The truth is still the truth even if no one believes it. A lie is still a lie, even if everyone believes it. – Unknown

The United States was founded in 1776 on the basis that all men are created equal. Despite that ideal, from the very beginning it becomes obvious that denial, contradiction and outright lies are the mechanism used to create a reality that doesn’t exist. All men are created equal, a concept agreed to and signed by men who owned slaves and never liberated them. (Slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865, 89 years after independence. Racial admixture prohibited by federal law until 1967, 191 years after independence. Despite that Alabama was the last state to remove anti-miscenigation laws in 1999, 223 years after independence! By contrast, the Dominican Republic wasn’t born as a slave country and anti-miscegination laws never existed.

American Identity

In the same token, American identity, particularly racial identity, is mired in lies and make belief, and the repitition of these lies as if they will ever become true. While the typical mixed race Dominican didn’t have his own country against him, it appears that those same mixed people of European and African ancestry was the most feared and unwanted by the United States, to the point that it negated a mixed identity to its own mixed race. All of this in order to keep the white race as pure as possible and with the least input of the “inferior people.” Concepts like the One-Drop-Rule, which was applied in the United States only where less than 5% of the world’s population currently live, is based on that belief. It implies negating one aspect of who mixed people so that they pretend they are the other aspect of their reality or, at least, side with that part more than the other. Contrary to popular belief, the One-Drop-Rule lie was created to force the European-African mixed people from recognizing their European reality and pretending they are simply African or sided with the African side only, hence blacks. The One-Drop-Rule was never applied to real blacks because, no one would ever think of a real black as anything else other than black. It was to the mixed race, the mulattoes, those that through their physical features, skin color, hair type, etc show that they are a mix is for who the rule was made. Plus, the One-Drop-Rule lie was applied almost exclusively to mixed race individuals in order to acheive the purest “uncontaminated” white population possible. On the one hand have the white population “on the lookout” for those signs of racial mixture and avoid associating with them and, more importantly, mating with them.

The United States has had issues concerning recognizing its mixed race population simply as that, mixed race. This goes to such length that if a mixed race person wants to identify with his reality, sometimes he will face the criticism of others clsiming he wants to be white. In fact, that’s a defense mechanism, because what they are saying is that their belief on the One-Drop-Rule is cemented on their desire to be black even if reality implies that they are mixed. Rather than wanting to be white, the mixed race person that claims a mixed rsce identity is simply being true to himself. He isn’t white or black, he is mixed and there is nothing anyone can do about it for one reason: that person was birn as mixed, will live as mixed and will die as mixed. No one decides that, it simply is.

While the One-Drop-Rule is no longer a part of laws meant to control and exclude the mixed race population, even after anti-miscegination laws and anti-segregation laws were eliminated at the federal and state level; it remains as a cultural tradition, though every year it becomes less relevant. The African American community is composed by two groups and it has always been composed by them: the blacks and the mixed race. Allowing the mixed race individual to excert the reality of who they are instead of pretending they are what they are not and coming to terms that this reality implies different experiences from blacks which occurs on a daily basis, will not weaken the African American community. On the contrary, allowing the truth to behold mixed people and not abusing them by applying racist and false concept such as the One-Drop-Rule, will further strengthen the group as the mixed race individuals see that the African American community itself is compromised with accepting reality. As the old saying goes “The truth shall make you free.”

Implications for the Dominican Republic

Given the history of the United States with cultural beliefs that lead to situations such as Manifest Destiny (it itself in part led to the Monroe Doctrine), Americans still have an intrinsic desire to mold the world and make it more like the United States in everything. This ideal has often fail as Americans have imposed it on various parts of the world, but it also has have some successes. The basis of this belief is another belief: the notion that the American way is the right way, that somehow Americans are superior and other peoples are beneath them. In consequencs, the other people need to subject themselves to the beliefs of the Americans and this includes aspects of racial identities, in particular to the One-Drop-Rule. That is not the only concept born from the desire of negation in identity, the blood quantum is applied also among many native American groups to define who is accepted in their tribes and, essentialky, becomes an indian. Through this concept, people that look white with blonde hair and blue eyes, and people that look black with nappy hair and small ears if they have enough native American blood as defined via an ancestry DNA test, then among other specifics depending on the tribe they become members and, in effect, become native Americans. It’s a system based on self-denial and make belief.

Since Americans are not willing to accept other peoples way of identity and are willing to impose their own flawed identity, even see it as “natural” or “anti-racist” when in reality it isn’t any of those things, countries like the Dominican Republic are under an incessant attack regsrfing its identity and, at times, its own existence as a country and a people. Let history be damned when it comes to that of countries other than the United States, the only past that matters is the American one and the other people have no choice but to “get in line” with it. A certain segment of the African Americsn community and American society at large, loathe the identity of the Dominican Republic because it’s so different from their own. They see Dominicans through an American lense that distorts reality and interprets everything as if the entire world had the same past that Americans did. The past gives rise to the present and the future. The United States is not an exception and neither are other countries. Just how Americans are unwilling to accept forms of identity of other countries, those other countries too are unwilling to accept American interference.

The concept of the One-Drop-Rule often is applied to Dominicans by some Americans. As Americans are often shocked when travelling to most countries in the world where most of humanity lives and witnessing that the One-Drop-Rule is largely a United States concept that isn’t accepted in most places, they too tend to become intolerant and at times belligerent that elsewhere it’s something else that exist. It turns out thst the Dominican Republic is one of a handful of countries where most of the population is of mixed race, particularly of the European-African variety. This becomes evident not just in ancestry DNA tests, but also in seeing Dominicans and especially when returning to the Dominican Republic after visiting countries where most of the population is overwhelmingly of Sub-Saharan African descent such as Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados, various countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and others. Even looking at the African American community itself, which as has been said is composed by blacks and mixed race people, it becomes evident that in most places the typical African American looks blacker than the typical Dominican. This is evident again in ancestry DNA results where most African American are overwhelmingly of Sub-Saharan African, even many of those that are lightskin, while most Dominicans show that the Sub-Saharan African component is not even half with most of the ancestry DNA being something else. In this essence, it could be said that there is an overwhelmingly black population (African Americans) wanting to impose the One-Drop-Rule on a smaller mixed race population (Dominicans), just as it was done with a large segnment of the United States own mixed race population. The United States is the only country in the world whose not-for-profit organizations, some institutions of higher learning, etc have an attack on Dominican identity with the publishing of multiple papers regarding the subject and even televised documentaries. That isn’t a coincidence.

Conclusion

In conclusion, to impose concept like the One-Drop-Rule on Dominicans is to negate the mixed race reality of most Dominicans. It’s also an insult that doesn’t value and takes into account that the history and the culture of one country isn’t the same as that of the other. It’s to imply that somehow the belief on the One-Drop-Rule is right and the rest are wrong, that Americans are superior to Dominicans who as an inferior people should subject themselves to those that think of themselves as superior. The United States has no right to impose systems of identities that are proper of her to other societies based on a host of ideas. You are not superior, your ideals are not the ideals of other people, what you think is right is not always right. Dominicans created the Dominican Republic, defended the Dominican Republic, and will continue to define the Dominican Republic without the help or input of any other people. Dominicans have sustained their own Dominican Republic and the United States is no one to tell Dominicans what to think, what to say or how to live in their own country. Not even countries that were similar to the United States concerning its division of the races such as South Africa, Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) or Namibia (then Soutwest Africa) had anything like the One-Drop-Rule. Today most countries of the world doesn’t have the One-Drop-Rule concept, well over 95% of humanity doesn’t live with the One-Drop-Rule concept and the Dominican Republic itself will not accept this concept either.

The truth is still the truth even if no one believes it. A lie is still a lie, even if everyone believes it. – Unknown