- Thread starter PeterInBrat
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Hour long documentary comparing the DR and Haiti
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I don't see where Gates is any sort of opportunist or lazy, his approach is to interview people closest to the issue at hd and elicit their answers. I would think that this is what an American academic should do: ask Haitians about their history and ask Dominicans about theirs. I did not get the impression that he suggests that Dominicans are racists at all.
If the heavy lifting you refer to is determining what are the prevailing attitudes of Dominicans with regard to race and Haiti, I think that these would be best addressed by Dominicans rather than some American professor of any color.
Skin lightening creams are prevalent in the US as well as in the Spanish, French and Dutch Caribbean, and not only there, but in every country in Africa. The ads that sell in Nigeria, the RSA, Botswana, Ghana tend to feature female models with lighter complexions than the average Nigerian., South African, Botswanan or Ghanian. There is an excellent youtube by Tyra Banks on the whole "color struck" issue in the US.
I recall when I lived in Mexico, a very popular beer was a light lager (or is it a Pilsner?) called Superior. All the ads featured a woman who appeared to be an female angel of perhaps Norwegian extraction, with the slogan "SUPERIOR: Su rubia de categoria", (SUPERIOR: Your High-Class blonde").
Cerveza Negra Modelo, a very tasty dark Vienna-style lager did not ( and still does not) use a model in its ads at all.
And yes, I am aware that the Holy Mother Church insists that Angels do not come in female, because being immortal and all, they do not reproduce or have any need to do so. Having never seen any type of angel, I have no personal opinion on this, and am waiting for an angel to appear and submit to an interview.
If the heavy lifting you refer to is determining what are the prevailing attitudes of Dominicans with regard to race and Haiti, I think that these would be best addressed by Dominicans rather than some American professor of any color.
Skin lightening creams are prevalent in the US as well as in the Spanish, French and Dutch Caribbean, and not only there, but in every country in Africa. The ads that sell in Nigeria, the RSA, Botswana, Ghana tend to feature female models with lighter complexions than the average Nigerian., South African, Botswanan or Ghanian. There is an excellent youtube by Tyra Banks on the whole "color struck" issue in the US.
I recall when I lived in Mexico, a very popular beer was a light lager (or is it a Pilsner?) called Superior. All the ads featured a woman who appeared to be an female angel of perhaps Norwegian extraction, with the slogan "SUPERIOR: Su rubia de categoria", (SUPERIOR: Your High-Class blonde").
Cerveza Negra Modelo, a very tasty dark Vienna-style lager did not ( and still does not) use a model in its ads at all.
And yes, I am aware that the Holy Mother Church insists that Angels do not come in female, because being immortal and all, they do not reproduce or have any need to do so. Having never seen any type of angel, I have no personal opinion on this, and am waiting for an angel to appear and submit to an interview.
What does it matter if he didn't "suggest" that Dominicans are racist or not? It makes no difference because it still doesn't change the fact his documentary is frequently cited and used as evidence that Dominican people are self-loathing racists who don't want to be Black because they refuse to bow to the vestiges of American P.C. thuggery and because outsiders and foreigners refuse to understand their distinctdynamics regarding race/ethnicity/identity in. Add in other factors like cultural imperialism, presumptions, falsehoods, and half-truths, and you have the current mess the D.R. is in with Haiti. Also, just because there may be folks out there in Latin America who resent their sub-Saharan African ancestry or Afro-hair texture to point they go through lengths to straighten it and bleaching the dark skin doesn't give license for folks to universalize such incidents and claim they're the norm. Sammy Sousa, the Afro-Dominican baseball player who bleached his skin, and has become a caricature for folks to joke, bully and attack the Dominican Republic and its people and a hilarious skewered representation of how they feel about their African ancestry.
This is the first time I've heard about any skin-bleaching epidemic in the Spanish Caribbean because while it's pretty damn near impossible to picture that individuals like that DON'T exist and some may resent darker hues and the like....The Spanish Caribbean are mostly MIXED-RACE island nations, and with a mixed-race in these nations, the populace will vary in skin tone, their physical appearances, hair-texture, and etc......Many will not have dark hues and will be considered, as they say, "lily white", and because what's considered "dark skinned" or "preto" is subjective for a lot folks. Interestingly enough, many of these Black majority countries in the Caribbean and African nations, demonstrating their ethnocentric moral and cultural superiority because of their allegedly love for their Blackness and pride, seem to suffer fundamentally worse with the skin-bleaching and the so called "colonial mentality". At least Latin Americans have blood connection with our conquerors, not all of it which is just imperialism, exploitation rape, genocide and etc.... like many would love to argue.
Your comment about the advertisements for the beer you mentioned in Mexico reminds of another falsehood: That Latin American people, especially the "darker-skinned" ones, value white skin, blonde eyes, and those ghastly-pale complexion above all else. This is perhaps only applicable for "sex tourist" countries where you see the local men hook up with White Western women to shag them because they're "exotic" or "easy". Its funny, I always hear folks complaining about racially charged jokes towards the Blacks, Indians or "dark-skinned people" in regards to certain aesthetics these groups normally have and often mention their skin tone in a derogatory fashion but I also seem to recall equal many racially charged chokes to "gringos" or white-skinned/light-skinned Latinos that are equally unmerciful and mean-spirited, especially those of us Latinos who've been accused of "acting and looking like gringos", something that's considered disparaging and means of telling us were not, authentically, "real (insert random Latin American nationality"). Ironically, all of those come from the same said "dark-skinned" (as far as what's considered "dark skinned") people who complain about colorism and race/ethnicity in Latin America, at least when they're personally affected by it. Seems they can be just as bigoted, hateful, mean and cruel and politically incorrect as those "gringos" or "blanquitos". You see this pathology among more "ethnic-looking" Nuyoricans, DominYorks and African Americans who have their own idiotic presumptions and stereotypes on what were suppose to look like. I guess the actual conscious is you can't be too dark or too light, which seems to be just as as toxic as well.
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