Haiti’s Official Language Shouldn’t Be French
People often ask me why Haitians struggle economically and politically, with conditions worsening since the approval of Haiti’s new constitution in 1987. There are lots of reasons for Haitians’ struggles, but language policy represents an underlying condition.
Saint-Domingue, the French colony that lasted from 1697 to 1803 and became Haiti, was a cruel slave state. White society never built a school for its enslaved people, who were confined to awful sugar, coffee, and indigo plantations. A generation of Black and biracial men, women, and children waged a nearly 13-year war to banish French colonialism and slavery.
Gen. Jean-Jacques Dessalines dictated the Haitian Declaration of Independence in French to his secretary, Louis Boisrond-Tonnerre, for the occasion, which occurred on Jan. 1, 1804. Half of the population had been decimated, and the elite survivors legislated exclusively in French, the only written language they knew.
