I know I said I wouldn’t talk about this stuff for a “while,” but I stumbled upon this video. I figured I’d put it up here.

Now, just like the Hostos Professor in this clip, I’m not trying to affix a single label to Dominicans. I’m not trying to say Dominicans are overwhelmingly Black, White, or of Indian ancestry. That is not my aim; and I hope that’s not what you interpreted here for however long you’ve been visiting. But as Montilla said, we are all “a byproduct of those groups coming together.”

Look, we are “Latino’s,” but at the same time, we cannot walk around denying our ancestry. We are not a “race,” we are an ethnicity. When I write about this I’m trying to convince “you” that rejecting everything that is dark for the light isn’t right.

And to slide off from Latinos for a moment, at times, I find that Black friends of mine want to be like: “Claudio, you ain’t Latino, you Black man.” And I’m like: “It’s just not that simple.” Then they’ll hit me with the whole “self hate” nonsense. Same thing some Black women hit dark-skin men with when they date light skin women.

First off, I spoke Spanish until I was six. No ingles until that age. My parents are from the Dominican Republic and whether they are light as day or dark as night, I’m still Latino.

I know its not the exact same comparison, but when a Black guy from England tells me he’s “English,” I don’t debate him. Same with a “Black” dude from France who says he’s “French.” Just because those countries are historically associated as being “white,” doesn’t mean everyone else of color who was born there can’t be considered a “Frenchmen or Englishmen” just like them.

But the major part of the problem is the country we currently live in.

We are so used to being divided that we are basically forced to pick sides. And for someone who’s a dark-skin Latino like myself, that can be very difficult. It can be confusing while growing up as you’ve read on this blog. People in America make you feel like you have to claim a side and that’s not right.

But I guess as time goes on and the older generation dies off, things will change. Because this stuff is really frustrating, it really is; and I feel for those kids who look like me and are growing up amongst this BS on Post, Sickles, Arden, Ellwood, Thayer, Nagle, St. Nick, Wadsworth, Academy, Hillside, Isham, Bogardus, Seaman, Fort Wash, Bennett, Audubon, and Amsterdam.

Those individuals who are being trained to think no different of Black people than Trujillo (who had a Haitian mom by the way) or David Duke.

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