From Coffee to Negro: Colorism in Dominican Republic and how it affects Afro-Latinx
By Rebecca Leandre
Standards of beauty and attractiveness are allowed to be subjective, however the practice of mistreating those who may not fit those standards should be objectively immoral. Unfortunately, rigid or hard to change features such as skin color is a category for many, on what is beautiful. Historically, the scale has tipped in favor of those with lighter skin/ white skin in the United States and many other countries around the world. It’s sad that a rhyme made during the existence of Jim Crow still reflects what occurs today, that "if you is white, you’s alright, if you’s brown, stick around but if you’s black, get back” (Big Bill Broonzy).The Spanish speaking community specifically the Dominican Republic, isn’t foreign to this issue of discrepancy in the treatment of white, brown and black skinned people and it negatively affects groups like the Afro-Latinx.
This discrepancy is a consequence of racist ideologies. Racism has and continues to be a complex issue based off of hundreds of years of construction. Racism can be defined as “a social-institutional system of power relations that maintains and reinforces the racial hierarchy (Treitler, 2013, 68). To understand the racial hierarchy, we must look at its main source which is racial formation. Omi and Winant in Racial Formation in the United States, define racial formation as “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed” (Omi &Winant 3). Racial categories are created as political tools to promote one race as superior and those who don’t fit into that race as inferior. Thus, the racial categories such as white, black and Indian etc, that were created then influence society through social structures which are the rules (written/unwritten) that facilitate and constrain individual action. Basically, if you want to have the most benefits and privilege in society as a result of the racial hierarchy your racial group needs to be highly ranked.
The groups that tended to be highly ranked are white Europeans. Bashi Treitler discusses in chapter four of The Ethnic Project, how the racial hierarchy in the United States can be described as a ladder in which different ethnic groups are distributed throughout each level based on their position compared to the dominant group. Treitler found that through a process of whitening, “a racial process that has the effect of making ethnicity less salient and allowing for these measured characteristics of “assimilation” to change” (Treitler 68). To be categorized as white afforded on power and privilege.
Initially only upper class Europeans were given such power, however, standards of privilege changed as a result of the alliance between poor white servants and slaves against the wealthy Virginian governor, William Berkeley, during an armed revolt called Bacon’s rebellion. No longer would poor whites and slaves now synonymous with the term black, be in alliance because there was a shift in power. In the Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business re-create race in the Twenty-First Century,Dorothy Roberts explains how the upper class gave poor whites “freedom dues, including a musket, money, and bushels of corn,” (Roberts, 2012,9). While further degradation of black servants included no freedom and white servants had power over them. The black servants differed from the white servants in skin color and ethnicity and that cemented who would have power and privilege in society.
Division was created between white and black as well as within the black race as those of the black race who were lighter-skinned and closer to whiteness. Initially there wasn’t a term for this but Alice walker is credited for coining the term colorism. According to Alice Walker in her book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Colorism can be defined as “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color” (Walker, 1983, 290). Meaning those who look less like their racial group for example black, in terms of facial features, skin color and hair texture, and more European have and still are given privilege over those who don’t. Those who don’t are usually darker skinned, tighter coiled hair people whose blackness is more pronounced. Afro-Latinx are among the groups of people who are subjected to colorism because of a preference for those who are lighter skinned.
Afro-Latino refers to those of the Latino community who have significant African ancestry. Many Spanish speaking communities are home to self-identified Afro-Latino people such as the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Honduras. The term Afro-Latin is still fairly new term of identification for example a survey done by the Pew Research Center in 2014 was the first “nationally representative survey to ask people if they identify as Afro-Latinx". I identify as Haitian-American, combining my inherited culture and my place of birth. Similarly, many people are increasingly choosing to use this term to embrace both aspects of their identity. Groups like Afro-Latinx has been underrepresented in areas such as media because of society’s issues like colorism.
Racial formation has led to consequences like racial categories and that is ingrained in our minds. The myth that race has a biological basis instead of simply being a social construct has created this idea that we can simply look at people’s phenotype or observable characteristics and assign them to a race. Afro-Latinx embrace their African ancestry as well as their Latinx ethnicity which is already a mix between European, African and indigenous roots. Assigning this group to a race is basically difficult because of such a mix. However, people still attempt to do so especially those who don’t choose to use that term as identification. But for those who are more phenotypically ‘black’ there isn’t much of a choice. Colorism affects them the most because they are ostracized within many latinx communities like the Dominican Republic.
According to an article published on HipLatina, City College Professor of Latin American and Latino studies states that “Latinos are very color conscious and use a color classification system” (Giselle Castro, “Why understanding Colorism within the Latino Community is so Important”). Those colors can range from coffee, chocolate, blanco, negro, trigueno, Indio, Jabao, Moreno, Mulatta, etc. Much like in the United States, if you are darker skinned and your physiognomy or facial features instantly define you as black, you are shamed in the Dominican Republic.
There is a long history of a skin color hierarchy in the U.S. but Frances Robles, a Miami Herald reporter discusses the level of denial of black roots. She states that “Dominican Republic is the only country in Latin America that got its freedom - not from Spain - but from Haiti, from a black country. And for many years after that, even after they were freed, you have presidents in the Dominican Republic who really instigated a sense that anything Haitian was bad, anything black was bad” (Robles, Frances. Interview with Michelle Martin. National Public Radio). There is also a denial of blackness because it has been represented as shameful and struggling.
This denial of black ancestry negatively impacts those who would be considered black in most cultural environments. Frances was met with denial that there were any black people in Dominican Republic and that the issues she was bringing up were putting the country down. Oquendo’s Reimagining the Latino/Race examines this feeling of divisiveness that some D.R. residents felt Frances was creating by discussing such a sensitive subject. He believes that “racial subcategorization appears to be an attempt to project U.S. racial dualism onto the Latino/a community as a whole” (Oquendo, 1995, 63).
But the experience of “black Hispanics” differs greatly from their white counterparts because of racial issues like colorism. The skin color hierarchy plaguing areas like the Spanish speaking community defeats any possible unification of the Latinx community because these groups are being prejudiced. Robles also spoke about how she would hear people gossip about blacks and how marrying a black person was discouraged in order to have lighter skinned children. If someone decides to wear their natural hair texture such as kinky hair, their blackness is shamed and taunted. So, as we can see the upholding of whiteness as a main standard is universal of success, power and beauty.
Colorism in the Spanish Speaking Community is present and Afro-Latinx people especially those who are darker skinned shouldn’t be subjected to the consequences that comes with identifying with African ancestry. The denial of blackness ostracizes Afro-Latinx identity and makes it hard for people like Aisha Cort to always embrace both identities. Aisha Cort describes how she enters a Spanish speaking space and is met with a switch in language to broken English. They’ll then show “visible surprise and question how she knows the language” when she replies in Spanish. Aisha described how her features, “rich brown skin and tiny dark locs”, confuses some people in the Spanish speaking community ( Cort, Aisha, interviewed by Alford, S. Natasha, “More Latinas are Choosing to identify as Afro-Latina"). The confusion is a result of colorism and racism. The political move to invent races hurts society more than it helps but continued awareness and shifts in negative behavior about issues like colorism can redefine our world.
Bibliography
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. Routledge
Roberts, Dorothy. Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century. The New Press, 2012.
Treitler, Vilna Bashi. The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions. Stanford University Press, 2013.
Castro, Giselle, et al. “Why Understanding Colorism Within the Latino Community Is So Important.” HipLatina, 11 Apr. 2019, https://hiplatina.com/colorism-within-the-latino-community/.
Oquendo, Ángel, "Re-Imagining the Latino/a Race" (1995). Faculty Articles and Papers. 38. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/law_papers/38.
Martin, Michelle. “Behind Closed Doors: 'Colorism' in the Caribbean.” NPR, NPR, 16 July 2007, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12001750?storyId=12001750.
“Part 3.” In Search of Our Mother's Garden, by Alice Walker, Harcourt , 1983, p. 290.
Alford, Natasha S. “More Latinas Are Choosing to Identify as Afro-Latina.” Oprah Magazine, 18 Oct. 2019, https://www.oprahmag.com/life/a23522259/afro-latina-identity/.