Preliminary Thoughts on Race and Color in the Dominican Republic

We arrived in Santo Domingo on Tuesday evening. We spent the whole day Wednesday looking for an apartment, and the whole day Thursday enrolling the children in school. Today is Friday, and, although there is still much to do, at least the kids are in school and I can get back to writing and preparing for my research in Santo Domingo.

We found an apartment in Bella Vista, one of the upper-middle class areas of Santo Domingo. Our apartment faces a huge park – el Parque Mirador del Sur – which is a great privilege. In addition, we can just barely see the Caribbean Sea from the window, as Bella Vista is on a hill and the Sea is not too far away. Even though we can’t take a dip every day, at least we have the reminder that the Sea is there.

As we have been hustling and bustling about quite a bit, I have only seen a sliver of Santo Domingo. Really, I have barely left Bella Vista, and thus have quite a narrow vision of the city. In Bella Vista, I have been amazed at the quantity of big, expensive, new cars. Every time I turn my head, I see an SUV, a BMW, a Mercedes, or another fancy imported car. Nearly all of the cars parked in the parking lots of the many gated apartment buildings are in good condition and expensive. In sum, there are a lot of wealthy people in Bella Vista.

I have also been trying to figure out the racial situation here in Santo Domingo. At the various places I have been – the bank, the cell phone store, the copy center – the workers have been of all shades, except for the very darkest. Without exception, all of the women I have seen whose hair may be naturally kinky have chemically straightened their hair. So far, I have seen no afros, cornrows, or dreadlocks.

The darkest people I have seen have been street vendors. One young man who sold us ice creams from a cart appeared to be Haitian, given his strongly accented Spanish. The others, I couldn’t tell, as I just saw them in passing. I saw two dark-skinned boys playing on the street corner the other day during school hours, and it reminded me that I have heard that Haitian children are not permitted to enroll in school in the Dominican Republic. I asked my friend how many Haitians there are in the DR. She told me that it is estimated that about one million of the DR’s eight million people are of Haitian origin.

I have not seen any people who appear to be poor who are white. At first glance, then, there is some sort of color/nation hierarchy here, but it is a bit complex, and I have yet to figure it all out. Really, the purpose of my visit here is to understand how deportees are able to reintegrate into society. However, in light of my long-standing interest in race and color in the Americas, it is hard for me not to think about those issues as well. In what I have read about the Dominican Republic, I have learned that, in the Dominican Republic, people only refer to Haitians as black, whereas dark-skinned Dominicans are called indios. I have also read that there is a color hierarchy, and that Dominicans don’t like to talk about race and color.

Yesterday, we took a taxi to buy the children’s school uniforms. Our taxi driver was fairly dark-skinned. I was tempted to ask him about racial issues here in the DR. However, having only been here a couple of days, I was concerned I would say something offensive. What I was thinking of asking him was if he would consider himself “negro” or “indio.” But, I didn’t.

That said, in the Internet café yesterday, I noticed that the one of the employees called the other “negro” several times; I take that to mean that was his nickname. So, perhaps racial issues are not as delicate as they seem. So much to learn, so little time.