Spend more than a moment with Spokane’s Haitian population — about 500 people — and you’ll find folks who are in many ways just like everyone else here. They work hard. They pay taxes. They explore opportunities. They attend church. They’re proud of who they are.
But they are unlike most Spokanites in a very specific way: since the last contest for US president, Haitians have faced a brutally racist campaign of invective by people who are now running the federal government. The then-presidential hopeful Donald Trump, his running mate JD Vance and a bench of their faithful courtiers insisted, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that some Haitian communities were eating people’s pets.
That racism has at times spilled into the media feeds of local governments, including in Spokane…