Opinion: Haiti, like Appalachia, long exploited and neglected

The latest grim news from Haiti last week along with a commentary by southern Ohio journalist Gary Abernathy's on the U.S. Senate candidacy of "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance in Ohio connected in my mind.

To explain: Haiti has been exploited and neglected since becoming the world's first Black republic in the early 19th century, and the predominantly white Appalachian America Vance writes about as a region has also long been exploited and neglected.

The Haitians became free and independent through blood and brutality, and it seems the country's people have never been able to break free from that legacy.

The Duvalier family regime cynically presented Haiti as a buffer against Cuba's Fidel Castro and Communism in the Caribbean, gaining U.S. support and a blind eye to iron-fisted rule enforced by the Tonton Macoute paramilitary thugs.

Graham Greene's 1966 novel "The Comedians" (a future Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton star-studded movie) detailed the life of repression and fear on the Haitian part of the Hispaniola island shared with The Dominican Republic.

In the 1980s, the younger Duvalier, who reportedly hated being called "Baby Doc" after his late father had been feared as "Papa Doc," finally was forced into exile after sham elections and more violence and deaths. I was there for The Associated Press when his plane left, after he had stripped whatever was left of his country that could carry with him.

Stability since has been only fleeting, and among the exploiters in recent years have been American churches.

In an American way, Appalachia has its own bleak history. Harry Caudill's 1963 book, "Night Comes to the Cumberlands," explained the taking of the region's rich natural resources with rip-off contracts for mineral and timber rights that had consigned the region to a status as a continuing colony.

It helped make the region the focus of President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty," but declaring war and winning are two different things. Then the Vietnam War overtook the social war, and Johnson and his dreams for the region faded away.

As an Associated Press reporter in 1994, I retraced some of Johnson's steps through the region from 30 years earlier and found that very little had changed. A reporter returning 50 years later might have found some progress, but the pandemic has pushed back on the region that still lags the nation economically and in education and health.

Vance's 2016 book, seen by many then as a guide to why a bombastic New York deal maker appealed to poor white Americans, fascinated me because of our shared roots: born in Middletown into families direct from Breathitt County, Kentucky: but 30 years apart.

As I read Vance's account of the Middletown of his youth, I realized I had been there for its golden age. It was a time when people without education, both white and Black, could earn nice paychecks by showing up on time, working in heat and breathing smoke for eight hours – or even longer to get coveted time-and-a-half pay – and give their families the brick ranch homes, good schools, and perks such as a company park and free movies their ancestors never knew.

By the time I settled back into the Middletown area nearly 30 years after I had left to pursue my journalism career, much had changed. There was no company-town benevolence, no assurance you would still have a good job tomorrow.

Many of my classmates who had gone to the steel mill out of high school took early retirement as labor relations deteriorated with the AK Steel combination that swallowed Armco. A 13-month lockout that ended in 2007 followed, and many struggled to find regular work.

My parents and grandparents had believed that with love and support, I and my four siblings could get educations and jobs we liked. We all five did.

J.D. Vance had the tough support and love of his "Mamaw" to put him on the right path, which included finding the right life mate (his an Indian-American; mine Appalachian-born) and should be an uplifting story. He is critical of his fellow Middletonians who have surrendered their pride and the work ethic the city was built upon, but he also is an example of what can be done.

Gary Abernathy makes a good point that Vance shouldn't be trying to disown his earlier criticism of Trump. Vance could concrete examples of how maybe he was wrong about Trump on something specific. Maybe he could start by trying to show how Trump's appeal translated to any Appalachian progress.

Either way, Vance faces an uphill struggle in the Ohio Republican Senate primary.

He has my interest; the Haitian people have my prayers.

Dan Sewell recently retired after a 44-year career as journalist, 5 with The Enquirer and the rest with The Associated Press.