“Combat de Vertières” by Patrick Noze, oil on canvas, from Haitian Art in the Diaspora. The Battle of Vertières was the decisive engagement of the Haitian revolution, fought in November 1803.

In this interview, College of Staten Island CUNY professor and anthropologist Philippe-Richard Marius, author of The Unexceptional Case of Haiti: Race and Class Privilege in Postcolonial Bourgeois Society (University Press of Mississippi, 2022) breaks down the social and political nature of Haiti’s racial and class structures, both past and present. Without undermining the incredible accomplishment of the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue and by employing ethnographic research and conducting personal interviews, he interprets the material culture of the country to explain it as an unexceptional case study.