Lesson on identity politics from the Dominican Republic
Florida minus air conditioning was my first impression of Santiago de los Caballeros, a city in the agricultural heartland of the Dominican Republic. During my week sojourn, the patina of sweat on my skin disappeared only in the shower.
Heat aside, it’s a lovely place. Blooming trees and palms line the streets of brightly painted cinderblock houses. Santiago is known for its murals. The gracious, inviting Latin culture sets the island apart from the English-speaking Caribbean islands I’ve visited. My childlike Spanish elicited grace at every turn. “Ese tu perro? El perro blanco es bueno. El perro joven es bueno también.” With their encouragement, I doubled my vocabulary.
Also, the food is good. Mango salsa, stewed eggplant on rice, fried plantain, and Sancocho, a soup made with every kind of meat and root vegetable plus pumpkin, which gives it a yellowish color, are a few favorites. I had an avocado dulce de leche popsicle dipped in dark chocolate at a restaurant that serves only gourmet popsicles. ¡Qué buena idea!
As I noted these cultural distinctions, I was equally struck by the absence of something — selfsegregation by skin tone. In the
United States, social grouping by ethnicity is common. At an American mall or a school lunch table, you’ll see clusters of people with similar skin tone.
In Santiago and in rural towns I visited in the Dominican Republic, I observed no pattern in social interactions based on ancestry. Among married couples, groups of friends, church attendees, baseball players or band members hitting the notes at Lunes de Jazz downtown, racial background appeared to be a non-issue. Even the owner of the beach grill at Costambar, a blond Dutch immigrant, seemed as Dominican as her native husband.
My host confirmed this observation; the Dominican Republic is a true melting pot of those with Taíno heritage (the Caribbean’s once indigenous people), European and African peoples.
Mixed ancestry unites rather than divides Dominicans. Dominicans are the proud progeny of islanders of differing ancestry who shook off the yoke of Spanish, French, and even U.S. rule to be an independent nation. This integrated identity is represented by the faceless doll you’ll find in souvenir shops. First created by Dominican sculptor Liliana Mera Limé, the dolls convey the message that there is no Dominican archetype.
Back in the comparatively cooler air of Denver, I wonder how the United States can import such a beautiful sensibility. Like the Dominican Republic, the United States is the product of waves of human migration beginning with the first settlers from Asia some 15,000 years ago, followed by Europeans, Africans and Asians. These migrations produced conflict, war, displacement, enslavement and suffering to be sure, but they also produced the rich cultural fusion that characterizes new world nations today. Every living American is the fortunate beneficiary of that complicated past, descendants of victors and victims alike.
While catching up on a week’s worth of missed news, I read that controversy has flared up over the University of Denver’s team name Pioneer. Opponents want it scrubbed because they view the pioneers, that is, people of European descent who came west, as an unalloyed evil. This cynical, Manichean take on history, like cultural appropriation, slavery reparations, intersectionality and other expressions of identity politics, serve only to reinforce divisions.
In an effort to eradicate the vestiges of racism, advocates are creating new prejudices and reinforcing a destructive “us versus them” mentality.
I cannot help but think that Dominicans have a better sense that we’re all in this together. The idea of national unity irrespective of ancestry is worth importing, along with avocado dulce de leche popsicles.