I do agree with statements that in DR race plays a secondary role for african-americans as they are seen as gringos. By deep racism I mean:
embedded into the psyche
long stading historical, cultural roots
difficult to spot
often denied - "unseen"
hard to eradicate
Not just AA's, it plays a secondary role with everyone. You are treated according to your socio-economic status. That status is present in various forms:
- The way you dress, groom.
- The way you talk, particularly Dominican Spanish. The gulf is immense.
- The way you think. As a general rule of thumb, lower class people tend to be more inclined towards being pessimistic and fatalistic, and (gulp) believing in conspiracy theories.
- In some cases, you can even tell by the corporal smell. Poor Dominicans tend to clean themselves with cuava soap, which produces a distinct smell/aroma from more refined products used by non-poor people. This is more noticeable when surrounded by a group of people.
As for the 'its difficult to spot', well I think it is difficult to spot because its relatively rare.
In much of the English literature that has been written about Dominican culture, perhaps 99% has been written by foreigners, and much of it appears to be a mere repetition of what was published in the original literature, when Dominican culture was beginning to be studied for the first time.
This 'repetition ad nauseum' is an incentive for the propagation of misinformation and misunderstandings of Dominican society by foreigners. Sometimes these misinformations are subtle, as in the references to Joaqu?n Balaguer's book "La Isla Al Rev?s" as "The Upside Down Island." I've read that translation in every single article/document that has been published in English. The 'kicker' is that the correct translation should be "The Backward Island" of which not a single English-language "study", article, and critique of Dominican society; particularly when its about the suppose 'racism', has ever referred to the book by its correct translation. If this type of misunderstanding that originated from the first foreign "investigator" to refer to such book to support their thesis has not been corrected to this day, one can only imagine what other type of information has gone this route. Its also a testament to a continuous repetition of information with not much analysis being done by more recent foreign "experts" concerning the validity of what has been published in English about Dominican society.
At other times, its obvious that a certain discrepancy has been 'discovered' by a particular foreign author and he/she will make the adequate change to keep their thesis of the DR being very racist in tact. A good example of this is Joaqu?n Balaguer himself. Often times, on the various articles/documents written about this subject, the various foreign authors pin point to Trujillo as the catalyst, but very often they shift away from Trujillo and focus on Balaguer as the one to receive the brunt of the chastisement for the suppose 'severe racism.' One interesting fact that has always been known is that Trujillo was a Mulatto and he looked the part. His siblings had even greater markings of being Mulattoes. Balaguer, on the other hand, has always been casted, even in English-language literature of the DR, as White. They always make reference to Balaguer's 'race' by writing the world white prior to his name. I think we all know that whenever anyone is referring to racism, inserting the role play of Whites in that ideology is paramount in creating the ephemeral other and showing a sort of racial war or battle. The conquering of the non-White man by the White one. But, in an interesting turn of fate, it turns out that Balaguer was never White, but also a Mulatto. He was related by blood (distant cousin) of Ulises Hereaux, the dictator of the DR in the late 1800s known as Lilis. He was, perhaps, the darkest Dominican to have ever ruled the DR (as dark as the late Jos? Francisco Pe?a G?mez). In light of this, now two ways of referring to Balaguer has emerged in the English-language literature concerning Dominican society. On the one hand there are those 'not in the know' who still make reference to Balaguer as a White, but on the other hand, there are articles beginning to surface in which Balaguer is now referred to as "white-skinned", which is different from simply White, given that to be white skinned, a person has to have a color resembling that of the whites, even if the person is of partial-White ancestry. Plus, now there seems to be an effort in attempting to make him seem foreign, as to give the impression that the DR has been controlled by foreign people, using his Puertorican father as enough to consider Balaguer non-Dominican, or almost non-Dominican; despite his very Dominican mother, of whom we also know had partial Haitian ancestry.
The fact that Mulatto Trujillo has been 'left off the hook' in order to put most of the blame on the "White" Balaguer, poses an interesting twist to the insistance by many foreigners to instill a White vs. Black/Mulatto paradigm, especially when Haitians are thrown into the equation. What its now obvious and has been obvious to Dominicans - despite foreigners ignoring Dominicans on the unwritten by widely understood belief that all Dominicans are brainwashed, hence Dominicans can't be trusted in explaining their own history- is that what has been occurring is more of a Dominican vs. Haitian ordeal, and it has always been simply that. Hence the insistance of Trujillo to differentiate Black Dominicans from Black Haitians in the 1930s through the use of the word Perejil. It was never a White vs. Black/Mulatto ordeal, it could be argued that it was a Mulatto vs. Black ordeal - but this can be easily contested; but what it was for sure was a Dominican vs. Haitian ordeal.
There have been instances of foreign "experts" inventing stuff to support their beliefs of Dominican society. From my understanding, this is what happened by a foreign anthropologist who went to Villa Mella to "investigate and document" the Congos. An elaborate "study" was done connecting the people from VM to the actual Congo in Africa, using various examples of suppose evidence. As it turned out, it was all an invention. There were no connections at all, no serious study. It was all an attempt by a foreign anthropologist to gain fame and utilizing the DR as the perfect subject, using the African connections as a perfect example of such in the DR and Dominican "denial."
And there are an infinite number of little nuances clearly visible to any Dominican who fully understands his culture, his country, and his people in ways that no foreigner will be able to - given that foreigners were not subjected to Dominican culture from birth. Plus, the effect the foreigner's original culture have on their way of interpreting the world, even when they try to shed such influences, is still there and does has an effect that will present all or part of Dominican society in ways that are simply not truly applicable to the Dominican case.
And from this, I think, stems the divergence from the way many Dominicans analyze
our culture vs. the way foreigners see it or prefer to see it.
-NALs