If you ever doubted the power of one awful social media post to slander an entire people, look no further than the firestorm over Haitians eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Less than two weeks ago, a single post on X claimed that a Springfield resident saw a missing cat being carved up by a neighboring Haitian. With no photo and no verification, this post was nonetheless shared the next day by a conservative X account with nearly 3 million followers. It added text criticizing the Biden administration for allowing “20,000 Haitian immigrants” to be “shipped” to the town, and “now ducks and pets are disappearing.”
All of those quoted words are false. Didn’t matter. A few days later, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance jumped into the fray, posting that people in Springfield have had their pets eaten “by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
And later that day, Elon Musk, who owns X, poured gas on the fire by sending out a meme of a duck and cat with the words “Save them!”
It reached 93 million followers.
All this happened in a less than a week. Never mind that the actual mayor of Springfield said this wasn’t happening. Or that Musk, Vance or most of the millions repeating this claim hadn’t set foot in Springfield to see for themselves.
Or that the woman who put up the original post would soon be apologizing.
Never mind. Next thing you knew, former President Donald Trump was screaming this ugliness to 67 million viewers during last week’s debate.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs!” he spewed. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there!”
Memes popped up everywhere. Internet songs were posted with images of worried animals. To many groups, it became something amusing.
I’ll tell you one group that doesn’t find it amusing: Haitians. Especially since bomb threats over the last few days have now closed Springfield elementary schools, a middle school and its city hall. How many of us would find anything funny in that?
Trump and Vance lied, at Haitians’ expense
Now, those who know me know my strong connection to Haiti. I operate an orphanage there and have been going to Port-au-Prince every month for nearly 15 years. I know more Haitians than I can possibly count. Families. Friends. Workers. Neighbors. I also have 11 young Haitian college and graduate students right here in Michigan, who I‘ve helped raise since they were toddlers.
These kids, to me, are my family. And the fact that they now have to worry about people looking at them as pet-eaters, all because some angry folks want to make a point about immigration, is despicable.
Know this. I am against illegal immigration. I do not support open borders. But in a major detail these rumor-mongers conveniently overlook, most of the Haitians in Springfield are here legally. They were either granted Temporary Protected Status, or are part of the Biden administration’s immigration parole program that, as of August, has admitted 205,000 Haitians to our country.
That program, by the way, has been a blessing and a curse for Haiti. True, it has given desperate Haitians a safe haven. But it has also stolen away many of the nation’s best and brightest, men and women who had access to computers to apply, and sponsors in America who would financially vouch for them. I can’t tell you how many teachers, doctors, even police, I know of in Haiti who, with the advent of this program, have fled for a better chance in America.
Meanwhile, the most suffering Haitians, those without computer access or sponsorship, remain fighting the daily horrors of the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
But like it or not, the protection and parole programs are legit. America extended the invitation. So to characterize all the Haitians is Springfield as “illegal” — which Trump has done repeatedly — is simply a lie. Say that word again: A lie. A fib. Made up. A falsehood.
You wonder if that even matters anymore. What we witnessed with this pet-eating babble is the truth of the famous quote, “A lie spreads around the world before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on.”
Haitians, all immigrants, deserve better
Now, none of this diminishes the hardship that Springfield is going through. But remember what happened here. A Midwestern city of around 60,000, losing population and economic opportunity for years, created manufacturing jobs that attracted, amongst others, Haitian immigrants. Why not? They want to work, just like our immigrant parents, grandparents or great grandparents wanted to work. Soon more Haitians were coming, because, again, like our immigrant predecessors, they wanted to be where there were others like them.
No doubt this happened too fast for a small city like Springfield. For a community of 60,000, growing suddenly by 15,000 will likely strain resources. Housing. Rent. Medical centers. And, let’s be honest, in a city where there are four times as many white people as people of color, a sudden 25% increase in the Black population is likely to create tension and finger pointing.
This was exacerbated when a Haitian driver last year accidentally hit a school bus, and killed an 11-year-old boy named Aiden Clark. That kind of thing will boil emotions. But using that tragic event to smear an entire ethnic group — just like the pet-eating scare — is dead wrong, and decent people know it, including the victim’s father, who last week demanded politicians like Trump and Vance stop invoking his son’s name to buoy their claims.
“My son was not murdered,” Nathan Clark said in a speech to the city commission. “He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti.” He added that he wished the perpetrator had been a 60-year-old white man, because maybe that would have spared his family from all the “hate-spewing people” who are abusing his son’s memory.
It was a brave statement. But people who are going to hate, lie and spread rumors are likely to do it regardless of facts.
It’s astounding that Vance, who escalated this thing, has now admitted, “It’s possible, of course, that all these rumors will turn out to be false.”
It’s equally stunning that Erika Lee, the woman who made the original explosive post about the pet-eating, told NBC News that she now regrets it.
“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” she said. She also added, “I’m not a racist.”
Maybe not. But she fueled others who are. I feel for the people of Springfield, some of whom claim they are losing their town. But I also feel for the Haitians, not only the ones in Springfield who are being threatened, but others in this country, like our kids in college, who now have to endure whispers and see those mocking memes suggesting their people feast on neighbors’ cats and dogs.
I remember a few years ago, when they first got here, I took three of our college-age Haitian kids to Disneyland. It was their first visit and they were joyfully wide-eyed all day. Then, late in the afternoon, I had to leave for a short stretch. When I came back, they were sunk into chairs and looking forlorn.
“What happened?” I asked.
They told me how they’d wanted to find something in the park, so they politely asked a man who was pushing a baby carriage if he could help with directions.
“Why don’t you ask someone who looks like you?” he snapped, before moving on.
It was their first real encounter with racism. I will never forget how devastated they looked. It remains a grim reminder of the harm we do with our prejudices, our assumptions and our resentment.
Why should those same kids, or any Haitians — or anyone, period — have to be looked at as barbaric invaders who would eat your dog, all because someone started a rumor, and a bunch of others used it for their politics?
The old saying goes, “A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.” You know who who employed that strategy? The Nazi, Joseph Goebbels. How sad that we in America are living out his worldview today.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.
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