Unraveling Dominican Cultural Identity: Embracing Every Facet of Our Heritage

What happens when a single comment online unravels years of deeply rooted beliefs about cultural identity? Join me as I share a personal story of navigating the complex tapestry of Dominican heritage, where African, Spanish, and Taino strands are woven together. This episode takes you through a candid reflection on why Dominicans, influenced by figures like Trujillo, often fiercely protect their Spanish roots while grappling with the colonial legacy that shapes these perceptions. Through my own experiences, we explore the emotional weight of defending one's identity and the resilience required to embrace every facet of our cultural history.

Discover the challenges and discomfort of unlearning ingrained ideologies and the journey toward embracing a multifaceted identity. We delve into the heart of why our beliefs are often defended so passionately and what emotions lie beneath that defense. I invite you to ponder the parts of your identity you hold dear and to question whether this attachment is born from pride, fear, or something else entirely. Let's continue this vital conversation on Instagram, sharing stories and reflections that acknowledge the full spectrum of our heritage. Plus, get a sneak peek into next week's topic on the impact of dismissing others' experiences with the phrase, "it didn't happen to me.

Chapters

• 0:00 Cultural Identity in the Dominican Republic
• 15:01 Embracing Cultural Identity

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh, we could, we could fly. Welcome to this new season of the have a Cup of Chahani podcast. So I want to title this new season that I'm embarking on with I'm Growing, so this is going to be the season of growth and that's what I'm going to share with you throughout the season. So I thank you for coming over here and sitting with me and I hope you enjoy. Hola vasitos, and welcome to another episode of have a Cup of Johannie podcast, where we sip on coffee and dive deep into life's lessons. I am your host, anjua for short, and this month's theme it's all about the things I've learned from my kinfolk, my fellow Dominicans, through some heated, thought-provoking and downright fascinating online interactions, and if you hear some sort of purring, that's Octavia. She's my co-host for today.

Speaker 1: 1:05

Nevertheless, today we're talking about something many of us wrestle with but don't often name the weight of defending identity. Why is it that we, as Dominicans, feel so fiercely protective of our cultural identity and, more importantly, what happens when that defense inadvertently erases parts of who we are? Grab your cafecito, tu chocolatito, tu té, whatever it is, because this one is going to be good. All right, let's start with a little background. Folks, recently, I shared a personal experience online where I replied to a reel on Instagram from at Naturally, julie. Her focus on Instagram is about foods and her video was about how us Dominican folk, while our cultural specifically our food, cultural specifically our food is so heavily tied to Africa, we reject that side or ignore that side, while heavily emphasizing or uplifting the Spanish side of our legacy. And I replied I saw her video, I resonated with it and I replied I saw her video, I resonated with it and I replied and I was like hey, dominican here, and I worked with Spaniards while I lived in Europe and they called me I won't say that name here because it's a bad name and said that they consider us halfway savages on culture, not polite or lacking decorum, laughing emoji here. So as much as Dominicans love to claim them, they don't claim us like that. Ijs laughing emoji, thinking emoji, upside down emoji, eyes emoji and my point was to highlight how some Dominicans they claim, they claim Spain a lot, but the Spaniards don't claim us like that, you know. And that comment, though, it sparked some intense reactions and one comment in particular stood out to me and it was from at Felipe, something Felipe. And in there this person said 58 million Spanish in Spain, and you talk to how many? I live in Madrid and not even one Spaniard had ever said anything like that. So I guess you don't have all the truth. Now let's pause for a second.

Speaker 1: 3:45

This response wasn't just a disagreement, it was a defense. A defense of Spanish identity, sure, but also, indirectly, a dismissal of my lived experience. And it made me wonder why are we so quick to defend one part of our identity while overlooking the rest? Why do we defend our identity so fiercely? And I think there are a few reasons why we feel this weight to defend our identity. To defend our identity, colonial legacy, right, which I've said in various social media posts.

Speaker 1: 4:34

For centuries Dominicans have been taught that Spanish heritage is synonymous with sophistication and superiority, and the closer that you are to European ideals, the more you're seen as worthy. And that legacy has been heavily emphasized in the Dominican Republic. It was brutally enforced by one of the worst dictators in Latin America, trujillo. I mean, just look up the Parsley Massacre, you would see that this legacy, this colonial legacy to attach ourselves so fiercely to Spain as kind of like our mother country, as kind of like our thing that gives us life in the Dominican Republic was brutally beat into us by not just this dictator before him and after him, and that continues on to this day, but what Trujillo did was he cemented that in blood, you know, to show what can happen if you dare uplift the African and the Taino legacy that are also part of the Dominican Republic, you see. So that right, there was like boom, cemented that there's also pride and resilience. So let's be real, dominicans, we love our culture. We love it.

Speaker 1: 6:18

I think, like when I first immigrated to the United States, people would try to guess where I came from and I would just say I'm Dominican, and which will leave people aghast right away. You know, I have learned a lot of things since then, and I have learned a lot about my mixed heritage, my mixed legacy and everything that makes me me. So I am able now to present myself to other people in the United States easier, but nevertheless, we love our culture, and rightly so. I mean, we've built something beautiful out of a painful history.

Speaker 1: 6:57

But sometimes that pride can morph into defensiveness, especially when we feel like someone is challenging the narrative we've been told to believe and the narrative that we have accepted as well, because it's not just like somebody told us to believe. They told us we took it from them and we accepted it. We carried it out and we are giving it to the generation after generation that comes after us. So it's like the sunk cost fallacy, right? You have put so much time and effort, you have brainwashed yourself for so long with this lie, that when anybody objects to it or tells you something different, you automatically get defensive with it, because then you're thinking about is my entire life a lie? Why do I need to get uncomfortable and see myself through a different lens? You see, so it's very uncomfortable for people to come out of a belief system, right, that they have believed and accepted their entire lives, or for most of their lives, to something else, even if that something else is factual. They also have fear of rejection. That's another big one, and I said it on my video when I talked about this, these interactions that I've been having.

Speaker 1: 8:31

Fear is a powerful motivator, people, and that's what Trujillo thrived on. He instilled fear in the Dominican folk, and now that fear lingers, whether spoken or unspoken, that if we dare to admit being more than just Spanish, we will lose our place in the world. Other people will view us as less than Spanish, because that has been ingrained into us, that if we don't identify or present ourselves as Spanish descendants, as Spaniard descendants, and we instead, you know, either accept our mixed heritage, you know, and embrace African and Lutaino ancestry as well, or we dare say we are African-descendant Dominican or we are indigenous-descendant Dominican. Oof, that is like you say that in the middle of a group of Dominicans and they will chew your ass out Because we don't talk about Bruno, we don't talk about that. You know what I'm saying? So, but that's because of that fear, fear of rejection, fear of losing your place in the hierarchy back in the day, and even now, fear of incarceration, fear of violence against you. Fear of incarceration, fear of violence against you. Come on now, and if, out of all these three motivators that are here as to why Dominicans tend to fiercely defend that Spanish identity, I will say fear is the strongest of them all is the strongest of them all.

Speaker 1: 10:27

But now let me tell you about what happens, right, when you become lost in this divided mindset, right, and this, like I feel like this is a fractured mindset to have, because you're tracking one of your many legacies that you have. So I feel that it's divided and it's fracture, so you're not really embracing your full identity, right? And here's what can happen when you don't embrace that. And I've been there before. I was born in the Dominican Republic. I came to the United States, okay, and I was that one person because I learned that from my family, I learned that from the island, okay. And I know Dominicans are going to come for me when I say that, because whenever I talk about the things that I learned over there, that I had to unlearn here, they get mad at that too.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Once again, because pride, right, we take pride in our culture, we take pride in our education and we take pride in who we are, and that is good. I tell everyone of my home country, everyone. But I am not ignorant to the fact that there are things that need to change in that it. And here's what happened. If that comes to fruition, if we erase that, when we defend just one part of that identity at the expense of the others, we're not just erasing history, which is already dangerous enough.

Speaker 1: 12:34

When we erase history, we are also erasing ourselves. Think about it. If we only see ourselves as spanish, what happens to the african rhythms in our music? The tiny rhythms in our music, the Taino techniques in our cooking, the resilience and creativity that come from generations of blending cultures. More importantly, what message does this send to future generations? By ignoring or downplaying our full heritage, we teach them to reject part of themselves. And that rejection doesn't just stop with the self people. It spills over into how we treat others, and that's where I draw the line. For example, it's no coincidence that this hyper-focus on Spanish identity often comes with an undercurrent of anti-Blackness or anti-Haitian sentiment. It's no coincidence those are tied. When we idolize whiteness and Europeanness, we create a hierarchy, the same hierarchy that they instituted, where anything that doesn't fit that mold it's less than, and that hurts us all, all of us, because all of us are mixed, you know.

Speaker 1: 14:01

So here's my takeaway what I learned from this comment, because that is what this podcast is about. I know I'm heavily on the preaching side right now, but let me tell you, on the preaching side right now, but let me tell you, I mean, I have learned so much from interacting and dissecting and thinking on these comments and writing about it. I've been doing so many blog posts and recordings on this because, to me, I feel a responsibility, as someone who is Dominican, to dissect this, to learn from this and to share with other people in the hopes that we can learn to be better. We can learn to identify with our mixed heritage, our mixed heritage, which is African, spaniard and Taino. Okay, and here's what I learned, specifically that defending identity is human.

Speaker 1: 15:01

It's very human, and the reason why I'm so chill about it and why I'm so chill in the comments and very polite and things of that nature, is because I understand that as humans, we try to stay as comfortable as possible. We don't want to get uncomfortable. Big feelings make us feel as if we are in the danger zone and when you're trying to pull out somebody from an ideology that they have held on for so long, that's a very uncomfortable feeling to have. Even if it's coming from a complete stranger that they don't even know that is writing these things and comments in the internet, they feel as if you are personally attacking them because you're scraping at the identity that they have formed about themselves. So, because I understand that it's so recent, why I'm so chill with it and I have chosen to continue to talk and reply as my energy sees fit, while maintaining my calm and my cool and not getting too hype about it. But now we need to be mindful of what we're defending now and why. You know, like I get it, that defending is a human thing to do, but I also know that we, as humans, we have reasoning right, we have these brains that can reason, that we can construe logic. So I ask I always ask great, you're defending, but what are you defending and why are you defending it?

Speaker 1: 16:51

Because when I read that comment, I realized that it wasn't just about me or my experience in Europe. It was about something deeper a collective fear of facing our full history and the messy, beautiful complexity that comes with it. Because, as I unlearned that ideology right, and my first instance of unlearning started in college, when I joined this third world organization and it was filled with Caribbean folks, black Caribbean folks and one African-American person, and through conversation with them and with friends, right, just friendly conversation, no pressure, no nothing I understood the commonality there and I saw myself in them and organically, I started understanding that I don't just come from Spain, I don't just come from the colonizers. Part of me, the other two parts of me, came from those folks that were colonized and I remember being in the shower because that's where I usually have these introspective thoughts and really coming, just centering on that thought that I am half colonizer and half colonized, and how I come from ancestors, and it makes me want to cry from ancestors and it makes me want to cry when I think about it. And that's why I'm so empathetic to these people in my comments, because I know the big emotions that they must be feeling, you know, because it makes me want to cry just thinking about that moment when I centered that thought and I was alone in the shower, just me and the water coming down on me, and it was as if the water was cleansing everything that was not meant to be there. And I stood there, grounded in that thought, understanding that my legacy is half of those people that inflected deep pain and violence on the other half of me.

Speaker 1: 19:17

It is tough to come to that realization, to know that that is what makes you you now. But what empowers me is knowing that I choose now who to be. I choose now who to be and I choose now to look out for injustices and I choose now to talk about injustices and reply to comments, right, that try to invalidate that mixed legacy that we have, because I know that when we try to erase that legacy, we're, in a way, erasing our history, and I don't want that history to repeat itself, because, let me tell you, our identity is not fragile at all. It doesn't need defending. In fact, the more we embrace every part of it the African, the Spanish, the Taino the stronger we become. So I want to leave you with this question, vasitos what parts of your identity do you find yourself defending the most, and is that defense rooted in pride, fear or something else?

Speaker 1: 20:33

Take some time to reflect on it this week and, if you're feeling brave, share your thoughts with me. I told you before I don't get that much traction on Instagram. This comment that I made on somebody else's video has gotten a lot of traction, but usually I don't. So if you want to come to my Instagram is at haveacupofjoannie Come over, leave a comment, send me a message or tag me on your response on Instagram and let's keep this conversation going, because it's one that we all need to have. But let me tell you what's coming next. Well, this is all I have for today's episode, and I thank you for your time with me. Your time is precious, and thank you so much for giving it to me for being open to this dialogue.

Speaker 1: 21:24

Next week, we're diving into another layer of this topic. The problem with this phrase it didn't happen to me. With this phrase, it didn't happen to me. We'll talk about why dismissing someone else's experience hurts more than it helps. Until then, I want you to take care of yourselves, embrace your roots. See you next time, bye. Thank you so much for listening. I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment, do a rating if you can on the podcast, share it with somebody you love, but, most importantly, come back. See you next time, bye.