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They call us poor. Lost causes. Passive, primitive, and savage. But that’s all a cover for colonizers’ bloodlust for exploiting these nations’ natural resources.
Haiti
Many cite overpopulation and unintelligence for Haiti’s deforestation. But since the 1600s, French colonists cleared land for plantations. They used their wood to produce sugar, set the stage for forest laws criminalizing indigenous Haitians, and then received millions in cubic feet of mahogany - exported by Haitians required to pay France “debt” for resisting enslavement.
Congo
Like most colonizers, Belgium’s King Leopold’s excuse was to “civilize” Congo in 1885. He brutally forced Congolese people to harvest rubber. Rebels caught setting rubber vines on fire or attacking the army were made a deadly example. And today, cobalt mining continues to enslave Congolese people while the world turns a profit.
The U.S.
Cotton and sugar were prominent plantation crops. But from the mid-1700s on, Black Americans also mined coal. They faced the dangers of mines, lynchings, and disease. After unionizing against exploitation, many were targeted and forced out by Jim Crow, while U.S. greed continued to desecrate Indigenous tribal lands with coal.
Colonizers rob the Black diaspora, and then blame our communities for the poverty, environmental dangers, and political corruption their greed and hatred caused.
But no matter their narrative, the truth will always be our true history of exploitation and resistance.