Reactions to Trump's 'Shithole Countries' Remark About Africa and Haiti

On January 11, 2018, during an Oval Office meeting with a bipartisan group of senators over a proposed immigration deal, President Donald Trump reportedly asked why the United States would accept more immigrants from Haiti and African nations rather than places like Norway, referring to the former as “shithole countries.” Multiple senators who attended, including Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, confirmed the remark to reporters within hours, and it dominated international news for weeks.

The African Union’s diplomatic mission in Washington issued a formal statement expressing “infuriation, disappointment and outrage” and said the comment “dishonor[ed] the celebrated American creed and respect for diversity and human dignity.” African ambassadors to the United Nations went further, jointly condemning the remark as racist and demanding a retraction and apology. South Africa’s government lodged a formal diplomatic protest, and officials across the continent, from Botswana to Senegal, summoned or rebuked US diplomats in the following days.

The comment also prompted responses from prominent African Americans. Rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z, appearing on the premiere episode of CNN’s The Van Jones Show on January 27, 2018, called the remark “hurtful” rather than simply infuriating, telling Jones that Trump was “looking down on a whole population of people” who came from places with “beautiful people.” When asked whether it was acceptable for a president to say offensive things while overseeing a strong economy, Jay-Z rejected the trade-off outright, saying money “doesn’t equate to happiness” and that the basic obligation was to “treat people like human beings.” Trump responded on Twitter the next morning, citing a low Black unemployment rate as if it settled the matter.

The remark also renewed attention to Haiti’s actual history with the United States and France, a history frequently invoked online in the days after the comment. Haiti won its independence from France in 1804 after the only successful slave revolt in history to create a nation, but France refused to recognize it until 1825, and then only after extracting an indemnity, later valued at roughly 90 million gold francs, that Haiti spent well over a century paying off and that historians widely credit with crippling the young republic’s finances for generations. The United States occupied Haiti militarily from 1915 to 1934 after landing Marines to restore order amid political upheaval. Washington then pressed the Haitian legislature to ratify the Haitian-American Convention of 1915, which handed the US control over Haiti’s customs houses, treasury, police force, and public works for a ten-year term later extended twice.

The remark also drew a factual rebuttal about the population it targeted. Census Bureau and Pew Research Center data show that African-born immigrants in the United States hold bachelor’s degrees at notably higher rates than the US-born population overall, with figures cited at the time putting the gap at roughly 40 percent versus 27 to 30 percent, driven partly by a large share of African immigrants holding STEM degrees. Commentators at the time pointed to those statistics directly, arguing they undercut the premise of the president’s remark.