No Soy Africana

Check out this interesting interview with scholars by Marc Lamont Hill on 'blackness' in the Dominican Republic. Although Hill begins the show with a scene from the problematic series by Henry Louis Gates, there is more nuance and inclusion of Dominican-American attitudes. The voices of Dominican-Americans add much needed clarity on how blackness is always experiential and shaped by personal experience and how others perceive one, such that Biany Perez and Silvio Torres-Saillant 'learned they were black' from their experience in the United States (which was also based on how others perceived them). Indeed, one of the highlights of the show was hearing Biany Perez challenge the assumptions of the other Dominican-American based on how she is consistently seen as an 'Other' by other Dominican-Americans for being black (which reflects how Dominican-American identity within their own spaces may still exclude Afro-Dominicans in the diaspora).There is also recognition of how Afro-Dominican identity and cultural organizations are increasing in number in the island and in Afro-Latino activism in the US.