We’re Haitian, we live in New Jersey and we’re worried | Opinion (2024)

By Sheila Etienne

The first feeling was shock. How could someone have killed Haitian President Jovenel Moïse? Then, we were worried. Is everyone back home in Haiti safe?

Everyone began calling, and the phone lines were mostly busy. Finally, though, we got through. But the worry and concern about the welfare and safety of our families and friends remain.

It seems my country and its people have taken a step back and returning to a time where speaking up could get you killed. Many Haitians thought we were turning the corner from political persecution and beginning to find our voice. I am living proof of that as I now am president of the Asbury Park Board of Education and have been elected twice to three-year terms.

Being Haitian in America, specifically in Asbury Park, is about so much more than being able to greet each other with “sak pasé?” It’s about living with a sense of community for your family at home and abroad every day, and of course, dealing with the after-effects of having a love-hate relationship with yourself and the country that birthed you.

My story is similar to that of the many Haitian families who continue to migrate to Asbury Park and call it home. There are about 1.1 million Haitian Americans, according to recent Census data, with the fourth-largest concentration settling in New Jersey. I would venture to say that about 30% of the student body in Asbury Park is of Haitian descent. We even have our own Haitian Radio Station, Good News Radio WYGG 88.1 FM.

I was born in America, in the Bronx, but my life started in Haiti. My parents, who both worked full-time jobs, sent me back home when I was 3-months-old to live with my grandmother. I returned to America several years later with my grandmother to a city called Asbury Park, the jewel of The Shore. This was the mid-70s and I lived with my great aunt, Matilda Pierre, on Fifth Avenue. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was one of the first, if not the first, Haitian person to settle in Asbury Park in the early ‘60s. She and my great-aunt, Lise Lizaire Criechi, were instrumental in starting the first French Speaking Baptist Church in the city.

Arriving here, I spoke no English, but because I had many cousins who did, I was teased incessantly. I listened and learned and it took me about three months to learn English. At that time, I had no appreciation for being Haitian. I just wanted to be as American as I could, and as fast as was possible.

In the process, I forgot all about speaking Creole. But over the years, more family came to the U.S. and everyone who came stayed with us. That reintroduced the language into my life. From that point on, when someone heard me speak, they would say, “Oh, I knew you were something besides Black.” I didn’t really understand what that meant at that age.

We were a large family, about 13 of us. When we got home from school, a giant plate of rice and one little piece of meat would be waiting for each of us every day (we ate the meat first). McDonald’s, Burger King, Chinese food were all made at home; it was called Haitian food. We also dressed a little differently, and I still had pigtails in my hair until I was 13. More importantly, there were parts of town I was not allowed to go and people I wasn’t allowed to be with.

In my younger days, I struggled with being Haitian, like many students did because I just wasn’t quite Haitian enough, and not quite American enough. I did not understand why my family held fast onto the Haitian culture and norms. All I knew then was that it was something for me to be teased about.

I remember having a slumber party and how in the morning when my mother served fried spaghetti with haddock and hotdogs for breakfast everybody packed up and went home before they could eat our delicious spaghetti breakfast. As the nation and pop culture flirt with Haitian norms, the impact trickles down to the students who walk the halls of the Asbury Park School District. At times it is en vogue to be a native of our Caribbean country, and then months would go by where you were too ashamed to admit it.

Every Saturday morning was clean the house day, my grandmother walked around with a small satchel that she would jiggle and you would have to contribute to so that we could go back to Haiti and help out. While our life as a Haitian in American is ever-evolving, one tenant remains constant — we always contributed to those left back home.

Whether it was my mother or grandmother sending money back, we supported those who grew up in and near our family or contributed to the family church. As we got older we learned to take trips back home to go to orphanages and churches or to contribute to the life of those who lived around our old homestead in Haiti. While many norms have changed within the community, this idea has been steadfast.

Those efforts always seemed worth it. Returning home and retiring there was a dream of many Haitians here because we were always able to envision a better life for our families back home, in Haiti. But the assassination of President Moïse calls all of our sacrifices into question. The recent turn of events is an ever-present reminder that class and color still matter and that the battle between the haves and have-nots never really dissipated. It’s sad and amazing to me that we continue to battle internally for control and power. It’s one of the last things that we should worry about.

But we still worry it and about how our families are doing now and what the long-term effect might be. Because our president was assassinated, we have no reason to believe it will settle down any time soon. So we worry and we wait.

Sheila Etienne has been on the Asbury Park School Board since 1996. She is also an entrepreneur who owns an Early Childhood Learning Center in Asbury Park.

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