Although I am not personally qualified to speak on the experience of blacks and Afro-Latinos in America, the article on Dominicans is to me an example of internalized oppression. Because the message that blackness is inherently negative is subtly perpetuated in both Dominican and American society, Dominicans distance themselves from their black ancestry. On an anecdotal level, I have observed this phenomenon in a Dominican man who I am well-acquainted with. He presents as fairly dark skinned yet has a Spanish last name so that he reads more as Latino than Dominican. Instead of embracing the concept of solidarity with oppressed blacks, he is an outspoken critic of the Black Lives Matter movement. Although on the surface his identification with critics of the BLM movement may be attributed to the fact that he comes from a family of police officers, on a deeper level this article caused me to wonder whether it is internalized racism. Often people of color feel that in order to get ahead in America they have to distance themselves from their home culture, especially if that culture includes elements of blackness. One example that stands out to me is Ted Cruz, whose original name is Rafael Eduardo. Perhaps my Dominican acquaintance’s vitriol against a movement which simply aims to reassert the value of black lives in a world in which the deaths of people like Eric Garner go unavenged stems from internalized oppression.

Racial Formation highlighted how rigid our definition of race is in America. We look at race not on a spectrum but rather as a polarized choice between white and black. Being accepted as white is synonymous with being accepted as part of an American society, which is why it is so sought after to be white.  In reality there is a lot of gray-whether with ethnic whites like Jews and Irish, Latinos such as Dominicans, or East and South Asians. This simplistic definition causes much personal turmoil for those who do not fit neatly into either box, which in my estimation appears to be large numbers of the population. My estimation is supported by the article which states that most whites in Louisiana have at least 1/20th black ancestry. As a blonde haired blue-eyed Jewish woman of Eastern European and some Irish descent, I present as white and therefore identify as white in acknowledgement of my racial privilege. Growing up entirely in Brooklyn, the most discrimination I faced was an occasional antisemitic remark from passersby while en route to synagogue or some other visibly Jewish activity. However, I think the reality is a bit more complex than that-would I have been considered white a century ago? 50 years ago? My grandparents still remember a time when Jews were forbidden from entering hotels, while my grandmother recalls getting rejected from a teaching job at a private school due to her Jewishness. I check off white on surveys, applications and census papers but I feel my cultural experience is markedly different than a WASP person’s cultural experience. The question of whiteness becomes even more complex when you consider Middle Eastern people, many of whom are white passing yet still get stopped at airports for Arabic names.

-Melissa