The Haitian community in Montreal, and even here in Quebec City, experiences racism, as do the Arab, Muslim, and Latino communities. While there is a lack of documentation on these issues, a growing number of scientific studies and reports from organizations are addressing them. I am thinking in particular of our research as part of the Ustawi initiative on the impact of racism on mental health, as well as the research currently being conducted by Maxime Fortun (Observatoire du profilage racial) on the racial profiling of Black, Latino, and Arab people in Quebec City by the Quebec City Police Service (SPVQ).

This racism persists simply because institutions have inherited norms, processes, and practices that “maintain the historical inequalities suffered by certain groups and contribute to the accumulation of disadvantages experienced by them” (CDPDJ, 2024). Concretely, this can be observed in the career paths of these groups, which are often oriented toward professions that tend to be subordinated: healthcare workers, agricultural workers, factory workers, and many others. This systemic racism is also manifested in access to social and health services, in the search for housing, and even within the education system. It is intrinsically linked to the white supremacy that characterizes North American societies, founded on the plundering and near-decimation of Indigenous peoples.

In another vein, and here I am speaking specifically of Haiti and Haitians, we must be aware that there has historically been a process of distancing Haiti, a construction of “Haiti as Other.” Here, I agree with the thesis defended by anthropologist Marie Meudec (2017), who emphasizes that “people of Haitian descent are often stigmatized, dehumanized, and discriminated against in Caribbean and North American societies.” I would add that this is also observed in certain European (such as France) and Latin American (such as Chile or the Dominican Republic) societies.

This dynamic brings us into dialogue with a problem deeply rooted in modern thought and imagination. The narrative conveyed by Western societies in the aftermath of the Haitian revolution presented Haiti as “deviant,” unique, bizarre, unnatural, singular, strange, grotesque—and more recently, “resilient.” These discourses and representations often overlook the fact that Haiti constitutes the longest neocolonial experience in Western history, to borrow Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s words.
My training in psychology and the ethnopsychiatric sensitivity that drives me allow me, like many others, to take a step back from this “Haitian pseudo-resilience.” My co-supervisor, Daniel Derivois, speaks of “pathological resilience” to describe this stagnation, even psychological regression, among Haitians.
That being said, I can outline this legacy by asking ourselves what this has done to Haitians, and in turn, what happens to Haitian women from this legacy?

Frantz Fanon observed an inferiority complex among Martinicans in the postcolonial context in which he practiced. A similar phenomenon may have occurred among Haitians: by dint of being sidelined, they inevitably distanced themselves. The ethnic isolation of Haitians in Montreal, observed by Lafortune and his colleagues (2020), although it emanates from a form of solidarity “in evil”, in reality testifies to the difficulty of the “Haitian community” to live together with itself, but also with others (Derivois, 2017).