The ongoing humanitarian crisis situation in Haiti is getting worse. Meanwhile, the Dominican Republic, which shares the same island, continues to round up and deport people they believe to be undocumented Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. They then dump them across the border. Last week the untenable situation became even worse when the United States embassy in the Dominican Republic issued a warning to travelers from the U.S. to the Dominican Republic that they might get swept up and locked up if they happened to look Haitian, meaning if they have dark skin.
The Dominican government reacted immediately to reject the implications of the warning, as did certain elected officials here, including Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a right-wing Republican Cuban-American congressperson from Florida.
Denial is not a river in Egypt, and the loud protests of Dominicans denying anti-Black racism there, which has a long history, fall flat on the ears of many who know better, including Afro-Dominican voices here in the U.S.
RELATED STORY: Caribbean Matters: Dominican Republic builds a wall with Haiti, while dropping COVID-19 protections
Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.
Here is the alert issued by the U.S. embassy in the Dominican Republic:
Response from both news media and individuals followed swiftly. Richard Luscombe wrote for The Guardian:
Yup. The U.S. has a crap track record. That doesn’t negate that what the Dominican Republic is doing is official racist policy. From the time they decided to remove birthright citizenship for Black Dominicans with Haitian ancestors, government racism was patently obvious.
RELATED STORY: If you are Black, get out: The crisis of statelessness in the Dominican Republic
Other reactions to the news of the warning also mention the recent Dominican government 668-22 decree, which instituted a special police force to round up thousands of Haitian laborers, many of whom have been working in the fields for decades. This includes, in practice, Dominicans of Haitian descent and Afro-Dominicans:
Dominican Professor of English at the University of Toronto Ayendy Bonifacio tweeted:
(Blanqueamiento is a policy of social whitening.)
Journalist Jillian Kestler-D'Amours reported for Al Jazeera:
As I mentioned earlier, Florida Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar got into the act with an outraged tweet. Queue the appeal to the right-wing Florida Cuban community tucked into her message.
I was glad to see some Dominicans weighing in.
For those of you who have a little time to delve into the history of Dominican racial attitudes, watch this 2020 conversation held on “Anti-Black Racism and Colorism in the Dominican Community.” It was held in the Bronx, which is home to a large Dominican American population, and the talk covers both past and present attitudes and efforts to change them.
YouTube Video
And for another narrative, listen to New Jersey attorney Ednin D. Martinez, who is from the predominantly Black Dominican town of San Pedro de Macorís, which was settled originally by many Black English speaking immigrants. She talks frankly about being an Afro-Dominicana. (In her talk she references a 2007 Miami Herald story by Frances Robles on “Black denial.”)
YouTube Video
The issue of colorism and racism in groups lumped into the grab-bag “people of color” demographic has both overarching political implications as well as personally painful ones. The only way to begin to heal and change it is to air the situation openly and acknowledge it exists.
The Dominican government reacted immediately to reject the implications of the warning, as did certain elected officials here, including Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a right-wing Republican Cuban-American congressperson from Florida.
Denial is not a river in Egypt, and the loud protests of Dominicans denying anti-Black racism there, which has a long history, fall flat on the ears of many who know better, including Afro-Dominican voices here in the U.S.
RELATED STORY: Caribbean Matters: Dominican Republic builds a wall with Haiti, while dropping COVID-19 protections
Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.
Here is the alert issued by the U.S. embassy in the Dominican Republic:
Response from both news media and individuals followed swiftly. Richard Luscombe wrote for The Guardian:
Yup. The U.S. has a crap track record. That doesn’t negate that what the Dominican Republic is doing is official racist policy. From the time they decided to remove birthright citizenship for Black Dominicans with Haitian ancestors, government racism was patently obvious.
RELATED STORY: If you are Black, get out: The crisis of statelessness in the Dominican Republic
Other reactions to the news of the warning also mention the recent Dominican government 668-22 decree, which instituted a special police force to round up thousands of Haitian laborers, many of whom have been working in the fields for decades. This includes, in practice, Dominicans of Haitian descent and Afro-Dominicans:
Dominican Professor of English at the University of Toronto Ayendy Bonifacio tweeted:
(Blanqueamiento is a policy of social whitening.)
Journalist Jillian Kestler-D'Amours reported for Al Jazeera:
As I mentioned earlier, Florida Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar got into the act with an outraged tweet. Queue the appeal to the right-wing Florida Cuban community tucked into her message.
I was glad to see some Dominicans weighing in.
For those of you who have a little time to delve into the history of Dominican racial attitudes, watch this 2020 conversation held on “Anti-Black Racism and Colorism in the Dominican Community.” It was held in the Bronx, which is home to a large Dominican American population, and the talk covers both past and present attitudes and efforts to change them.
YouTube Video
And for another narrative, listen to New Jersey attorney Ednin D. Martinez, who is from the predominantly Black Dominican town of San Pedro de Macorís, which was settled originally by many Black English speaking immigrants. She talks frankly about being an Afro-Dominicana. (In her talk she references a 2007 Miami Herald story by Frances Robles on “Black denial.”)
YouTube Video
The issue of colorism and racism in groups lumped into the grab-bag “people of color” demographic has both overarching political implications as well as personally painful ones. The only way to begin to heal and change it is to air the situation openly and acknowledge it exists.