Dominican-American Ethnic/ Racial Identities and United States Social Categories

Abstract

The majority of Dominicans have sub-Saharan African ancestry,1 which would make them “black” by historical United States ‘one-drop' rules. Second generation Dominican high school students in Providence, Rhode Island do not identity their race in terms of black or white, but rather in terms of ethnolinguistic identity, as Dominican/Spanish/Hispanic. The distinctiveness of Dominican-American understandings of race is highlighted by comparing them with those of non-Hispanic, African descent second generation immigrants and with historical Dominican notions of social identity. Dominican second generation resistance to phenotype-racialization as black or white makes visible ethnic/racial formation processes that are often veiled, particularly in the construction of the category African-American. This resistance to black/white racialization suggests the transformative effects that post-1965 immigrants and their descendants are having on United States ethnic/racial categories.