Race

A blog post by Adam. I woke up a week ago Sunday to the unfortunate verdict in the Trayvon Martin murder case. Given all I had read over the previous three weeks, I wasn't surprised. In fact I would have been shocked if the jury had found George Zimmerman guilty. Still, I was disappointed. Reflecting on racism in the US made me think about race in the Dominican Republic.

Much like in the US, race isn't a very popular discussion topic here. It has come up on a few rare occasions. For example, one of Melissa's teachers in Santo Domingo denied that racism existed in the DR. And then there was the time our socialist host brother talked about the racist policies of Trujillo, claiming that Trujillo would have killed our host father had he been in the wrong place at the wrong time simply because our host father is too Black. Our host father politely disagreed with his son's assertions. Sometime later, at the Museum of the Dominican Man, our tour guide and Melissa's professor talked about how they both had really "bad" kinky hair. We tried to disagree but they said we couldn't understand because we had "good" hair. Since this last interaction more than a month ago, I've had very discussions about race with Dominicans.

So, strange as it may seem, I've learned most of what I know about race in the DR from a book written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard. The book is interesting although it seems to be based on a trip to the DR that was at most one week long (how much can you really learn about such a complex topic in such a sort time?) Among the book's most fascinating claims is that the majority of Dominicans define their race as Indio (Indian), despite the fact that within 100 years of Columbus' arrival to Hispaniola, there were no Indigenous people alive on the island. By American standards most people here today would be Black, but according to book, nobody wants to define themselves as Black (that's a term reserved for Haitians), so instead people identify as Indio.

I asked someone at the clinic about this, and he said he himself identified as white. He acknowledged that in the US he would clearly be African American, but because he had pale skin he was white in the DR. When asked about the term "Indio," he said it didn't actually mean "Indian" but was just a descriptive word for brown skin. He followed this up by saying that racism didn't exist in the DR, and that what might first seem to be racism was really just classism. Dominicans don't like Haitians not because they're Black, but because they're poor and from Haiti.  I wasn't convinced....

On my first day at the clinic where I'm volunteering, a man stopped me in the waiting room and asked if I would talk to him about his illness. I informed him that I wasn't a doctor and couldn't help him. I tried to convince him that the clinic's doctors were experts in their field and could provide excellent care. He said he didn't trust Dominican doctors, but realizing he was getting nowhere with me, decided to go ahead and wait for a Dominican doctor. Did he stop to talk to me because my clothes screamed successful physician or because I was white? If you've seen my wardrobe, you should be able to answer this question without thinking.

Then a few days ago, Melissa and I went to a see the local basketball team play - the Cañeros del Este. Last year they were Dominican champions. This year they are in last place. Still, we wanted to show our support, and so we bought the cheapest tickets they had - $2.50 per ticket. The arena was pretty empty, and we arrived early, so we wandered a bit and inquired about buying some Cañeros T-shirts. We were directed upstairs where we found nothing for sale. A few minutes later the man we first asked about the T-shirts told us to return downstairs. When we arrived downstairs we were handed two free shirts and directed to the VIP section of the stands, one row up from the court. It may have been the best $2.50 value of my entire life.

Adam poses with VIP swag from a recent Cañeros game.

With a nearly empty stadium, the upgrade to courtside seats made sense, but why give us free T-shirts? What made us VIPs? Could it be that we're white? 

I know the person I had spoken to at the clinic would say I received special treatment because I was American, but would I have received the same treatment if I was African-American? Would the patient in the clinic have approached me if I was Black? To both of these questions I think the answer is no - sadly both in the DR and the US.