The Drums Are Calling: Race, Nation, and the Complex History of Dominicans

Abstract

The central purpose of this chapter is threefold. One, we provide a critical look at how colonization and its Fukú allowed a minority of European colonizers to con- trol the numerically larger group of Indigenous people in Quisqueya, engaging in the atrocious acts of genocide, slavery, land dispossession, and ultimately instilling a racist colonial ideology of White supremacy. Two, we describe some of the realities and implications of this history when considering the role of skin color, phenotype, mestizaje (an ideology whereby everyone of Latinx2 descent is deemed to be of mixed race), and nationhood on the present lives of Dominicans. Three, we illustrate the relentless resilience and resistance that Dominicans have displayed throughout history, including the ways they continue surviving against all odds in the United States. An important element of this survival includes Dominicans’ recently growing celebration of the epiphany that the Mother of all Lands (i.e., Quisqueya) connects Dominicans to Africa; importantly, a growing number of Dominicans are continually seeking The Motherland’s historical wisdom: all its joyful, beautiful, magnificent, and unstoppable Blackness.