Are Black Americans and the Black Diaspora One Family? A Haitian TPS Voter Asks the Table
Short answer: Yes — but family means correction as well as comfort. When Haiti's Temporary Protected Status ended on July 27, 2026 and roughly 350,000 people lost work authorization, a Haitian-American woman who voted for Trump watched Black Americans laugh instead of speak, and concluded we're "neighbours who share an enemy" rather than one family. Big O, Big El and Krush answer her directly: you are family, you're owed the truth about your vote, and the split you're describing was manufactured long before either of us got here.
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[0:00] "I am 29. I was born in Spring Valley. I have never been to Haiti — and I voted for that man in 2024."
[0:16] BIG O: This letter comes from Spring Valley, New York.
[0:22] THE LETTER: "Bonjour. I'll write the rest in English because the part I need to say does not sound better in Creole. My mother has cleaned rooms at the same hotel for 19 years. Nineteen. She has a name badge with a little star on it. On July 27th, her work permit stopped being a work permit. And by Thursday of that week, a manager she has known for over a decade walked her to the office and could not look at her.
I am 29. I was born in Spring Valley. I have never been to Haiti. And I voted for that man in 2024. I want to be clear that nobody tricked me. I sat down. I looked at what I was paying for groceries and what I was paying for insurance. I listened to him talk about the economy like a man who had run on something, and I made a decision. My mother told me not to. My mother is the immigrant and I am the citizen — and I was the one explaining to her how the country works.
So the Supreme Court clears the way in June, the mandate lands on the 27th of July, and 350,000 Haitians lose status in an afternoon. Not a raid. Not a speech. A mandate date. Then in August a judge in Washington signs the order confirming there is nothing left to block it. And it's finished.
Here is what I did not expect, and this is the reason I'm writing to y'all and not to my pastor. When it happened, I waited for our people to say something. Not Haitian people — Black American people. The shows, the caucus, the ones who talk. A Miami Haitian, a Trump voter like me, lost his whole management team across seven restaurants and is closing two of his locations. And he said out loud that he regrets it. And I watched Black folks online laugh at him. They enjoyed it. He deserved some of it. So do I. But when they were done laughing, there was nothing underneath. No line about the 19 years or the gold star.
And I understood something I had spent my life not understanding. I don't think we are one family. I think we are neighbours who share an enemy. And when the enemy comes for the neighbour first, the family does the math.
I'm not asking you to tell me I was wrong to vote how I voted. I know what I did. My mother knows what I did. She still cooked on Sunday. What I want is for three grown Black men to say on a microphone whether Haitians, Jamaicans, Nigerians, Somalis — whether we are Black to you the same way you are Black to each other, or whether we are Black when the police are out and foreign when the paperwork comes. Because I have heard the jokes my whole life about the accent and the food and the boat, from the same mouths that say diaspora when a camera is on.
And I want somebody at the table to say what a citizen owes his mother when the country he chose takes her name badge. — Widline, Spring Valley, New York. P.S. Do not read this as a woman crying about Trump. I would vote on my grocery bill again. I just need to know whether the family is."
[4:18] BIG O: That was a lot. We talk about the diaspora wars on this show — not as much as you might find other places, because I think it's destructive and counterproductive. But sometimes these things find their way into our boxes.
[4:35] NEWS CLIP (Local 10, Miami): A popular local chef is facing backlash as the Trump administration ends TPS protections for Haitians. Chef Creole owner Wilkinson Sejour has been open about how the loss of Haitian TPS workers is already affecting his restaurants, but after revealing he voted for President Donald Trump, Sejour is now facing backlash. Sejour tells Local 10 that seven Haitian TPS holders on his management staff quit right after a federal judge cleared the way for the end of TPS protections for about 350,000 Haitians in the United States. "I've employed over 500 people since the conception of our business… it's terrible what's going on." Sejour says he regrets that choice: "I can't support a candidate that is having this ripple negative effect on our community, on our economy."
[6:00] BIG O: I'ma let the Haitian-adjacent member of our table start off first. What are your thoughts, Krush?
[6:07] KRUSH: First of all, I appreciate your candor in your letter and your transparency with your choices. I can fully respect that, and it's clear that you're acknowledging the consequences of those choices. Your question is whether we are truly one family in the face of the criticism you and others like you have received. One thing I'm immediately reminded of is one of the more important aspects of any family — no family will love you tougher, love you harder, than real family. We're not here to just provide comfort, but to also provide clarity. Solace is one thing; awareness is another. And I'm not being real family to you if I keep you in the dark about how we feel, about what our people are enduring due to this choice.
[7:27] KRUSH: This is not to indict, but to respond directly to your concern. I do have a personal stake in this — my wife's family is originally from Rockland County, and Spring Valley is an area I'm very familiar with. I can understand why you would question the idea of us being one family because of this, but I would gladly counter that and say no — we are one family. We love you no matter what you do. We're here for you, because at the end of the day, when the man comes, we all need each other.
[9:06] KRUSH: There will be a need for real reflection. I see a desire for analysis in the letter, but deeper reflection and an embracing of the larger context may be necessary here. Don't be disillusioned by the idea that we are not one family. We will always be one family — our shared experiences are very parallel, and by design. Nevertheless, we resist, and we continue to love each other across borders, across pain.
[10:10] BIG O: Her story is very similar to my story. I've heard all the names, I've heard the comments about the accents and all of the things. But it can't be understated that, as Krush said, we are family. And part of being part of a family also means correction — it can sometimes mean critique, it can sometimes bleed into ridicule. That's not to say you deserve all of those things. We see it in nature all the time. There's a reason animals collectively stay together and run, why they move as a unit — there's safety in numbers. So when the numbers were telling you don't do this, because there's safety with us, and you chose to go the other way… she takes that criticism. She takes that critique. She earned it.
[11:35] BIG O: But just because there's critique, just because there's ridicule, doesn't mean there's no love, no family, no unity. We just watched the World Cup, and there were a plethora of Latin American and Central American countries that played, and they had one binding thing that was forced upon them by imperialism — the colonizer's language. As other Latin countries fell out, it was: I know this country speaks Spanish like my country does, I'm going to support them. Meanwhile no one knows you're Latino for real until you open your mouth and speak Spanish — but everyone can see you from a mile away that you're Black.
[12:49] BIG O: It burns me when I see people — whether they're Asian, whether they're Nigerian, wherever they're from — who have this mindset that somehow culturally they're just so drastically different from everybody else. These cultural contrarians annoy me endlessly.
[13:15] BIG O: And while I believe she should and will be held accountable — not by us, but by her own decisions — there is a component there that I don't blame you for your decision solely. There's a larger context. There's a white supremacist settler-colonial empire that pushes that type of individualism onto us, because the mechanisms they've used against us divided us and keep us divided. Most of the rhetoric that we get about each other is not something that we created. They started that. They started it before they put Tarzan on TV — the way they depicted our brothers and sisters from across the non-American diaspora in such an unintelligent, barbaric, overly sexualized, hyper-masculine way. People here who never had access to real education about the diaspora accepted that hook, line and sinker.
[14:42] BIG O: It is our responsibility as people who know better to do better, and in some cases to say: damn, my bad, sis, that you had to go through that. That's not the way it's supposed to be. But there's also a level of culpability and responsibility that you have, because you fell into those individualistic, capitalist ideologies where your individual lived experience supersedes everything taking place across the diaspora. And every Black person here who participated and supported old boy fell into that same trap. It's a beautiful trap.
[15:31] KRUSH: In fact, her offhand comment about what motivated her vote was the one thing that divided her from her community — her grocery bill. Economics. Something she could not really control on her own, but you can if you become part of community.
[15:56] BIG O: I see it in the Nigerian community all the time — that because of education, because of status, they somehow feel separate from the collective. Mind you, you come from a country that from time immemorial has always preached communalism. The collective is the culture. It's part of our very fabric. It's about we, from conception.
[16:47] BIG O: For Nigeria specifically — after the British started leaving, the media that got imported was Boyz n the Hood, Menace II Society, that type of representation. And the missionaries came and spread this poison: if you dare to leave this country and go to America and meet African Americans, stay away from them, because they'll be your downfall. So you have a whole country being told: watch out for those over there. Meanwhile they may be telling Americans something else entirely about people who look like you.
[18:12] BIG O: Part of it is: you're special. If you get an opportunity to leave this jungle, you're special in a way that those people over there are not. So unless you want to be contaminated, you should not hang with them.
[18:47] BIG O: When my parents came to this country they were in that same thought process. All they'd heard was don't mess with African Americans. But much like Muhammad Ali, much like Malcolm X — age and experience change your mindset. Education changes your mindset. My parents have been here 40-plus years. Ask them now. Some of the most influential and impactful people in my parents' lives have been African American people — never mind the Nigerian community we built that would have run out on them when they needed help the most.
[19:47] KRUSH: My father came here in the late '60s and told me and my sister he did not understand why everyone was so damn angry. He'd heard things before he came, but seeing the protests and the speeches himself was a shock to the system. And white folks back then had their jokes for him too — he came over lighter than me with long wavy hair halfway down his back and a Philly-style beard. They couldn't quite say if he was Black or something else, but they lumped him in anyway, because he only worked with Black people as a contractor on construction sites. It didn't take long before he got called what everybody else got called. His friend Fred had to stop him from swinging.
[21:37] BIG O: It burns me up, because I grew up in a household that initially had that way of thinking, and I never really grasped it. I felt caught between two worlds, but I didn't allow either world to tell me one was more poisonous than the other.
[21:59] BIG O: But when you start having conversations with people and they recognize you have a pan-African mindset — it changes everything. I didn't know having a pan-African mindset was so frowned upon. If I'd known beforehand, I would have kept my mouth shut. People look at you differently.
[22:37] BIG O: And largely because their personal experience supersedes what is actually taking place. That's part of the intent and design of this capitalist society — for us to be individualistic. They don't want us on the same page. They don't want us to understand there is a connection. While there is some pain, some hurt, and some harm that has happened in our family, there is a connection. And when that connection is strengthened, we're more dangerous than anything else.
[23:11] BIG O: I dig where she is. I don't think there's anything necessarily unique about you, sis, because there are Black folks born and raised in this country with the same mentality — I'm going to do this for me and my family. And I dig it. I just think you're wrong.
[23:34] KRUSH: We have been so severely conditioned to believe in the benefits of self-interest versus the benefits of collective interest. It's been beaten into our souls, to the point that the idea of communal thinking, of interpersonal growth, is nearly painful — if not completely terrifying — to most of us.
What actually happened to Haitian TPS on July 27, 2026
This isn't a rumor. Haiti's TPS designation terminated effective July 27, 2026, after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the Homeland Security Secretary's termination decisions aren't judicially reviewable. USCIS confirmed that Employment Authorization Documents issued under the Haiti designation are no longer valid, and employers completing Form I-9 have to reverify. There was no raid and no speech — just a date on a calendar, and by that Thursday people who had worked the same job for years were being walked to an office.
In Miami, Chef Creole owner Wilkinson Sejour — himself a Trump voter — told Local 10 that seven Haitian TPS holders on his management staff quit in the same week, that he's closing two locations, and that he regrets his vote. That clip is where this letter starts.
The letter: "Nobody tricked me"
Widline is 29, born in Spring Valley, New York, and has never been to Haiti. Her mother has cleaned rooms at the same hotel for nineteen years and has a name badge with a little gold star on it. Widline voted for Trump in 2024, and she is emphatic that nobody fooled her — she looked at her grocery bill and her insurance bill and made a decision. Her mother, the immigrant, told her not to. She, the citizen, was the one explaining how the country works.
What she didn't expect was the silence afterward — not from Haitians, from Black Americans. She watched Black folks online laugh at Sejour, admits he earned some of it and so did she, and says that when the laughing stopped there was nothing underneath it. No line about the nineteen years or the gold star. Her question to the table was blunt: are Haitians, Jamaicans, Nigerians, Somalis Black to you the same way you are Black to each other — or Black when the police are out and foreign when the paperwork comes?
Krush: no family loves you tougher than real family
Krush answered first, and he took the question seriously rather than defensively. He respected her candor and her willingness to own the consequences. But he pushed back on the conclusion: the criticism she's seeing isn't evidence that the family is fake — it's what family does. "We're not here to just provide comfort, but to also provide clarity," he said. Solace is one thing. Awareness is another, and keeping her in the dark about how people feel would be the less loving move.
His answer to the actual question was direct: no, don't be disillusioned — we are one family, our experiences are parallel by design, and we keep loving each other across borders and across pain.
Big O: the critique is earned, and so is the love
Big O, whose own family came from Nigeria, said her story is close to his: he's heard the jokes about accents and food his whole life too. His point was that correction, critique and even ridicule are not the opposite of family — they're part of it. When the collective told her the danger was real and she went the other way, the critique came, and she has to take it. That doesn't mean the love isn't there.
He also made the observation that stuck: at the World Cup, Latin American countries backed each other on the strength of a language colonialism forced on them. Nobody knows you're Latino until you speak — but everybody can see you're Black from a mile away.
Where the diaspora split actually came from
Both hosts refused to let the conversation end at individual blame. The suspicion between Black Americans and the rest of the diaspora didn't grow here on its own. It was imported in both directions — Hollywood exporting Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society as the whole picture of Black America, and missionaries telling West Africans that if they got the chance to leave, they should stay away from African Americans or be dragged down.
Big O was blunt that his own parents arrived carrying that message, and that forty-plus years later some of the most impactful people in their lives have been Black Americans. Age, experience and education changed it. What didn't change on its own was the incentive to keep us apart.
The grocery bill: how individualism got sold to all of us
The hosts landed on the detail Widline mentioned almost in passing — she voted on her grocery bill. That's the seam. A system that pushes individual survival over collective interest gets everybody, not just immigrants and not just citizens. Plenty of Black folks born and raised here voted the exact same way for the exact same reason. As Big O put it: I dig where you're coming from, I just think you're wrong.
Krush's closing line was the hardest one in the episode: we've been conditioned so thoroughly to believe in the benefits of self-interest over collective interest that communal thinking now feels painful, if not terrifying.
What a citizen owes his mother
Widline asked what a citizen owes his mother when the country he chose takes her name badge. The table's answer, in substance: you owe her the truth about what you did, you owe her your presence now, and you owe the rest of us the harder work of not doing it again — while the rest of us owe you the honesty to say it plainly and the decency not to laugh while your mother is out of work.
Watch the full episode above — Big O, Big El and Krush do not soften it, and they don't pretend the answer is simple. Then tell us where you land. If you want more conversations that take the whole diaspora seriously, become family and support the show. Related: should Black America stand with immigrants?, does ICE need a judicial warrant to enter your home?, and why is everything so expensive?
Informed. Intelligent. In The Black.
