As Hurricanes Irma, Jose, and Maria ripped through the Caribbean in recent weeks, U.S. media coverage and responses to it made it clear that many mainland dwellers had little or no familiarity with the many island nations whose people are our neighbors—and in some cases, our fellow citizens.
This is not to say that there has been no support for the islands from folks who live on the mainland. Those with no Caribbean ancestry or family members have shared their memories of vacationing at one or more island venues in the past, with hopes that the beaches and hotels they remember so fondly will be spared and up and running again soon. The most irksome coverage was the thousands of reports that focused on what part of the U.S. mainland was now at risk, centered on Florida and other parts of the East Coast in the future path of these storms.
Some news reports openly hoped that these violent storms would be slowed down and weakened if they made a slight turn to sweep over land masses that had mountains, which would spare the U.S. mainland much of the looming destruction. But those land masses are inhabited by people whose job is not to provide a buffer against mainland damage. And we’re talking about a mainland that can better afford to rebuild than the nations facing being swept away by sea, wind, and rain.
I teach a college course about the Caribbean. Each semester I introduce it with this statement: “From the perspective of the average resident on the U.S. mainland, the Caribbean is the place that hurricanes pass over on their way to Florida, or a glossy advertisement for Carnival Cruises touting pristine beaches and fun in the sun.” With that said, I pass out blank outline maps of the Caribbean basin and ask students to fill in as many names as they can.
In a class of about 30 students, one-third of whom have family ties to the Caribbean, few can identify more than four islands or basin nations, and I frequently have students who can identify none (not even the bottom half of Florida, located in the upper left hand corner of the map). Click on the link above, try it yourself, and check out your results below.
How did you do?
I am happy to report that by the end of the semester, my students know the difference between Barbuda and Barbados, and that Dominica is not the same as the Dominican Republic. They also know that Dominica is the home of the Kalinago people, descendants of the original indigenous inhabitants.
They learn history and are also able to discuss contemporary Caribbean politics and issues. Part of the problem is that geography as a specific stand-alone subject is no longer taught to most of our schoolchildren, along with the fact that “history” as a grade school subject gives short shrift to the Caribbean (other than “Christopher Columbus discovered it”).
I have had high hopes that the current fame and media coverage of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway show and cast album of Hamilton would also become a teaching tool to highlight some of the historical interconnections between the islands and the U.S. mainland. Miranda is now our nation’s most high-profile Puerto Rican, along with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, both of them born in New York City of Puerto Rican parents. Neither of them are “immigrants,” since Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens —which has to be pointed out quite frequently. Nevertheless, newscasters skipped the Caribbean when talking about when Irma was due to hit the U.S. People sent them angry tweets, pointing out that Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are part of the U.S.
Alexander Hamilton, a founding father of the United States, was an immigrant. Not only was he born on Nevis and raised in St. Croix, his travel to the U.S. was enabled by the local notoriety he received after penning an article about a hurricane.
For the several hundred years before hurricanes in North American waters were named after women and then men as well, they were often labeled by the name of the saint’s day on which they fell or just called, monotonously, “The Great Hurricane” of a specified year. There was “Hurricane Santa Ana” in 1825 for example, “San Felipe” the first and “San Felipe” the second in 1876 and 1928. And there was “The Hurricane of 1768” that destroyed some 4,000 houses in Havana and killed a thousand people.
But Hurricane Maria, which was closing in on the islands of the Caribbean Tuesday morning, inevitably brings to mind a storm which has acquired a truly unique nickname: “The Alexander Hamilton Hurricane of 1772,” as Bahamian meteorologist and historian Wayne Neely called it in his book “The Greatest and Deadliest Hurricanes of the Caribbean and the Americas.” It barreled through the Leeward Islands of St. Thomas, Puerto Rico and St. Croix on Aug. 31, 1772, described in a local paper as “the most dreadful Hurricane known in the memory of man … the whole frame of nature seemed unhinged and tottering to its fall … terrifying even the just, for who could stand undisturbed amid the ruins of a falling world …”
It blew Hamilton to America’s shores, figuratively speaking, and altered history. The experience merited a soulful song in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical:
When I was seventeen,” it goes, “a hurricane destroyed my town.
I didn’t drown
I couldn’t seem to die
I wrote my way out
A discussion of Alexander Hamilton is useful at a time when immigrants and immigration are on our political agenda as loud, hate-filled right-wing voices, egged on by the nation’s xenophobe-in-chief, are clamoring to lock the doors and build a wall to keep out (or throw out) those brown people who taint the whiteness of America.
Alexander Hamilton is also a good way to spark discussion around issues of “race” and how it is constructed here, since there are historians who have speculated that his mother was of mixed African and European ancestry. This perspective is still taught as part of his legacy in the Caribbean, though stifled here—for obvious reasons. Whether he was or wasn’t is not the point: his connection to a colonial America, which built much of its merchant wealth in the North on slave and goods trading with the Caribbean, is an important part of our history. I discussed that history in “Uncomfortable truths: The role of slavery and the slave trade in building northern wealth.”
As Hamilton was propelled into the rebellion against England and King George, which would turn colonies into a nation, there were Caribbean connections in that revolution that I can’t remember being taught about in school. I learned about Prussians and the French, but never about Haitians coming here to fight.
Savannah, Georgia: Memorial Statues of Haitians who fought in the American Revolution
Here’s more on the little-known history:
In October 1779, a force of more than 500 Haitian free blacks joined American colonists and French troops in an unsuccessful push to drive the British from Savannah in coastal Georgia. More than 300 allied soldiers were gunned down charging British fortifications Oct. 9, making the siege the second-most lopsided British victory of the war after Bunker Hill. Though not well known in the U.S., Haiti's role in the American Revolution is a point of national pride for Haitians. After returning home from the war, Haitian veterans soon led their own rebellion that won Haiti's independence from France in 1804.
When we discuss the history of the enslavement period in the U.S. and the triangle trade, we recognize that in the early period of the trade, most enslaved Africans were not brought to the U.S. directly from West Africa. A majority were purchased in the Caribbean, where they had been put in “seasoning camps” to be brutally taught to work under the yoke. It was only later that the internal or domestic slave trade involved breeding slaves here for sale to other parts of the U.S., developed as a result of the British cutting off the trade.
We also do not learn of the reverse “out-migration” of freed slaves in the U.S. sent to the Caribbean, like the Samaná Americans, who are African Americans in the Dominican Republic.
The Samaná Americans (Americanos de Samaná) are descendants of African American freed people who, beginning in 1824, immigrated to the Samaná Peninsula in Hispaniola—then under Haitian administration—benefiting from the favorable pro-African immigration policy of president Jean Pierre Boyer. They constitute the most sizable group of native English speakers in the Dominican Republic. Aware of its distinctive heritage, the community, whose singular culture distinguishes them from the rest of Dominicans, refers to itself as Samaná Americans, and is referred to by fellow Dominicans as "los americanos de Samaná." Over 80 percent of Samaná's population is of African American descent. It is estimated that there are over one half million Dominicans who are descendants of the African-American settlers. Eight thousand speak the English of their ancestors.
These African Americans included ship-builders, traders, educators. They traded across the Caribbean and to the US in their own boats and maintained ties in the US to sell their products.
Here in the U.S., there is also a current lack of clarity about who “Caribbean-Americans” are. Terms like “West Indian,” “Latino,” and “Hispanic” obfuscate the situation with the assumption that nationality infers race. We hear “West Indian” and we think “black.” We hear Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and we think “not black.” We hear Haitian and black is a given, but not when we hear Dominican-American, though both Haitians and Dominican Americans are from the same island.
This is further confused by how Caribbean-Americans identify themselves. Many people who identify as Puerto Rican or Jamaican here in the U.S. were born here, though their cultural roots may be from one of the islands. In other cases, the general population here simply assumes that if they see certain skin colors and hair textures that these folks are African-American, which obliterates cultural, national, and ethnic identity. The situation becomes more complex because of the deeply embedded racism in the U.S. (not to imply that there is no racism and racial stratification in the Caribbean). Many Caribbean-Americans reject vociferously the “African-American” or “Afro-Caribbean” designation, preferring to be simply Hispanic or Latino, no matter their ancestry or phenotype.
Before the 2010 U.S. census took place there was a concerted effort by Caribbean-American groups to change the way data was collected. That movement was called Carib ID 2010, and the effort continues in advance of the upcoming 2020 census.
Currently we do have some numbers collected by the U.S. Census bureau that give us an idea of how many people who identify themselves as Caribbean live here. Listed under “West Indian” are those who are classed as black in the census (close to 3 million). The others fall under Hispanic: just tease out Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican (about 9 million) from Mexican when you look at the numbers.
These data make it clear that a substantial chunk of Americans have Caribbean roots, which is something that those of us who are looking to boot Republicans out of office in upcoming elections should pay attention to. The recent devastation of Caribbean islands by hurricanes is not an “outside” or “foreign” issue. Currently there are about 5 million Puerto Ricans in the mainland U.S., far more than the 3.5 million on the island, and about 20,000 people from the U.S. Virgin Islands live here as well.
Caribbean Americans are paying close attention to the news (or lack of it) during this time of woe. Though Donald Trump tweeted out his (insincere) support, it was Gov. Andrew Cuomo from New York who mobilized instant aid from New York to St Thomas.
It is too early to say what impact the disasters will have on a larger shift in population from the islands to the mainland, as people have been steadily moving from Puerto Rico to Florida in recent years as the island’s becomes more depressed. My guess is there will be an uptick. It may also decrease the number of mainland Puerto Ricans and Virgin Islanders who decide to “move back home” when they retire. So many Puerto Ricans I know have always dreamed of retiring to a little casita on the island after putting in decades of work here. I know plenty who have done it, only to see all their life savings wiped out in a gust of wind and rain.
I will be waiting to see what Congress does in terms of allocation of rebuilding funds and support for our American territories. Given that the Trump regime wants to cut back on “foreign aid,” it’s doubtful that much will be forthcoming for Caribbean nations that are not part of the U.S.,given that our own citizens there are not going to get a heck of a lot. I hope I am wrong.
To end on a lighter note, here’s an incomplete list of the people who have played key roles in our politics, arts, and entertainment who were either born in the Caribbean or are of Caribbean ancestry.
The first woman to run for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president was Shirley Chisholm. Though born here, she was raised by her grandmother and spent a lot of time in Barbados. In the video below, she speaks of that time and how it influenced her.
I have already mentioned Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Joining her in the political realm are former Attorney General Eric Holder, who was born here but has roots in Barbados, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, born in Harlem to Jamaican immigrant parents.
Constance Baker Motley’s parents were immigrants from Nevis.
In 1964 Judge Motley entered politics. She was the first woman to be elected into the New York State Senate in 1964 and in 1965 became the first woman to hold the position of Manhattan Borough President. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Motley to the United States District Court in 1966, making her the first African American woman to hold a Federal Judgeship.
In the world of film, Sidney Poitier was born in Miami during a visit by his parents, who were from the Bahamas, where he was raised. Cicely Tyson’s parents were immigrants from Nevis. Harry Belafonte is a real Caribbean mix. Born in Harlem, he is ...
… the son of Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper of Jamaican descent, and Harold George Bellanfanti, Sr., a Martiniquan who worked as a chef. His mother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish white mother and a black father. His father also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and Dutch Jewish father of Sephardi origins,
Singer Rihanna was born “in Saint Michael, Barbados. Her mother, Monica (Braithwaite), is a retired accountant of Afro-Guyanese background, and her father, Ronald Fenty, is a warehouse supervisor of Afro-Barbadian and Irish descent”
Gloria Estefan was born in Cuba, and Nicki Minaj is from Trinidad & Tobago. The most-viewed YouTube video of all time, Despacito, comes to us via Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, who are Puerto Rican. It was shot in La Perla, an area of San Juan, Puerto Rico, an area that few tourists ever enter. I’ve been searching the news to find out the fate of La Perla, which took a direct hit.
Jorge Ramos recently paid it a fascinating visit:
Directly below the famous touristy Old San Juan streets in Puerto Rico is La Perla -- a community with a tainted reputation of drug trafficking and crime -- rarely visited by outsiders. Although he was warned not to go there, Jorge Ramos decided to explore what La Perla has to offer, guided by local artist Chemi Rosado Seijo and community residents.
NBA all-star Patrick Ewing is from Jamaica, and the basketball star who has done so much to raise funds for the Virgin Islands is Tim Duncan, born and raised on Saint Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
He is keeping it up after Maria.
The Caribbean will always be part of us. Do what you can to help now, as well as in the years ahead.
