Written by Carlos Polanco
The chocolate skin, the nappy hair, the internal identity suppressed and pushed down to be forgotten. For most Dominicans it’s not uncommon to deny one’s blackness, to forget one’s past. I remember when I was still living in D.R. and I would hear people speaking of Haitians calling them “maldito negro” which translates to “damn nigger.”
At the time it seemed perfectly normal to me because it was ordinary. It had never occurred to me that the people who I was raised to see as “taking our jobs, practicing voodoo, and lesser than us” were in reality very much like me. They weren’t taking our jobs, they were simply taking the jobs that we didn’t want, the jobs that we thought we were too good for, that they were Roman Catholics just like the rest of us.
But above all that they were equal to me, to us. Sometimes their skin color was just like mine, and when it wasn’t it was richer in pigment and sometimes even lighter. It wasn’t until I came to America at the age of 5 that I began to reflect on my native country and realize just how racist it is and was.
When speaking of racism I go by the definition that Beverly Daniel Tatum uses in her book “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria”: “A system of advantage based on race.” So yes, in the Dominican Republic, Dominicans can be racist towards Haitians, because Dominicans have power-it is perpetuated, and systemized. But contrary to popular belief, people of color cannot be racist towards whites since we live in a White-dominated society, but that’s a slightly different topic.
In the Dominican Republic, people of my color and darker, are the white folks, and the Haitians the Black folk. I will never forget the look that a Haitian boy gave to me when I was younger; we met each other’s eyes and I sensed the wall between us. I felt the distance that separated us, the line that he wasn’t able to pass, the green fields that he wouldn’t be able to get to. The opportunities that were simply not there for him, the life that he was being forced into. He walked away with his parents and might’ve not thought much about that day, but I will forever remember that moment.
The root cause of this was the rejection of our common blackness, the ignoring of the nappy hair, the chocolate skin, the shared struggle of white colonization and slavery. We forget that not too long ago we too were seen as the “maldito negro” by whites. We forget the struggles of trying to survive and provide food for our families. We forget that just a couple generations back we worked the fields, we were whipped, our women raped, and our children taken from us. In the minds of many Dominicans every time we push down Haitians we rise. It is long due that we realize that our future success are intertwined and by keeping Haitians down we hinder ourselves.
It wasn’t until very recently that I accepted my own blackness and came to terms with. I didn’t know if I could consider myself Black, if I would fit into the community, if I would be mislabelling myself. Growing up a Dominican I was taught to reject being Black, but I can now say I’m Black and I’m proud. I’ve accepted my past and am willing to embrace a different future, a future that’s filled with a hell of a lot of melanin.
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