TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. One night, when my guest Rich Benjamin's mother was staying over at his Brooklyn apartment, he awoke to her screaming, please don't kill me. Please don't kill me. She was having a nightmare. Here's the backstory. Her father, Rich Benjamin's grandfather, was appointed president of Haiti by a temporary government in 1957. But 19 days after taking office, he was overthrown by a military coup. Soldiers with submachine guns stormed into a cabinet meeting, took him away and gave him a letter of resignation to sign. His wife was also kidnapped by soldiers.
They were both ejected and sent to the U.S. Soldiers also came for the president's children, including Benjamin's mother, who was 13 at the time. The children were taken to barracks, where his mother was raped. She never got over the terror of that day. Through her aunt's negotiations with the military government, she was able to get out of confinement and go to New York, where she was reunited with her parents. The family never really talked about the coup and the trauma. It wasn't until Benjamin went to Haiti to help after the 2010 earthquake that he decided to do some research to better understand his family and himself.
As part of his research, he sued the U.S. State Department to get access to classified documents, which revealed the U.S. played a role in the coup. His new memoir is called "Talk To Me: Lessons From A Family Forged By History." It's also about being Black, the son of immigrants and gay. He says he's enjoyed advantage and endured exclusion. Benjamin's first book, published in 2009, is called "Searching For Whitopia: An Improbable Journey To The Heart Of White America."
Rich Benjamin, welcome to FRESH AIR. What did you learn about the Eisenhower administration's role in overthrowing your grandfather's presidency?
RICH BENJAMIN: Terry, first of all, it's great to be here.
GROSS: It's great to have you (laughter).
BENJAMIN: But what I - thank you. Thank you. What I learned in writing this book is that executives of American corporations, after my grandfather assumed Haiti's presidency, called the White House directly to ask them to intervene. In those phone conversations, they called him a rabble-rouser. They said he wasn't fit to be president. And I think a lot of their gripe was he had been a labor leader on the ground.
And also, what was fascinating is looking at the national security meeting held at 8 a.m. in the White House the day after my grandfather was inaugurated. Eisenhower was there. Dulles, the head of the CIA, was there. The other Dulles, his brother, who was secretary of state, was there. All of the national security team was, and they discussed what to do about this predicament.
GROSS: So you said your grandfather was a labor leader, but he was more than just a labor leader. He was very popular, very charismatic, and was able to organize mass protests.
BENJAMIN: He was. My grandfather became a major labor leader in 1946, and he was in charge of unions that represented factory workers that represented the farmhands who plowed the fields, who cut the sugarcane, bus drivers and haircutters. And in many cases, Terry, he was able to garner them better wages. And he also represented laborers who worked for Standard Fruit, which was a global corporation, and they weren't too pleased with him in terms of his ability to get them better wages and better working conditions.
So - and he became a popular labor leader through his voice. He had this beautiful command of Creole, the native tongue, and he would give these beautiful speeches, these fiery labor speeches that really aroused people's passion. It galvanized them politically. And for that, he became known and he kind of came under the surveillance of U.S. operatives in Port-au-Prince.
GROSS: So what role did the Eisenhower administration play in the coup?
BENJAMIN: The role that the Eisenhower administration played was first, they were aware that the coup would happen. We know this through secret CIA cables. But also, they granted this couple without the couple's request.
GROSS: The couple being your grandparents?
BENJAMIN: Yes. They granted them visas to enter the United States without the couple's request. And so they knew that it was going to happen. And so that's critical in their hatching the coup. In other words, they know this man is going to be deposed. They know he's the legitimate leader of Haiti, and yet they're granting him visas to facilitate his being kidnapped and ejected.
GROSS: After your grandfather was overthrown by the military coup, Duvalier was elected president, and he had what some people considered as a kind of reign of terror. He became a dictator. His police really cracked down on any kind of dissent. And he was president for how many years?
BENJAMIN: It was very swift, his dictatorship. Once he kidnapped my grandfather, it was barely two weeks before he sent the military into the city's capital, and he mowed people down through submachine guns. He killed people. So he wanted to squash the descent by violence and by murder immediately. And subsequently, he ruled from 1957 to 1971. And then, as you point out, Terry, it was a reign of terror. He broke the press. He broke academics. He broke his opponents, and he became a dictator for life through sheer violence.
GROSS: Yeah, he declared himself president for life.
BENJAMIN: He did.
GROSS: So let's talk about your mother a little bit. So she was kidnapped by the soldiers and taken to barracks. She was raped there. How much did she talk to you about that? And that night when she woke up screaming, don't kill me, did you already know the story that she was raped?
BENJAMIN: No, I did not. I did not. And...
GROSS: When did she tell you? How did you find out?
BENJAMIN: I found out subsequently through a different visit to Brooklyn when we talked about it. But the main thrust of this story and the main discovery of this story is just growing up I had no idea, period, about what went on in Haiti. I had no idea about this man's rule. I had no idea about what her childhood was like in Port-au-Prince. I had no idea what her life was like as an immigrant to New York. And technically, she's not an immigrant, by the way. She's a refugee. When you've been expelled, you're a refugee, not an immigrant. So none of this I knew growing up.
GROSS: So she told you eventually that when she told her father - the former president of Haiti - that she was raped by the soldiers, he didn't believe her. And that created an anger that never left her. And also although he may have been a man of the people, he wasn't a family man, and she felt betrayed by that, too. She was asked to lead your grandfather's funeral procession in Haiti. He had moved to Haiti just months before he died. And this was - what year was that?
BENJAMIN: 1986.
GROSS: Yeah. So she was asked to lead his funeral procession, and she had really mixed feelings about it because she was still angry with him. And thinking, like, what a position to be in. Like, you're the daughter of a president who was beloved by workers who were challenging the elite, and he's still celebrated by people who were alive then. And you don't really want to do it, but you have to do it. Do you have any insight into how she felt when she was actually leading the funeral procession?
BENJAMIN: The insight I do have is, as human beings, we expect our parents to protect us. And in his case, he failed miserably. He failed miserably to protect her from the emotional harm. He failed to protect her from the physical harm and the violence. And he was in a sort of denial and disbelief and anger at what had happened to her. And this was never resolved, in my opinion.
And so, as you point out, once he's finally able to return to Haiti in 1986, she's put in the difficult, ironic position as his eldest daughter to lead the funeral procession for him. So we can imagine what a complicated position that is because on the one hand, your father has died. You're attending his funeral. But on the other hand, you're asked to mourn a deadbeat, who had left your mother and you for a younger woman and throughout his whole life had failed to protect her from violence in so many ways...
GROSS: Including his own because he beat her.
BENJAMIN: ...Including his own. And, Terry, I want to return to this other point you made of his being popular and beloved - but that's outside his house doors - and less popular and cruel inside his house doors. To this day, he's still beloved. To this day, you can go to Haiti and find older Haitians who will say, I remember this man, I remember what he did for my family. And to this day, you can meet Haitians in Boston, in Washington, in New York who say, this was a beloved hero who I looked up to.
I was at a book signing at a New York public library. A woman came up to me, and she said, my name is Danielle (ph). And when my mother was pregnant, she was cheering and a vocal fan of your grandfather, Daniel Fignole. And therefore, my name became Danielle. This woman is still in Brooklyn. And so he was this beloved popular figure outside his home, but inside his home, he was a bit of a monster and a ghost.
GROSS: When you went to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, you went to a high school that was named after your grandfather. And I should add here that there was a period after he was overthrown when you weren't allowed to print his name.
BENJAMIN: Yes. Duvalier made it a crime to speak that man's name, to print his name or to reproduce his image. And that's what happens in autocracies. They were fierce, fierce rivals. But, Terry, when I did return to Haiti in 2010 on this discovery to do this research, I had no idea that there was a high school named after my grandfather, Daniel Fignole. And what a surprise. So I couldn't help myself. I went to visit that high school and see what it was like. Sadly, that high school had suffered devastating casualties after the 2010 earthquake. So at one point, it was a very prestigious high school. It was considered one of the best public high schools in Haiti. But once the earthquake struck, you know, it was reduced to kind of rubble. And there I was myself to visit the high school, to visit with the students and to see what it was like. And it was devastating.
GROSS: Well, we have to take a short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Rich Benjamin. He's the author of the new book "Talk To Me." We'll be right back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF DANILO PEREZ AND CLAUS OGERMAN'S "RAYS AND SHADOWS")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Rich Benjamin. His maternal grandfather was a labor leader in Haiti, who was appointed president by a provisional government in 1957 but was overthrown by a military coup after 19 days in office. Benjamin's mother, who was 13 at the time, was forced by soldiers to go to barracks, where she was raped. She was later reunited with her parents in New York, where Benjamin was born and continues to live. His new memoir is called "Talk To Me."
Tell us what your mother taught you about education and how it should make you uncomfortable.
BENJAMIN: My mother taught me that education is not meant to be safe, and she meant this in a double-braided sense. Education is not meant to make you feel safe. And once you are educated, you are meant to make others feel unsafe. In other words, power is knowledge, and you don't just use education idly. You use education to make the world a better place. But we never believed in safe spaces. Education wasn't safe for her father. Education wasn't safe for her. And education wasn't meant to be safe for me. In other words...
GROSS: Why wasn't it safe for them?
BENJAMIN: Oh, my goodness. My education was not safe for my grandfather because when he became a professor, he was a vocal critic against various regimes. He was such a vocal critic against one of the regimes - the Lescot regime - at the time that he was fired for his teaching. He was fired for being a pro-Black pro-working class professor, and so education wasn't safe for him in that sense.
And education wasn't meant to be safe for me in the sense that I was always encouraged to get out of my comfort zone, to learn things that might make me uncomfortable, to learn things that might make me unsafe about other ideas, about other people, about other culture. But then I wasn't just meant to, you know, make money simply off that education. I was meant to make others feel unsafe and uncomfortable with that education by being a learned citizen.
GROSS: What do you mean by that?
BENJAMIN: Well, by that, I mean you don't sleepwalk through the current moment. You don't sleepwalk through current affairs. You don't accept the narratives that your government is telling you about how things should be. You speak out. You teach others. That's what I mean by that. And frankly, Terry, now it's a very good lesson to have had in these days.
GROSS: You became an activist. You worked for the think tank Demos for a while - progressive think tank.
BENJAMIN: I did. I worked for a progressive think tank that was deeply devoted to democracy forum, that was deeply devoted so that more voters can vote. It was deeply devoted to improving voter access by all kinds of means. And then it was also devoted to economic opportunity. What can we do in this society so that there's not these vast disparities of wealth inequality? The minimum wage being the most obvious example. And when I speak out, Terry, another example was, from 2008 to 2014, I used to be a regular commentator on Fox News on the calculation that that network had a sliver of its audience that was reasonable, fair-minded and persuadable. I would go on Fox News to talk about everything from sensible regulation on Wall Street, police brutality, raising the federal minimum wage, immigrant rights, you name it. And so these are examples of using an education to be useful in the world.
GROSS: I'm just curious. I don't want to get too caught up in this. But did you feel like you were being effective, that you were reaching a sliver of Fox's audience?
BENJAMIN: I did, I did. And the measurement of that, Terry, was the emails I would receive. Sometimes - and I shouldn't even say sometimes. Often, I would receive emails from Fox viewers who said, hey, I hadn't thought of that. You made me think of this issue in a different way. And if I'm frank, I once got a handwritten note from a Fox News host who said, thank you for presenting the issues in a way that I respect, even if I may not always agree with you, and that my viewers can respect. And by the way, that happened to be Neil Cavuto. So I did always try to use my voice in a productive way. And sometimes it worked, and sometimes I do better.
GROSS: Did you get a lot of hate mail?
BENJAMIN: Oh, Terry.
(LAUGHTER)
BENJAMIN: The hate mail. Where do I begin? And often, Terry, I would measure my success by the heat and the volume of the hate mail. So oftentimes, if I felt that I bested Bill O'Reilly in a debate in his prime time, my social and my inbox would blow up. And you could summarize that vitriol in a couple of words. It's always, like, [expletive] or [expletive]. And I knew that the media appearance and my words had been successful to the extent that it got under people's skin. So the response was often vitriolic. And to me, it didn't faze me. Oftentimes, I could get such a vitriolic response and then sleep like a lamb.
GROSS: What did your mother, growing up in America after the age of 13, tell you about race in America and about colorism? And I ask about colorism in part because your grandfather, one of his goals was to help lead an opposition to the mulatto elite. And mulatto was the word used in Haiti. So if you had whiteness in your background, you were more likely to be in the elite. So what did she teach you about race and colorism?
BENJAMIN: My mother taught me some very profound and useful lessons about race, and that is that I was not to be defined by my skin color. And I was not to allow others to define me by my skin color. And she always had this wonderful, sometimes unspoken lesson for me, is as a Black person, Richard, you don't pick a fight because of your skin color, but you also don't run from one. And so race is just one aspect of who I am. So both her and her father also thought in terms of class and poverty and not just colorism.
But colorism is a fascinating thing, and it still exists to Haiti to some extent. And as you pointed out, Terry, it's those who look more European from the colonial descendants often had more money and financial advantage in birth. And the dark-skinned masses tend to be the laborers who are working the fields, who are working the factories, who are working as domestics in people's home. And those were the brawn and substance of my grandfather's labor unions.
GROSS: Let's take another break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Rich Benjamin, author of the new memoir "Talk To Me." We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF JACKY TERRASSON SONG, "O CAFE, O SOLEIL")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Rich Benjamin. His maternal grandfather was a labor leader in Haiti, who was appointed president by a provisional government in 1957, but was overthrown by a military coup after 19 days in office. Benjamin's mother - who was 13 at the time - was kidnapped by soldiers, forced to go to barracks where she was raped. She was later reunited with her parents in New York, where Benjamin was born and continues to live. His new memoir is called "Talk To Me: Lessons From A Family Forged By History."
Your father was originally from Guinea in Africa, and while you were in high school, he got a job in Guinea, which he really wanted to take. He really wanted to return. And he was an economist. He took the job. Your mother went with him. And you write there were virtually, like, no schools or colleges in Guinea at the time. So you and your siblings stayed behind, and your grandmother moved in to take care of you. And you felt pretty abandoned, similar to how your mother felt abandoned by her father. Can you talk about that period and what it was like to know that your mother was in another country while you were still in the U.S.?
BENJAMIN: Yes. So during those high school years, she was off in Africa, as my father was. And, Terry, you think about the yearly rituals that any high school person has, the annual birthdays, the annual homecoming dances, the football games and whatnot. And so they were gone for all of that, and they were gone, albeit helping the world and helping other people's children. They had humanitarian jobs.
GROSS: Yeah, your mother ran UNICEF programs in several African countries.
BENJAMIN: She ran UNICEF programs. It's - she ran. And it's a refrain I noticed because my grandfather said Haiti was his one greatest love, and my father said helping other people was also his greatest love. And so it's just a tension in this book about helping other children versus the ones under your roof.
GROSS: When you were a young man, you didn't want people to know that your mother was from Haiti. And there's a scene in your book early on where you're in a taxi with your then-boyfriend, and the cab driver detected a Caribbean accent and asked if you were from Haiti. And you said, no, I'm from New York. And he said, where are you originally from? And you said, New York. And he said, you have a Haitian accent. You have a Haitian face. But you didn't want to tell him you were Haitian. Why not?
BENJAMIN: My whole life, Haiti has been associated with dread. You know, we remember in the 1980s, the Haitian boat people. We remember the accusations that Haitians brought AIDS to United States.
GROSS: Yeah, the boat people were people trying to escape Haiti on, like, little makeshift boats who - heading toward the U.S.
BENJAMIN: Exactly. Exactly. But that was a thing when I was growing up. So it was, you know, Haitians with AIDS, Haitians who are boat people. And the other stigma was a kind of condescending pity for Haitians, and perhaps that was the most important. And so my boyfriend, in the cab at the time, he said, oh, my God, a Haitian nanny raised me. Poor, poor people. But what a resilient people. And I think that was characteristic of many people's attitude at the time is, on the one hand, there's this deep antipathy and anti-Haitianness. But on the other hand, there's a kind of clawing and condescending pity for the country. And so for those reasons, I didn't care to be associated as a, quote-unquote, "Haitian American."
GROSS: When did you change your mind about that?
BENJAMIN: Returning from Haiti in 2010. When I could actually visit the place, when I could actually understand through my research, through the CIA files, through my grandfather's life, through my mother's life. That's when I changed my mind about Haiti. I think part of the joy of this book is it's really not a trauma memoir. And I hate that word trauma. It's really about survival. It's really about people stumbling and rising through America. And it's really the ways that my mother is such a resilient survivor. And so those two are linked in my mind, Terry. Learning what resilient survivors my grandfather was, and my mother was that changed my mind about Haiti.
GROSS: So you went to Wesleyan University, and there you joined the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon, which is, I think, the same fraternity that George W. Bush had been in.
BENJAMIN: Yes, indeed.
GROSS: Yeah. So - and this was during a period - which we're probably still in - of, like, a lot of drinking. And were you out when you were in that fraternity?
BENJAMIN: No, I was not.
GROSS: Yeah, because fraternities are so much about big frat parties with lots of beer and more beer and even more beer, and it's all about, like, meeting girls and hooking up with girls. So I'm trying to figure out what that experience was like for you being gay and being in a fraternity like that.
BENJAMIN: It's ironic to think about. In looking back, I think I pledged that fraternity for the beer and the more beer. And there were some nice guys in the fraternity. But also there was this atmosphere of secrecy and confidentiality in that fraternity in particular, but all fraternities, and that appealed to me. That appealed to me.
GROSS: So you were hiding being gay and maybe also hiding being Haitian American?
BENJAMIN: Yes, but fraternities are also you're not meant to discuss what happens inside the hollow halls of a fraternity. And so it was just another layer of confidentiality and secrets and privacy that really I liked at the time, you know, being a young man. And of course, I'm drinking my face off. Of course, I'm doing keg stands. Of course, we're dancing to De La Soul. But it's also that idea and atmosphere of privacy and secrecy that I loved.
GROSS: Were you still having to perform being somebody who you weren't?
BENJAMIN: I was, yes.
GROSS: What was the performance like?
BENJAMIN: Well, in fairness to the fraternity, I think, looking back, a lot of people were performing. You know, you're a young guy, you're performing being a football player, you're performing being popular for other people. I'm performing what I'm performing. And so college is just a life of a lot of performance, faking it till you make it, and many people just being different people. All that being said, college is also where I, and many people, you're your most authentic because they really take the guardrails off, and you let loose. You have no parental supervision. And so I formed some really close friendships in college because we're very much ourselves. We're all having our hair down, and we're living far from home among each other for the first time.
GROSS: And everybody's trying out new personalities, trying to figure out who they are...
BENJAMIN: Yes. Yes.
GROSS: ...Away from their parents if they're going to out-of-town college.
BENJAMIN: ...Especially. And that's why we're there.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: That's right. You wanted to get as far away as possible.
BENJAMIN: Yes.
GROSS: Yeah. So when you started going to gay bars, it was during the AIDS epidemic, which is such a difficult time to start your sexual life. You must have been afraid of getting AIDS. At the same time, you really wanted to have a sex life.
BENJAMIN: Yes. For me, that was also a harrowing aspect of survival in that anytime I got a cough, anytime I got a scratchy throat, anytime I got a pimple, which I would think was a lesion, I would go into this panic. Do I have HIV? And it was - yeah, it was an awful time to come to one's sexuality. And I have to keep perspective. I have to have gratitude because the generation before me - they were literally going to funerals once a week. They literally lost whole dozens of friendships to the pandemic, and that didn't happen to me. I'm HIV negative. And I was able to really come into my sexuality at the end of it. And now there are drugs anyway, but still, it was not pleasant.
GROSS: Well, we have to take a short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Rich Benjamin. He's the author of the new book "Talk To Me." We'll be right back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOLANGE SONG, "WEARY")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Rich Benjamin. His maternal grandfather was a labor leader in Haiti, who was appointed president by a provisional government in 1957 but was overthrown by a military coup after 19 days in office. Benjamin's mother, who was 13 at the time, was forced by soldiers to go to barracks, where she was raped. She was later reunited with her parents in New York, where Benjamin was born and continues to live. His new memoir is called "Talk To Me."
When you started going to gay bars, you also started using a lot of cocaine. Did you have an end-of-the-world feeling because of the AIDS epidemic so party now?
BENJAMIN: Yes, indeed. You know, when I was young, there was this atmosphere of hedonism and death. There was a sense that I would not live past 40. And so I had this mentality - burn the candle hard at both ends; live fast, die young - in the way you think of James Dean or Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin. So I went at it hard. I went at it hard. But also, I was born with a blood disorder called sickle cell anemia. And when I was born, the life expectancy for children with sickle cell anemia, assuming they survived their childhood, was 40 years old. So I grew up not taking life for granted and kind of thinking I'd be dead by 41 anyway. So you might as well enjoy yourself, right?
GROSS: When - in that period when you were a young man and going to - using a lot of cocaine, you got arrested because you were very high. You saw a Mercedes and - go ahead. Tell the story.
BENJAMIN: It was one of these classic gay Manhattan nights on the town, and we'd been at a club called The Roxy that has three floors. And I was just in this kind of lucid, illusive luster. And I just saw a Mercedes that looked like a spaceship to me at that time in my hallucinatory state. And I remember the dashboard was gleaming, and it looked pretty, like a spaceship. And I tried to mount and get in the Mercedes, but its owners were feet away - to my detriment - and they yanked me out of the car, and they proceeded to pound the crap out of me.
GROSS: Then the police came and took you to the Manhattan detention center known as the Tombs. What was the cell like?
BENJAMIN: And I'll never forget this as long as I live. The cell was tiny, and there were four people crammed into the cell, and there was a latrine in the middle of the cell. And I'd never been to a cell like that, so it was especially more stark and jarring. And so it stank like feces. There's empty rolls of toilet paper, and there I was in the middle of the cell. And I remember there was plaster coming off the walls. It was horrible.
GROSS: Did that experience change your life? Like, how long were you in jail, and did that experience change you in any way?
BENJAMIN: The funny thing is it felt like I was in jail for three days, but when I documented - because I went back and got the police record - in fact, I was only in jail for 36 hours. So it did change my life. It changed my life. I understood leaving that jail that my life was on the wrong trajectory. And also, at that point in my life, it was just a confluence of forces that really shook me up and made me put my life back on track. And that was my twin sister gave birth to her firstborn, and my best friend gave birth to her firstborn, and I became the godfather of both children. And to me, that was a deep, profound, spiritual blessing. And it told me - it's one thing if I was going to ruin my own life and set that off course, but I wasn't going to do that to godchildren. And so I got on the straight and narrow, and since then, I haven't had any trouble.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Rich Benjamin. He's the author of the new book "Talk Benjamin. He's the author of the new book "Talk To Me."
I want to ask you about an earlier book you wrote in 2009. It was called "Searching For Whitopia: An Improbable Journey Into The Heart Of White America." What did you consider whitopia, a white version of utopia? And what was your goal in writing the book? What did you really want to learn?
BENJAMIN: I literally delineated the fastest-growing and whitest communities in this country. And once I did that, I packed my bags and embarked on a 27,000-mile journey that lasted two years to the whitest, fastest-growing communities in America.
GROSS: You were threading back and forth if it was 27,000 miles (laughter).
BENJAMIN: It was. It was a lot of travel. I got a lot of frequent flyer miles. And I just embedded myself. It was a project of hanging out. It was a project of deep immersion. And I just wanted to learn what these communities are like, why they were growing so fast and why they were so white.
GROSS: Did you get any answers to those questions?
BENJAMIN: I did.
GROSS: What were they?
BENJAMIN: I learned about racial segregation that largely wasn't consciously racial. People were lured by these towns for better homes, more home for your dollar, beautiful natural resources - lakes, running trails, hospitals. And yet there was a lot of implicit bias. It was kind of white flight 3.0. And these places are Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, Forsyth County, Georgia, St. George, Utah. There are a lot of whitopias in Wisconsin and Minnesota. And so some experts call these the exurbs, but they're not just the exurbs. They're white exurbs that are getting even whiter. And the prescience of this book was to understand what a big deal immigration is to these residents, these white voters, and to learn how dissatisfied they were with the ways this country was going.
GROSS: Tell us more about what you found about immigration.
BENJAMIN: Oh, my goodness. For example, when I was in St. George, Utah, I sat in on a local group called the Citizens Council against Illegal Immigration. And every week, local people would convene to figure out how they could combat immigration. And I interviewed them. And they would say things like, the California of my youth isn't what it is now. And I'm using their words now - it's just overridden and infested by immigrants. And so they were battering down the hatches. They felt that places like California, Texas and Florida were becoming too brown and too immigrant. And so they would go to these whitopias, and they would discuss immigration.
GROSS: I know there were a lot of golf courses in the places that you visited. And you played golf with a whole lot of people who you interviewed. What about guns?
BENJAMIN: There was a gun culture in whitopia. In Kootenai County, there were more gun dealers than gas stations when I was there. And so there's this idolatry of guns and the Second Amendment. And surely enough, after I've written these books, these issues of immigration and property values and guns just blew up. And by the way, I learned a lot about people's antipathy towards the government in these communities. And so what the book does is it really is prescient in terms of the Tea Party movement that would come about, and it was prescient in terms of Trumpism.
GROSS: So what did you learn in terms of thoughts about diversity? Because right now there's an emphasis of cutting diversity, equity and inclusion - DEI - throughout the federal government.
BENJAMIN: At the time on my journey through whitopia, I learned that people liked diversity only in cultural forms, in terms of what television shows they were watching, in terms of what food they could eat. But when diversity came in the form of actual human beings, that's when things got sticky. And so another thing that the book could really suss out is the antipathy towards diversity that would really flare in these communities.
At the time, I remember vividly interviewing people. And I would hear things like, what's wrong with homogeneity? If neighborhoods shake out like this, what's wrong with that? And they would say things like diversity is a challenge to excellence. It's all about the content of character. So in those days, there was a refusal to think about things like implicit bias. There was a refusal to think about how communities are zoned and designed to exclude people - i.e., apartment owners. And so diversity was this thing that was poorly discussed. And it's not surprising that it's under attack now.
GROSS: So what was it like for you as a Black man to be in the communities that you describe as whitopia?
BENJAMIN: It was very dissonant because on one level, people were kind. I did go golfing. I did go bowling. I did go fishing with a lot of these residents, and they really did open their homes to me. And it just brings up this caustic saying. One Black man is a delightful dinner guest - 50 Black men is a ghetto. And so, as I said, managed forms of comfortable diversity are OK in these communities. But when you think about tipping points and diversity that they can't control, that's when it becomes scary and authoritarian.
GROSS: Well, we have to take a short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Rich Benjamin. He's the author of the new book "Talk To Me." We'll be right back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Rich Benjamin. His maternal grandfather was a labor leader in Haiti, who was appointed president by a provisional government in 1957 but was overthrown by a military coup after 19 days in office. His new memoir is called "Talk To Me."
So getting back to Haiti for a minute, after your grandfather was removed from the presidency by the military. And it was a coup that the U.S. had a hand in - the Eisenhower administration. When you look at what happened to Haiti afterward, when you look at President Duvalier, who was a brutal dictator, and when you look at, like, the chaos now with gangs having taken over the capital, Port-au-Prince, do you wonder what Haiti might have been like if your grandfather had remained president?
BENJAMIN: I do. I do, because when he was ousted in 1957, that was a tender moment in the life cycle of that country. And I think those 40 years, let's say from 1957 on, were critical. And I think if those 40 years had gone in a different direction, I believe the country would have been better off. And would he have been the best president of Haiti? I don't know. But I do know that Haiti went in that wrong dictatorial direction precisely at the wrong moment because Haiti was on an upward trajectory. It was a vacation destination to rival Jamaica at the time, to rival Cuba at the time. It had glamour. People were educated. People read. It had all this foreign tourism. And so had he been president and not - had the country not lost those critical 40 years, it would be way better off.
And also, the brain drain - so many capable Haitians were either murdered or they were just ousted from the country. And so all these countries, especially America and Canada, are benefiting from these Haitian Americans and actual Haiti is not. And it's difficult to calculate that devastating loss of brain power, devotion and human capital that Haiti lost under the dictatorship. And in part, we're seeing the consequences of that. And it's not at all to say that they're not educated, capable, intelligent people there now. Clearly, they are. But I'm talking about volume and magnitude.
GROSS: Well, Rich Benjamin, it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.
BENJAMIN: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure to talk to you also.
GROSS: Rich Benjamin's new memoir is called "Talk To Me: Lessons From A Family Forged By History."
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GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
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