It seems as if the Dominican Republic is proceeding in its plans to deport thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent. What’s most interesting is that this issue is now only starting to cause uproar and fury in the United States and the pan-african community. Tremors have foreshadowed this fate since the horrific Earthquake that devastated half of Hispanola five years ago. In light of the current conversation, I think its important to share this video from Dr. Henry Louis Gates who explores the centuries long division between the two countries.
In the Dominican Republic, Professor Gates explores how race has been socially constructed in a society whose people reflect centuries of inter-marriage, and how the country’s troubled history with Haiti informs notions about racial classification. In Haiti, Professor Gates tells the story of the birth of the first-ever black republic, and finds out how the slaves’s hard fight for liberation over Napoleon Bonaparte’s French Empire became a double-edged sword.