Bertin M. Louis, Jr.

In Anti-Haitianism in Paradise: Marginalization, Stigma and Antiblackness in the Bahamas, Bertin M. Louis, Jr. and Charmane Perry present a study about the historical foundation and the contemporary realities of anti-Haitianism in the Bahamas. This work is based on 28 combined years of ethnographic and archival research by two scholars who study the Haitian diaspora of the Bahamas (17 years by cultural anthropologist Bertin M. Louis, Jr. and 11 years by Black Studies scholar Charmane M. Perry). Anti-Haitianism in Paradise is one of the first full-length books that applies the concept and lived reality of anti-Haitianism, best known in the Dominican Republic, to the Bahamian case to demonstrate how anti-Haitianism serves as a form of antiblackness encouraged and enacted by Black Bahamians through law, immigration policies, denial of citizenship, statelessness and raw bigotry. By studying local transformations in the Bahamas pertaining to its Haitian population, Louis and Perry offer a greater understanding of the adoption of anti-Haitianism as a political and nation-building strategy for the Bahamas and how anti-Haitianism, and antiblackness by extension, operates among people of African descent. The ethnography also contributes to the study of human rights, migration studies, immigrant racialization, and the advancement of anti-Haitianism theory.