- Thread starter Dolores1
- Start date
Tribute to African-Americans in Samana
It happens 2 century ago, they just acknowledging their history, the new generations rarely speak English.
I know one, he never mentioned it until I asked him why one of his last name was English.
Your bias is showing.
Yet Boyer was mixed race himself, and part of the movement behind his downfall would be the revolt of black peasants from the north due to feeling oppressed by him and his kind (on the application of the Code Rural). Oh the irony.
by whom? most Dominicans do not consider themselves Afro anything. i had a Dominican girl tell me that she could not be racist, because she had no problems associating with me, even though i am black and she is white.
she is ten shades darker than i am.
i know a Dominican guy who manages a parking lot on Water St in NYC. the guy is so black, he shines. he rejoiced when Leonel beat Pena Gomez for the presidency, and i asked him what it was about Leonel that made him so happy.
"the guy Pena Gomez is too black to run the country", he replied.
One classmate in College replied after I told him that I was from France:"oh, i thought you were Black". We are the same complexion. So, I think Blacks to many means African Americans.
Other than that, I have never heard a moreno, morenita, negro refer to themselves as blanco/blanca.
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That is my experience as well. In fact, that is reflected in the US census, in which DR's are the Hispanic group that marks the white box the less (contrary to what one can see with the very clearly Amerindian/Choloid Central Americans on said census).
My wife has 8 brothers and sisters from Braun to really black. She is the most "light skinned" and they all call her La Rubia (blondie). Never understood this.
that makes sense to me. i think it really has a lot to do with AntiHaitianismo rather than racism.
For you to understand this, you would have to study the very informality permeating the Dominican nation since its inception, one in which (until recently) a person's word was enough to seal deals of any and every kind in lieu of documentation. In the specific case of your wifey, her nick only tends to reflect the fact that she's lighter in comparison to her siblings, but nothing further than that. In an informal society such as this, nicknames (even those which would be considered offensive in your cold, cold, cold and pc, pc, pc lands) tend to stick more than the official names and surnames of a given person.
A bit off topic, but I have noticed that many/most Dominicans use a nickname, or even a completely different name, as opposed to what is on their cedula/birth certificate....
Kind of nickname, in a family of light skins, the one who will be slightly olive (hardly black), would be called affectionately negra.
Same as Rubia, never seen a real one, it usually someone light (or lighter) skin.
Just a Snake's said (just read his reply)
Maybe this has something to do with frustrations amongst some Dominicans about their color and wanting to be more White. I call it the Michel Jackson syndrome.
You're giving too much meaning to something that is entirely superficial. It could have gone the same way if they had called her "La Flaca", "La Gorda", etc. But then, there aren't many among you, blancs, that are willing to think outside the box and go farther than the stereotypes you have about us.
Very true, my son has blond hair, blue eyes, would fit in Norway, Sweden. Mother an family call him mi negro. nothing to do with skin color.
Lots of true Rubios/as in Jarabacoa, but in general I'd have to agree that Rubio is used as a decriptive adjective to identify a White skinned non-gringo. I've only heard mi negra /negro used as a term of affection.
It took me quite some time to adjust to how Dominicans view race and ethnicity. I am an African-American and was in college during the sixties at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. When I first visited the DR about 14 years ago it was the first time I had been confronted with the reality that not every culture viewed ethnicity in the same way and that the crucible of our historical experience profoundly shapes our prospective. I know, it shouldn't have taken me so long to come to that, but the experience of race in America for a black man is just that deep. There are a lot of things that I have learned from Dominicans over the years. This adaptation has changed how I view race and ethnicity forever. I know that there is, nevertheless, a great deal of racism and racial self-loathing among my Dominican brothers. But, before imposing the 'racist' label we must not impose the context of our own experiences on Dominicans whose experience and history is total different.
Interesting comment Ron. How do you know that they have a lot of racial self-loathing? Isn't that comment in itself projecting.
Yes. I truly believe that self-loathing is a challenge all African peoples who lived during the aftermath of colonization, enslavement, segregation, and Jim Crow had to deal with at some point. People of color were considered inferior, and, at some times in our history, sub-human. The darker you were, the more sub-human, the more animal-like, the more ignorant and incapable of intellectual achievement. It was an intentional degrading by the 'others' to sublimate, and it worked! Dominicans are not the only people of the diaspora who did not want that label. So, in the DR, it became mulatto, a proud mix of Taino, Spanish, and African. And it is beautiful.