Joined: 02 Feb 2010 {Posts: 5 } Location: Hampton Roads, VA
Posted: Sat 15 Jul 2006 13:19 Post subject:
fwsweet wrote:
Olorun1 wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
Olorun1 wrote:
...
This is formal request #2 for your source that most Dominicans self-identify "racially" (rather than nationally or culturally).
Racially as we're used to [odr], Dominicans do not classify themselves. However, in doing so by culture and nationality, is a form of disassociating themselves from the Haitians and blackness. In DR Haiti is synonymous with being black, as Ernesto Sagas argues in the Antihaitinismo thread I posted in the Caribbean Basin Forum.
Sagas's conclusion is the same as mine, which you disagreed with: that most Dominicans self-identify nationally or culturally and DO NOT self-identify "racially." Since you have now flipped back to this earlier, well-documented position, you need not provide sources. We already have copious sources in this thread supporting the conclusion that most Dominicans DO NOT self-identify "racially" (including Salsassin's Google-search findings).
Next time, however, you might want to warn your readers in advance when you intend to switch to the opposite conclusion, and then jump back again back again two posts later when challenged by the administatrion.
I disagree with your assessment of my position. I did not "switch" positions, I did told you earlier that the complexities of the Dominican Republic is not 'cut & dry' as you and others presented here.
In challenging my positions and perspective as I see and studied race relations in the island, you've shown a disturbing degree of intolerance for the answers I give you, or replies I give others. Your usage of language to address what I write is without reasoning such as "cloak, weaseled" -- and now this.
I believe that my contributions here are not accepted nor tolerated, and on that note I'll simply thank you for the opportunity. Please, kindly delete my account.
Part of Sagas' article on Antihaitianismo, explaining the roots of a Dominican identity, and perhaps the motives:
Even though the Amerindian population of Hispaniola was exterminated in less than a century, the Dominican elites portrayed the Dominican people as the descendants of these brave indians and the Spanish colonists. It was a greater honor to have a rebellious indian as a predecessor than an African slave. Soon, Dominican mulattoes started considering themselves indios (an obvious reference to their claimed indian ancestry). Mulattoes, who make up the majority of the Dominican population, disappeared, to be replaced by the Dominican indio. Being indio also helped the mulatto to "whiten" his own perception of his color and race (Despradel 1974, 94-97). To hide a common African past, the words "black" and "mulatto" also disappeared from Dominican Spanish, and were replaced by the less traumatic and more socially-desirable indio. "Black" and "mulatto" referred to Haitians, who were considered the real blacks.
When asked about this, Jorge Estevez gave this response.
Quote:
Yes Jaime this has been the official stance of the DR government for a long time. However neither the government nor anyone else for that matter can contest the fact that there is Indian biological heritage in the DR.
The use of the "Indio" color to describe Dominicans has nothing to do with Native American identification. These terms were used by said government to distinguish Dominicans from Haitians.
The wonderful thing about living in this time is that now we can finally test if indeed Dominicans or other Caribbean people have Taino Indian blood. The DNA tests confirm this as did a A-B-O blood group study conducted by J ALvarez in the 50's.
One thing is certain; Dominincans have a tendency to identify with Indian over anything else. I argue that this is due to us having a very real biological, cultural and linguistic connection to our Indigenous ancestors. The terms African, Spanish, Mullato disconnect us from our homelands \, rendering us almost immigrants in our homelands.
It is the Indian that connects us to our lands and we continue to be Indigenous to Kiskeya.
Believe it or not, many identify with Indio, but few with Taino. Its what I call the "magical stupid"! For some reason or another our people have been so estranged from our Taino ancestry that the idea that we are somehow connected to them seems absurd, yet we romantically connect to the indian. It is very odd indeed. Nothing that education cannot solve.
Joined: 11 May 2005 {Posts: 84 } Location: New York
Posted: Sat 15 Jul 2006 14:35 Post subject: People denying their blackness
fwsweet wrote:
This present thread, on the other hand, can continue with its now-crumbling topic: (1) That most Dominicans refuse to consider themselves "black." and (2) That this attitude is morally reprehensible on their part.
Here is a broader perspective on the issue. It brings out similarities between Latino and Arab identities, and gives an answer to the second question.
Carlos Moore sees a disguised racism permeating Latin American society, invented by Arabs in the Iberian Peninsula.
By Anson Musselman
The Rules of the Subtle Race Game
Moore recalled that Hollywood wanted to make a film about Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. They had cast an African American in the role, only to have to pull the plug on the project when Sadat objected to a black man portraying him. Sadat, being the leader of Egypt, considered himself white, according to Moore. Moore said there are black-looking Arabs and Latin Americans who consider themselves white because they have some distant white ancestry. “The only problem is when they go to New York."
Moore expressed some concern about the implications for race relations in the United States posed by the increasing immigration from Mexico and Latin America. While he clearly regarded the often overt racism of the North as perhaps even more objectionable than the Arab-Spanish form in the South, he saw a particular problem in the general Latin American denial of race as an issue. This has made it socially disreputable to raise demands for reform in Latin America around race issues.
Moore concluded by expressing the hope that these new Latin American immigrants will not import their Arab-Latin American model of race relations, as with it comes a false color blindness. To Moore, the U.S. model of dealing with race, while far from ideal, enables groups to make demands on society, and to be able to work for change.
Here is another discussion of the similarities between Latino and Arab identities. This discussion is very broad. It might belong in another discussion, but I’ll let the moderator decide. The article is an Arab discussion of race. And its fascinating.
Slavery, Genocide and the Politics of Outrage: Understanding the New “Racial Olympics”
Hishaam D. Aidi
Hishaam D. Aidi is a researcher at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.
In October 1999, PBS aired The Wonders of the African World, a six-part documentary produced by the renowned African-American intellectual, Henry Louis Gates, wherein the Harvard educator travels from Egypt to Sudan and down the Swahili coast of East Africa and up though parts of West Africa examining the encounter between Africa and Arab civilization and the role of Africans and Arabs in the enslavement of Africans. In Egypt, Gates reflects on the “facial features” of monuments in Aswan, noting the “blackness” of the pharaohs and pondering whether construction of the Aswan Dam that inundated ancient Nubia was an act of Arab racism. In the coastal Kenyan cities of Lamu and Mombasa, and on the island of Zanzibar, he talks to a number of natives who, to his dismay, define themselves as being of “Arab” or “Persian” descent. “To me, people here look about as Persian as Mike Tyson,” Gates remarks, “It’s taken my people 50 years to move from Negro to black to African-American. I wonder how long it will take the Swahili to call themselves African.”
The Wonders of the African World was guided by peculiarly American conceptions of race and blackness, the most obvious being the “one-drop rule,” by which anyone deemed possessing so much as one drop of black blood was to be considered fully black and subjected to the legal system of racial domination known as Jim Crow. Asked by one critic why he considered ancient Egyptians more authentically African than modern Egyptians, Gates responds: “I suspect that if the average ancient Egyptian had shown up in Mississippi in 1950, they would have been flung into the back of the bus. And that is black enough for me.”[1] By emphasizing the role of the Arabs and Africans in the slave trade, Gates was engaging in the common American practice of allocating “racial guilt,” in this case underlining Arab and African “blame” for slavery. As one African reviewer wrote, “Some of us fear that in [his] efforts to repair relations between White America and Black America, [Gates] may be sowing the seeds of discord between African-Americans and the peoples of the African continent.”[2]
Black nationalists are not the only group in the United States to claim certain cultures, spaces and eras of the Arab world as theirs for their own purposes. Christian and Jewish nationalists have long imbued the “Orient” with redemptive significance. But while Christian and Jewish cultural affiliations with the Middle East have historically been staunchly Zionist and pro-Israel, African-American constructions of North Africa and the Middle East have been ambivalent about Zionism and more willing to engage with other nationalist movements. Malcolm X, one of the first to try to reconcile Arab and black nationalisms, tells of a transforming encounter he had with an Algerian diplomat in Ghana: “I was speaking with the Algerian ambassador, who is extremely militant and is a revolutionary in the true sense of the word…. When I told him that my political, social and economic philosophy was black nationalism, he asked me very frankly, well, where did that leave him? Because he was white…he was Algerian, and to all appearances he was a white man. And he said if I define my objective as the victory of black nationalism, where does that leave him?”[3]
The presence of Arabs on the African continent—“white” ones like the Algerian ambassador, but especially those who appear phenotypically “black” but reject the label “African”—has elicited numerous ideological reactions, from Malcolm’s pro-Arab pan-Africanism to militantly anti-Islamic, anti-Arab strands of Afrocentrism. In the early 1970s, a school of black nationalism emerged that is strongly distrustful of the Arab world.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sat 15 Jul 2006 18:43 Post subject: Indians
Salsassin wrote:
...
When asked about this, Jorge Estevez gave this response.
Quote:
Yes Jaime this has been the official stance of the DR government for a long time. However neither the government nor anyone else for that matter can contest the fact that there is Indian biological heritage in the DR.
...
The wonderful thing about living in this time is that now we can finally test if indeed Dominicans or other Caribbean people have Taino Indian blood. The DNA tests confirm this as did a A-B-O blood group study conducted by J ALvarez in the 50's.
One thing is certain; Dominincans have a tendency to identify with Indian over anything else. I argue that this is due to us having a very real biological, cultural and linguistic connection to our Indigenous ancestors. The terms African, Spanish, Mullato disconnect us from our homelands \, rendering us almost immigrants in our homelands.
It is the Indian that connects us to our lands and we continue to be Indigenous to Kiskeya.
Believe it or not, many identify with Indio, but few with Taino. Its what I call the "magical stupid"! For some reason or another our people have been so estranged from our Taino ancestry that the idea that we are somehow connected to them seems absurd, yet we romantically connect to the indian. It is very odd indeed. Nothing that education cannot solve.
.
Thanks Jaime:
Those are quite curious and interesting ideas.
They are the same reasons why the mestizo (Euro-indigenous) populations in several countries of the Americas Identify with Indians first, and above all. I will just pick up the reasons that Jorge Estevez gave, because are the same:
(1) there is Indian biological heritage
(2) (we) have a tendency to identify with Indian over anything else.
(3) (Spanish, European) disconnect us from our home lands, rendering us almost immigrants in our homelands.
(4) many identify with Indian, but few with (the local tribes).
That pattern repeat over and over in most countries of Latin America, including Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Peru (correct me Jaime if I am wrong), Ecuador, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, etc.
The only countries that don't really identify with Indian are Costa Rica, Uruguay, Argentina (so and so) and, perhaps, Puerto Rico (correct me Frank if I am wrong).
You know what? That's our mother land who call us. We have the psycological need of an historical continuity in these lands: we need local ancestors. That happens everywhere in the Americas, althogh without the same intensity. After all, we live in the Americas. Don't we?
The tests to which you are referring to were looking for Native Ancestry only,. they did not mention any other genetic influence because they were not looking for any. You have to understand that the African and the Spanish are considered the norm. It is the Indian genetic component that is always in question. If you begin to ask a hypothetical question: Are there substantial Native American genes in the DR? The Answer is Yes. To look for Spanish or African is absurd because we ALL know that its there. Do you realize that up to a short time ago many academics erroneously claimed that the reason why some Dominicans looked Indian was because if you mix black and white in time you get something that looks somewhat indian! This was an actual train of thought among many academics in the Caribbean.
As for the statistics: In the last 30 years there has been a push to Africanize Dominican Identity. So its not surpiring that many more identify with negritude which of course is contrary to the note you originally sent which claims the government has dark agendas in trying to WHITEN the island by switching one dark people for another. Most of those involved in what I call ultra afro-centric ideals we adamant in making sure that it was African or nothing at all. The indigenistas in our country have never said there were no Africans or African Influence, only that there is Taino as well. The afro centrics take rather unusual stance and claim that if one says INDIAN he is automatically denying Africans. I cant see the reasoning in this.
I wish we could meet in person. I can show you pictures of DR's that look like they stepped out of the Amazon!
Hasta pronto
Jorge
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sat 15 Jul 2006 20:45 Post subject: Afrocentrism
Salsassin wrote:
...The afro centrics take rather unusual stance and claim that if one says INDIAN he is automatically denying Africans. I cant see the reasoning in this.
I wish we could meet in person. I can show you pictures of DR's that look like they stepped out of the Amazon!
Hasta pronto
Jorge
[/quote]
Yes Jorge!
Afrocentrism is not looking for the equality in recognition of ancestry. It want to create a Black and only Black identity. Afrocentrist want to get rid of the white men culture but also of the indian heritage. Those heritages does not fit in theirs world view. The sad point for Afrocentrism in the Americas is that, no matter how the numbers are manipulated, the African heritage, both in genetics and in cultures, comes in third place in the Americas as a whole.
If you ask me, I preffer the myth of the Cosmic Race, because it has room for everyone, and it is exactly the opposite of Racism. Yes, if you are White, Black, Indian, Asian or any of its mixture, you are welcomed in the Cosmic Race idea. That's what I like it of it.
In the case of the Indians. They are important for the history of the Americas and for the present and future of our people because we are in the Americas after all. And we need to have a link to the Mayans, Aztecs, Incas and all other civilizations that where in here before the foreigners arrived.
Well Jaime, now you and I are cooking with oil! Yes its about culture. When one studies the Classic Taino Material culture of the islands, everything from Hamacas, to Casabe, weaving baskets to slash and burn farming down to how, when and where Native crops are to be planted, bohios, etc and you compare that with the campesino culture of the ciabo for example, its easy to see why Dominicans have strong connection to an Indian past. My problem lies with certain individuals who say the following:
(1) there are no Indian genes only Indian culture left ( and very little of it)
(2) when the genetics proves the above statement to be untrue, then the counter argument is- Yes there are genes but no Indian culture.
As if you can have a strong genetic contribution to population and somehow not pass on ideas, culture, beliefs, etc.
The fact that we have at least 800 Taino words that persist in our Spanish today is remarkable, where else in the history of the world have an "extinct people" influenced a culture as much as the Taino?
I am happy that you identify with your four ancestries. I believe that identity is a personal matter and the individual has the right to choose.
Since I was very, very young I have identified with Indian. Somehow for me it boils down to this: If you mixed Africans and Spanish anywhere else in the world and giving rise to mulato people, would these people be Kiskeyanos and Boricuas or Cubans? Of course not. What makes us a unique people is that we have customs (the above mentioned), beliefs (ciguapas, misterios, opias, etc) linguistic traits that are indigenous only to the caribbean, rendering us a unique people. If as if by magic we can subtract everything that is taino from Caribbean culture, would we still be the same Dominicans? One can argue that if you subtract any portion of our multi-ancestries we would nopt be the same, but one thing is certain, as long as the Taino is there, we will always be indigenous to the Caribbean and not Dominicans by chance.
Thanks again Jaime!
Jorge
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sun 16 Jul 2006 20:03 Post subject: Great!
Salsassin wrote:
Quote:
Well Jaime, now you and I are cooking with oil! Yes its about culture. When one studies the Classic Taino Material culture of the islands, everything from Hamacas, to Casabe, weaving baskets to slash and burn farming down to how, when and where Native crops are to be planted, bohios, etc and you compare that with the campesino culture of the ciabo for example, its easy to see why Dominicans have strong connection to an Indian past. My problem lies with certain individuals who say the following:
(1) there are no Indian genes only Indian culture left ( and very little of it)
(2) when the genetics proves the above statement to be untrue, then the counter argument is- Yes there are genes but no Indian culture.
As if you can have a strong genetic contribution to population and somehow not pass on ideas, culture, beliefs, etc.
The fact that we have at least 800 Taino words that persist in our Spanish today is remarkable, where else in the history of the world have an "extinct people" influenced a culture as much as the Taino?
I am happy that you identify with your four ancestries. I believe that identity is a personal matter and the individual has the right to choose.
Since I was very, very young I have identified with Indian. Somehow for me it boils down to this: If you mixed Africans and Spanish anywhere else in the world and giving rise to mulato people, would these people be Kiskeyanos and Boricuas or Cubans? Of course not. What makes us a unique people is that we have customs (the above mentioned), beliefs (ciguapas, misterios, opias, etc) linguistic traits that are indigenous only to the caribbean, rendering us a unique people. If as if by magic we can subtract everything that is taino from Caribbean culture, would we still be the same Dominicans? One can argue that if you subtract any portion of our multi-ancestries we would nopt be the same, but one thing is certain, as long as the Taino is there, we will always be indigenous to the Caribbean and not Dominicans by chance.
Thanks again Jaime!
Jorge
Great post!
I agree with Jorge, and thanks Jaime for reproducing it in here.
The only identity from the "identity marker" that can cure us from the complex of the immigrant, is Native culture. They were our ancestors in this land, whether we like it or not. And most of the people in the Americas got, at least, one drop of theirs blood.
Even if no genetical link exists, at least should be recognized a spiritual link to the founding people of these lands. The Amerindians, who have lived here for the last 25.000 years, and who developed about half of the greatest civilizations the world has know.
Is not that enough for us, people of the Americas, to be proud of be the sons of the New World?
http://www.las.iastate.edu/newnews/stinchcomb0308.shtml
Despite little, if any cooperation, Dawn Stinchcomb persisted and wound up publishing a book.
Most people would have given up when faced with the response that Dawn Stinchcomb got when she started her research in the Dominican Republic.
Quitting was never on Stinchcomb's agenda.
"I'm not a quitter," the assistant professor of foreign languages and literatures said. “"Anger is one of my best emotions. When I get angry I do my best work.
"They kept telling me that I couldn't do it," she continued. "I had to go back and finish the study for no other reason than I believe that Blas Jimenez is a great writer and that it was important to pull his and the voices of the others like his within the margins."
Jimenez is a Dominican Republic poet whose writings proudly affirm his black identity.
At least ninety percent of the population of the Dominican Republic is of African descent. But Stinchcomb found out that most of the general population and even the government denies that heritage.
During graduate school Stinchcomb was viewing a documentary on racism in Latin America. A portion of the documentary featured Jimenez and his experiences renewing his passport after returning from the United States.
"He tells the story of how he had to check his race on the passport application," Stinchcomb said. "He checked black but, even though he was obviously of African descent, the person at the passport office told him he couldn't be black and to go back and fill out the form correctly.
"I had never heard anything about this in Latin America - blacks who had to bury their blackness. This has contributed to a form of identity crisis in Dominican culture."
Stinchcomb's subsequent research indicated that the Dominican Republic's denial of its heritage dates back to the 1800s. The Dominican Republic is situated on an island with Haiti. The eastern portion of the island was colonized by the French, while the Spanish established a colony on what became the Dominican Republic.
In the 1800s, Haitian slaves overthrew the French landowners, killing most of them. Not wanting to meet the same fate, the Spanish white elite began a campaign of misinformation using literature as the mode of transmission.
"The white minority successfully convinced many blacks and others of African descent on the Dominican Republic side of the island that they didn't have anything in common with the blacks in Haiti," Stinchcomb said. "They compared the Haitians to barbarians and mass murderers with a strange religion.
"They created a myth that every person in the Dominican Republic had Spanish forefathers and an Indian mother. Most Dominicans still claim that their ethnic heritage is limited to the original Taino Indians and the Spanish to this day."
Stinchcomb has focused her research in her book on Dominican authors who embrace their African heritage. The University Press of Florida published her book, The Development of Literary Blackness in the Dominican Republic, earlier this year. Stinchcomb identifies and examines the role that race has played in the literature of the Dominican Republic.
But the path to the book wasn't an easy one for Stinchcomb. On her first trip to the country she was met with less than enthusiastic support for her work.
"That was a very depressing experience," she remembered. "I was looking for Afro-Dominican writers and everyone told me there was no such thing."
People would cancel interviews with her. She even had one person walk out during an interview.
When they thought that Stinchcomb was interested in canonical Dominican literature they were eager to discuss their work with her. But mention the work of Blas Jimenez and the discussions would stop. Blackness and Dominicanness are two very different things. Blackness opposes Dominican national identity.
"I would attend literary circles and I would bring up Blas' poetry and I was immediately silenced," she said.
A year later Stinchcomb returned to the island better prepared professionally and emotionally. She went to La Trinitaria, the country's capital's most important bookstore and literally spent days on the floor going through book after book by Dominican writers.
She also met with Jimenez and other Dominican authors proud of their African roots. These Afro-Dominican authors were writing their Afrocentric poetry before Blas Jimenez, but had been ignored because their national origins were not necessarily Dominican.
Stinchcomb's investigations revealed that despite the national rhetoric that denied the existence of blackness with Dominicanness, black writing did exist in the Dominican Republic.
The result was the concept of literary blackness and a book that Jimenez and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) would like to see published in Spanish and distributed in the Dominican Republic.
"I feel very proud of what I've done," she said. "I hope I have given a voice to people who have been ignored and haven't been recognized for what they have done and have inspired others to do work in the future about other Afro-Dominican authors."
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Thu 20 Jul 2006 16:16 Post subject: Literary blackness?
soserious wrote:
...The result was the concept of literary blackness and a book that Jimenez and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) would like to see published in Spanish and distributed in the Dominican Republic.
"I feel very proud of what I've done," she said. "I hope I have given a voice to people who have been ignored and haven't been recognized for what they have done and have inspired others to do work in the future about other Afro-Dominican authors."
literary Blackness?
That's a quite old concept in Spanish letters.
Look for Nicolas Guillen, the best of Cuban poets.
'
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