What Do You Consider Yourself To Be?

[reinadelmangu]

I was born in Santo Domingo and raised there until I was about five, and then brought to the U.S. For my whole life when somebody asks me what I am, I've always just simply said "Dominican" and nobody every made me explain any further. Lately though, whenever I or some other Hispanic says where they're from, the person asking asks what we mostly consider ourselves to be; African, European, or Indian. In my case, people ask whether I consider myself to be more Dominican or African/Indian.

In my observation, the people who mostly ask Hispanics this question are African Americans who want to know what dark-skinned Hispanics like me consider themselves to be. I'm pointing out that the people concerned with this are African American (black people) because in my experience 1) white people don't really want Hispanics who look European to consider themselves as part of their group and 2) black people who want to know about this seem to be trying to find out whether or not we "look down on them".

For me, this question is very sensitive because there is no answer that's gonna satisfy the person who asks it. In my case, the black (I've never had a white person ask me) person asking me obviously wants me to say that I consider myself to be African. But I don't. I consider myself to be Dominican. Period.

And it's not because I'm "ashamed" to be African, it's because there's no possible way of knowing what ancestry I am predominantly. I know that obviously our culture has African roots and ancestry in it, but it also has European and Indian. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't base my physical appearance with my culture. My dad is brown, and he is where I got my color from, but my mom is white-skinned. Which means that I obviously have genes from many different cultures in me.

But it gets trickier.

As you go down a line of relatives, you become either more or less of the cultures before you. Like say if a woman who was 100% African had a child with a man who was 100% European, the child would be 50%/50%. If the child turned out dark and got married to another dark person that was only 25% African, the kid would turn out dark, but he would not be 'more African' just because he's dark. My mom's side of the family is dominantly dark-skinned, yet she turned out with light skin and light eyes just because of a very few light-skinned people. Imagine if someone who was light actually had 75% African ancestry, and someone who was dark was only actually 10% African were only being labeled by they look. You can't base culture on looks.

It's ridiculous when you think about it. Because by now, our people have gotten so mixed that it's virtually impossible to tell what percentage of ancestry we each have from those three groups. Yet I find myself basically being called a racist because I won't "admit to be what I am." Obviously, I know I'm brown, but that really doesn't make me Indian. I know that some of my physical features are more common in black people, but that doesn't make me "black." My hair is very nice and soft, and my eyes are green, but that doesn't make me European. My genes came from those places, but my blood, my culture, my lifestyle, and my upbringing came from DR.

I don't see anything wrong with people wanting to celebrate their African/Indian/European roots, but I wish people wouldn't ask me to choose one that I consider myself to be most of. Especially just because I look the part. Hispanics ALL have African/Indian/European roots NO MATTER WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE. All this "well you're not this, you're actually this" crap is just so annoying to me. It's unnecessary division. We're all the same, no matter what we look like. I'm brown, my mom's white, my cousin's black--we're all Dominican, we're all Hispanic.


Any opinions?

[NALs]

I've written multiple posts about this issue with good documentation to back my information. I'll suggest for you to visit the debates section and click on racial based threads and read much of the material there, the answers or information you are looking for is imbedded in there somewhere.

However, keep in mind that the issue between being "Dominican" or "Black" in the United States, I would say, is equivalent to the issue of the mulatto, who in such country must pick whether to act Black or White. The US ideology on race leaves no room for mixture, you are either one thing or the other and one drop of blood of blackness throws you into the black category.

Is this a correct ideology? Personally, I think not. In many countries around the world (DR included) mulattoes are accepted as an ethnic group of its own, people who are neither fully black or white, but inbetween.

I'll leave you with the following links. When you read the first link, you will get a better understanding of why the US adopts and continues to act as if race is real . On the second link, every time you see the word Mulatto think of the word "Dominican" instead.

My purpose is to give you a better understanding of why there are differences between defining who is what in the US vs. most other places.

As you will notice if you travel, what you are does not depend on your own personal ethnic mix or lack of such, but on what the people around you say about you. In much of the world, mulatta will be your category and Dominicana will be your nationality.

Here is a quote I have taken from the first link:

"Not only does the one-drop rule apply to no other group than American blacks, but apparently the rule is unique in that it is found only in the United States and not in any other nation in the world. In fact, definitions of who is black vary quite sharply from country to country, and for this reason people in other countries often express consternation about our definition."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...d/onedrop.html

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA02/rod...roduction.html

-NALs

BTW: Remember, there is not a single white person who can tell you what it feels to be a slave owner and their is not a single black person who can tell you what it feels to be a slave. We can only speculate and say it probably feels like this or that, but we really don't know.

Why?

Because the issue of race and slavery was an issue of our ancestors and we have nothing to do with what they did. All that we can do is march forward and stop living in the past.

A parent is responsible for what the child does, but the child is not responsible for what the parent does. We (the decendants of our ancestors) are the children and our ancestors are the parents. Our ancestors created their own dilemma, their own problems and we should not have to continue on with these problems that were not ours to start with.

This issue of race, it's the biggest lie everyone wishes was true.

-NALs