Colorism, Race, and Dominican Hair Salons
By Jo Nubian
White civilization and European culture have forced an existential deviation on the Negro… what is often called the black soul is white man’s artifact. ~ Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks
While up, online, and “fighting sleep”, which I often accuse my daughter of doing, I received a chat from a friend who I always have great debates with. The brother is bad, a beautiful Dominican philosopher who self identifies as black. I heart him. Anyway, this night, he forwarded me the following article on colorism and race in the Dominican Republic . My shoulders immediately began to sink, inch by inch, until it seemed as though my face lay on my laptop by the article’s end. It pains me when people don’t accept those things about them that they can never change. I understand what self-hatred does to the soul , and regardless of its origins, it prohibits freedom. Each of us deserves to be our own kind of free, it is an inalienable right, and as close to God as we can ever hope to be while here on earth.
While visiting New York City a few months back, I had the pleasure of staying uptown in Washington Heights. One eve, full of smiles and cocktails, I got lost after exiting the train station and walking towards my friend Gwendolyn’s apartment. Actually, what I became lost in was the beautiful culture of the Dominican people, and how they expressed it so vivaciously. The anthropologist in me had to watch, study, and interact. Okay fine, that was a fancy way of saying I’m nosy. One of the things I noticed immediately was the number of hair salons in the community and the fact that women were being serviced at 11 at night (I just found that odd and awesome). I also noticed that a great majority of these women were having their hair straightened. Consequently, on the same night a Dominican brother asked me if I was “Dominicana” to which I replied, “Now you know my hair is to nappy to be Dominican”, we both laughed as he sort of escorted me back in the direction I should have been walking all along.
After reading the article linked above, that “nappy hair” conversation feels weighted. How many Black women do I know who rock naturals, and will only trust the Dominican sisters to temporarily straighten their hair? I don’t know that any of us considers what having “pelo malo” translates to for them. I believe I have some idea, however, being born into a “Creole” family from Louisiana where skin color and hair texture, just like in DR and Brazil and countless other places, is everything. At least for me though, there are only a hand full of titles one can designate in reference to race and social standing (yes the two are most certainly connected) where I’m from. In Opeleusas, one can be white, yellow, red, Indian, or black- I may have missed a few, but essentially that’s the list. Those few titles are a far cry from the hundreds of cognomen associated with Dominican, Brazilian, Cuban and other Afro-Latino groups. The colorism fight, however, is not specific to the southern US or places like DR. I was reminded by this when a twitter friend @sylphanne forwarded this documentary to me about skin bleaching in Jamrock. Straight hair, light skin, etcetera, represent a vast number of issues that all tie together in one way or another within our collective community. The ties that bind then are the ideas of a superior race, social darwinism, and of course capitalism. Colorism has kept us divided, it continues to keep us divided, and at some point we are going to have to deal with the effects of it holistically.
In attempting to understand the break down of race in Afro-Latino and even some African nations (like South Africa for instance) and why their inhabitants shy away from acknowledging their African ancestry, I was told that I was viewing the issue through American eyes where race has very narrow definitions and prescriptions. I absolutely agree. My western eyes attempt to oversimplify something that is very dynamic, complex, and multi-layered. In the US someone with ANY African ancestry is considered black-period, so the idea of hundreds of adjectives used to describe varying levels of blackness leaves me a bit perplexed- especially since we are fully aware that race in itself is a social/political construct, and is not biological at all.
Where does one attempt to begin to understand the color lines prevalent in Dominican culture as outlined in this article? Do we start with the many issues that DR has with Haiti, who ruled their portion of Hispanola for a little over twenty years? I mean, one could easily tie Haiti to Africanness or blackness and argue that some Dominicans, in rejecting blackness, reject those who once oppressed them. Or maybe we must examine the Trujillo dictatorship that was responsible for what many consider a genocide or ethnic cleansing of Haitians. If we examine the idea of “complexion” in these historical constructs, one could imagine that “lighter skin” could better, or possibly save, one’s life. The same could be said for Blacks living in the US during and after slavery (and some may argue still to this day). These issues sit at the base of those Dominican Salons, in some ways define colorism, and even more so enjoins our ideas of race and racism.
At story’s end, we have to acknowledge that all of these references to complexion and hair texture mirror the psychological issues that Frantz Fannon thoroughly examines in his book Black Skin White Masks. What we celebrate as good is what moves us closer to “whiteness” and is often the result of oppression, brutality and rape. Essentially, what we see as affirming our beauty only further reminds us of the crimes committed against us- which I find much uglier than “dark skin”.
What say you readers?
How has colorism affected your life?
Also consider these references:
NYT: As Racism Wanes, Colorism Persists
Beyond racism: race and inequality in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States
Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola
