Ignorance

I am Dominican. I am very proud of it. I don´t wish I was anything else. I just wish Dominicans weren´t so ignorant. It´s not that Dominicans are more or less ignorant than any other group of people (it may sound relativistic, but I think as a whole, I think societies tend to have the same balance of good and evil to them, and again it´s not like the United States is perfect, far from it) but I feel a greater sense of responsibility for the cultural attitudes and oppressive aspects of Dominican society. These are "my" people, so even though I have seen fucked up shit in lots of places, I don´t take it to heart like I the shit here to heart. And while I can´t blame the Dominican Republic for its poverty (even though the comprador class here is definitely part of the problem and deserves contempt) I can blame them for the terrible sexism and anti-black/anti-Haitian racism here (and lots not even get into the homophobia and classism). I knew that I couldn´t be in this country too long cause otherwise my head would explode. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I had to argue with some "so-dark-they-shine-purple" Dominican about how Haitians are not evil and destroying the Dominican Republic. The anti-Haitianism is simply out-of-control. During lunch last Thursday my cousin had the TV on and the news anchor was talking about how the Dominican Republic was suffering a "peaceful invasion" with over two million Haitians in the country. Clearly, the number was exaggerated. And again, it´s not like the United States isn´t an incredibly xenophobic and racist society, what makes the racism and xenophobia especially heinous here is that it is tied to a level of black self-hatred that I don´t think is known in the United States (or hopefully anywhere else, I pray that there is no greater group of self-hating black people on the planet, I can´t imagine a worse situation).

So far I have gotten into two arguments with Dominicans about the anti-Haitianism in the Dominican Republic. The first was last week when "el primo" was arguing that Haitians are lazy and all they do is "comer pan y beber refrescos el dia entero" (eat bread and drink soda all day). Of course that is a complete lie. I usually just let those comments slide, because I have realized that if I disputed every racist comment in this country I would have no time to sleep, eat or go to the bathroom. But that day I was feeling especially sensitive since I had spent the entire morning reading about Marxist economics on my cousin´s balcony as a group of Haitian men shoveled dirt and rocks to make cement and help some upper-middle-class Dominican like my cousin build another McMansion. Those men were anything but lazy, and I knew that they were working incredibly hard for pennies (no more than $3 a day). So I tried to explain to him that although immigration is a problem the real culprits are the Dominican individuals (many if not most Haitians in the Dominican Republic at this point work in construction, often of private residences) and firms that hire Haitian workers and pay them less than they would pay Dominican workers. Ultimately, there would be no Haitians in the Dominican Republic if the already weak labor laws were just minimally enforced (the same of course is true of the good ol´US of A). He conceded that I was right but then came with the even more racist argument that Haitians just want to unify the entire island which they have been trying to do since 1822 and that they simply want to impose their culture on us. Dominicans are just trying to protect their culture, he lamented. At that point, I just let it go. I knew the discussion was not going to go anywhere. I just hate the fact that so many Dominican immigrants can accuse other immigrants of doing the same thing that they are condemned for doing. In all of these discussions you can basically just subsitute Dominican for American and Haitian for Dominican, Mexican or shit, just say Haitian. The discourse would be the same. Just fill in the blank. Group X is lazy, brings crime, undermines our nation´s values and mores and is fundamentally different and inferior to us.

The second discussion occurred last night. I hate sounding so cynical, but the details are not necessary since the arguments about Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic almost always unfold in the same way. Dave and I tried to convince two of Dave´s friends that the differences between Haitians and Dominicans really are not that great, that we have much more in common. They insisted that we didn´t know what we were talking about since we were coming from abroad and didn´t understand all of the major differences. We argued that our "outside" perspective (shit, some parts of NYC may as well be part of DR at this point, Dominicans abroad are even allowed to vote in Dominican federal elections, and it´s not like there are a million of us in NYC or anything like that) allowed us to see that the differences truly were minimal. They insisted that they weren´t being racists that they merely wanted to protect Dominican culture. That they only opposed illegal immigration (cause when the police is rounding up Haitians for deportation here they really do check for legal status, yeah right). When Dave and I asked them to point to any major differences outside of language and religion between Dominicans and Haitians, they replied that there were major differences in customs. When pressed again to give ONE example, Dave´s friend said that Haitians had a fertility ritual where they rolled in the mud. He is not racist, however, he just wants Haitians to "stay on their side." It was clear that they weren´t going to be swayed to believe that Haitians are human beings, that they are not trying to "take over" our country based on some two-hundred-year-old grudge, and that Dominicans are treated the same way as Haitians in the US. By then I had had a couple of Presidentes and was just tired, so I decided to just put in both my pennies and fuck it if they didn´t agree with me then I was just going to lay it out there and say what I really believed. I told those fools that I was a socialist and I believed in a border-less world.

Then of course we got into the same debate about communism. The one where people tell you that communism is great on paper, but that in reality that shit doesn´t work because people are greedy and that I was being idealistic and really I should be happy with capitalism because it allowed me to own Armani glasses. After kicking myself for wearing Armani glasses, I made the argument that I would rather live in a world where everyone could have cheaper glasses, instead of some of us having Armani and others going blind. I told them I was going to Cuba and the argument continued to go in circles. Eventually Dave´s friend asked me if I would fuck a Cuban woman with a fat booty if she asked for my watch. It was his way of ending the argument. We could disagree about immigration, racism and communism, but in the end we were all men and could agree that women were just floating vaginas. Sexism is common ground. God bless the Dominican Republic.