Dominican Anti-Blackness

Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, Social Science on 2016-06-01 01:19Z by Steven

Dominican Anti-Blackness

bluestockings magazine

Perla Montas

We were socialized from an early age to name blackness. To taunt it, to call it names. My friends and I compared skin colors as we played the “who’s blacker?” game.

“You’re blacker than me, Perla!”

“Haitiana, you lose!”

My parents groomed an identity that privileged straight hair and lighter skin, while compromising my kinks and self-esteem.

“I need 25 dollars to straighten Perla’s greña. It looks messy. She needs to look good for picture day.”

My inherited black skin and kinky hair were my parents’ greatest shame and the butt of my friends’ jokes.

La Raza Dominicana, a term that refers to Dominican people and culture as a collective, is actually used to highlight the Dominican Republic’s pluralities. The term celebrates all of the racial, ethnic, and cultural origins that have positively influenced expressions of Dominicanidad. Like Cuba and Brazil, the Dominican Republic has an extensive history of racial mixing between Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, and European colonizers. Yet under Spanish rule, colonizer violence and disease diminished the Indigenous population from 400,000 to 60,000 people by 1508, leaving a population of mostly miscegenated people (Howard, 31). As such, the DR has a population of primarily black people. According to current statistics, the Dominican Republic has an afro-descendant population of nearly 8 million people, the fifth largest black population outside of Africa.

While the colors and aesthetics of Dominican people are endless, it is important to keep in mind that white supremacy still operates insidiously in miscegenated societies…

Read the entire article here.

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