On Tuesday night, in the Inwood section of uptown Manhattan, on the famous Dyckman street, African-American protestors were banished.
In a now-viral video that has both “Dyckman” and “Dominican” trending on Twitter, a mob of angry Dominican residents is seen approaching a group of African-American men.
While the men were standing around and apparently protesting, the mob swelled to intimidate them to move In the video, you can hear many male voices warning the group of men to leave quickly.
“You got to get the f&#k out the neighborhood.”
“You better get that sh*t out of here nigga.”
“If you aint from here you got to get the f&*k out”
“It’s best y’all leave.”
The woman who is filming the altercation tries to calm the situation down but it falls on deaf ears. She asks the crowd to “chill out” confirming that the men “not even doing (anything).”
Repeatedly, as the woman filming and the angry mob are shouting at protestors, they use the N-word profusely.
Later in the video, shots are fired. Presumably they were rubber bullets from police, and men are seen fleeing while police vans block the street.
Brown vs. Black?
In a 2007, National Public Radio produced an episode entitled: “Behind Closed Doors: ‘Colorism’ in the Caribbean.
The piece was about the hierarchy of skin color within African American communities. However, it exposed that it’s not just an American thing.
Miami Herald reporter Frances Robles discussed her report on “colorism” in the Dominican Republic.
“I would say it’s a complete denial. I would say that the majority of the black people – particularly in the Dominican Republic – don’t consider themselves black. And I’m talking – not people who look like Hispanic but could be considered black. I’m saying people who are in the United States would be an African-American like any one else. They just don’t see that in themselves.”
The Dominican Republic is the only country in Latin America that got its freedom from, Haiti, a black country. In the 1800s, Haiti freed itself and a few years later it took over the entire of island of Hispaniola.
So for 22 years, the Dominicans were under the rule of the Haitians. 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.
“So that when you have an island now of, I don’t know, something like 10,000,000 people who believed that blackness and Haitianness is bad, it’s not even our fault, frankly. It’s a historic, learned behavior.”
Cardi B Gets It
In June 2019, Cardi B shared a video touching on race saying, “It’s like, ‘Cardi’s Latin, she’s not Black.’ And it’s like, ‘Bro, my features don’t come from fcking white people fcking, okay?’ And they always wanna race-bait when it comes to me. That’s why I have Afro features.
“A lot of people don’t know the difference between nationality, race, ethnicity and that’s not nobody’s fault,” she said on Instagram Live. “That’s actually the schools’ fault because schools don’t be teaching this s— to people.
“People just don’t be understanding s–t,” Cardi said “It’s like, ‘Cardi’s Latin, she’s not Black.’ And it’s like, bro, my features don’t come from…White people f—ng, okay?’ And they always wanna race-bait when it comes to me…I have Afro features. ‘Oh, but your parents are light-skinned…all right, but my grandparents aren’t.” This situation isn’t the first time the rapper, who is Dominican and Trinidadian, has had to address comments about her race.”
A common misconception about people from the Latin world is that because they speak Spanish they don’t have African roots. Latinos are a group of people from different races brought together by Spanish or Portuguese colonization.
Latinos that identify with this African roots are constantly proving their latinidad due to their race. It’s an ongoing challenge many face in countries like Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, The Dominican Republic, Colombia, and Panama.
Ironically, those countries also have the highest populations of afrodescendientes in the Western Hemisphere.
