Black Experience In Latin America

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Darius Henry Black Experience in Latin America Sawyer/ TA: Florence 7 December 2012 Final Exam 1. There are plenty of ways to define Black Politics in general. One is when many people who considered themselves Black in that country join together and form an organization where they can fight for the equal rights that their white and Moreno counterparts have. These organizations are so that these people can have an identity and they can feel proud of themselves, their heritage, their culture, etc. In this course and in the readings, we’ve talked about Black Politics in Latin America. Everyone knows Black Politics exist here in the United States as they struggled for racial identity and racial culture. But is there a just thing as Black…show more content…
In class, we talked about many Latin American countries. Many of these countries have similar experiences, including what they think of when they of race. Most of these countries were colonialize and many of them have slaves. This includes the United States of America. But one thing we have learned throughout the duration in the class is that every country has different experience than one another when it comes to race relation. The best two examples we can look at are Ecuador and Dominican Republic. As we see, both have similar experience when it comes to slavery. But one country does not considered themselves as black while the other country are now becoming proud of their heritage and though work needs to be done, they help improve the racial tension in that country. But one thing that we learned from all this is that race…show more content…
In Dominican Republic, there is rarely a term known as “Afro-Dominican” because many of the Dominicans citizens do not consider themselves as Negroes. As Sagas explains, they believe that the term “negro” belongs to the Haitian and not the Dominicans and the blacks in Dominican Republic are consider “morenos”. The funny thing is that most of the Dominicans skin-color is black. So the question is this why they do not consider themselves as Blacks? The reason, as Sagas point it out, is that since the island was founded, there have been race-mixing and this practice lasted for century. Since they practice race-mixing, many of the citizens turn out to be mulatto so they do not really consider themselves Black. In Dominican Republic, if you have any white ancestry, you have a higher possibility to have a great life and live in the upper-class. This is different than the USA, of course, where if you have any Black ancestry, you are consider low in class. It is not that they do not think of themselves as “white”, but that they are really “Dominicans” for “national and racial purpose” (335). If we take a look at the culture of Dominicans, we see that they do not really want to be associated with being blacks. According to Casandra Badillo’s article Stories of Race, Hair and Gender, many of the “Black” Dominicans women decided to straighten their hair so that
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