蘑菇视频

Oct 5, 2024 3 min read

When you see Ku Klux Klan literature from a century ago, with its exhortations that “the purity of the white blood must be maintained” and that “we must keep this a white man’s country,” it’s easy to feel a certain sense of moral superiority.

We have, without question, traveled quite a distance over the last 100 years. We are a more diverse, more accepting and less bigoted society than we once were. One hundred years ago, discrimination in housing, employment and many other facets of life was not punishable by law. The country’s Black population was subject to lynchings and other forms of terror. Many states prohibited interracial marriage. Casual racism was rife.

But a flyer purportedly from the Klan was recently posted to a Charleroi community page on Facebook. It was filled with dark warnings about “third-world immigrants … destroying every city they arrive in” and telling “white America” to “protect your families.”

It’s enough to make you wonder how far we actually have come.

Charleroi and its population of immigrants from Haiti have landed in the national spotlight in recent weeks after former president Donald Trump made false claims about the borough and its immigrant population in a speech in Arizona. Trump and his running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance, have falsely suggested that Haitian immigrants in Charleroi and elsewhere have been taking jobs that otherwise would have gone to the native-born, have pushed up housing costs, have been a strain on local schools and health care providers, and have driven up crime rates. And, as we all know by now, Trump repeated the urban legend in his debate with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris last month that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, feast on pets.

This week, Charleroi officials and members of the borough’s Haitian community sat down with members of the staff of the Observer-Reporter to discuss the challenges they have faced and to separate lived reality from poisonous myth.

And officials underscore that the reality is this: Haitians who have left the strife-ridden outpost in the Caribbean and relocated to Charleroi have provided an economic shot in the arm to an area that had been steadily declining since the demise of the steel industry; they have filled jobs that would have otherwise gone unfilled; they have not caused any kind of spike in crime; and they have been good neighbors.

Evency Dorzelma, a former police officer who fled the mayhem enveloping his homeland in 2018, said that he and other members of the Haitian community in Charleroi “love the USA and we wouldn’t do any harm to the community. … We Haitians, we brought energy, we brought life to the city. We fill many jobs that people refuse to do.”

Casey Jagerman, a business owner, explained, “They just want to belong. They’re in a new place, they’re starting over, they’re learning a new language, they just want a place to belong.”

That’s exactly how many of our forebears felt when they came to America generations ago, whether they were fleeing famine, religious persecution or political upheaval, or merely seeking out the promise of a better life in a country with abundant land and many opportunities.

Let’s be frank – the hate and vitriol that has been heaped on immigrants from Haiti and other parts of the world in recent weeks is nothing less than a betrayal of their legacy.