-crushing and dangerous, and that’s the fate that Silver planned to hand James over to. That’s what Thomas has come through, and this is also Thomas saying to Silver and Rogers too, “I know what you’ve done to my husband. It stops now, if I have to fucking break you to pieces psychologically to make it stop.” Silver clings to denial but ultimately breaks at least a bit. Rogers, though – I think what Thomas says to Silver actually frightens Rogers quite significantly, because he sees in Thomas what he himself could become. This is Rogers’ moment of realizing what England does to men who try to change her even by legal means – what she does even to those with great privilege if they step out of line and it scares the shit out of him. He’s come from a place of thinking like a lot of rich men – that the pirates just made all the wrong choices in life to end up where they are, and Thomas is proof to the contrary. He’s proof that a man can do everything right – everything Rogers himself has done as far as working within the law – and still end up a slave, shoulders no longer straight, hands twitching for work to do, and towering anger that’s strong enough to topple empires included. I’m setting a deliberate contrast in this scene, between Silver who lies to himself regularly and so allows any guilt he feels at his actions to slide away and Rogers who has been screaming apologies to his dead wife and now sees in full just what it is that his enemies have been fighting against without any kind of filter between him and that horrifying realization that he’s been wrong.
Aww, Anon, I would hug you if I could! Thank you so much for the kind words – I’m honored that it’s your favorite fic in the fandom!
As to a sequel – I am very, very open to the idea of a sequel, honestly, because I like where we leave the characters and I have a couple of ideas for where I could take them next. Nothing’s fully formed, but I’ll certainly give it some thought!
2/2
ich both of the people he loved were gone, taken from him by forces
outside of his control, and it occurred to him suddenly and horribly
that James had not been either. – To the Upper Air, for the DVD
commentary!
So – at this moment in the story, Thomas is getting something that’s going to be very, very important – a taste of what it is that Miranda and James have faced. It’s the moment that he realizes what it is to have the people he loves taken from him so very abruptly. It’s also me playing with a question – what happens if it’s not James that’s left to keep going when everything seems lost but Thomas? We’re really kind of exploring who Thomas is as a person, here – how he clings to hope because it’s all he’s got left at this point, and that feels very true to him as a character. I certainly think canon Thomas must have done exactly that, because he got through ten years of absolute hell somehow. There’s something that’s meant to be very forlorn about this scene – it’s Thomas standing outside a ring of people, holding James’ hat as if it might have an answer to a question he’s only just realized he doesn’t know how to answer.
Meg's Mumbles 