Republica Dominicana Bloggana

The essences of power and privilege were shed in a different light when I lived for six months in the Dominican Republic. Although I had grown up in a place where most people were darker than me, I had never been in a situation of being utterly alone and the only person of my color in a city of millions (okay, I had other program members there, but I did not get along with or hang out with them). Being the minority for the first time was exactly how Zalika described it: I would wake up in the morning, exhausted and already sweating, and think—I’m tired of being different. I’m tired of having to try so hard….And then I got to go home. I got to go back to being “regular”.

I can only imagine how tedious it must be, always being stared at like you are an entity rather than a person. Being watched wherever you go because it’s assumed that you are unpredictable and untrustworthy. Being laughed at because you haven’t “acclimated” to the thick heat. Being involved in jokes with your own friends where everyone is laughing, and you know you’ve missed something culturally and pretty sure they’re just laughing at you at this point. And on top of that, I didn’t speak the language.

Beyond my everyday struggles, the absolute hardest part was not having any friends, family, or confidantes to share my struggles with. Interestingly enough to the Dominicans, me, the “rich” white girl from the states shared a great bond and friendship with the Limpiabotas (shoeshine boys) and homeless kids. They were the other outsiders of that community. And they accepted me in ways that other Dominicans did not. The boys would get harassed by police officers who were in utter disbelief that a tourist of my stature could actually want to have these dirty little kids hanging around me. One boy, Renato, actually got arrested once, just for walking with me, and I had to go to the detention center and “claim him” as not being guilty of harassing me. How, I ask, was it okay to arrest this little boy for being just who he was, and yet, every day when walking home I would be harassed by countless people—the fruit stand worker, the guard, spit on by hookers—without so much as a glance by these “tourist” police? It was all about power and privilege. And in this society, although I held some of the highest power (I was able to single-handedly get a kid out of jail) and privilege (not too many Dominicans get to “decide” they want to study abroad and actually do it), the masses spoke louder.

I believe that it is human nature to seek power. And it’s the assumption that once that power is attained, the privilege that goes hand in hand with it will follow. This struck me particularly in the way that Dominicans viewed skin color. To me, being from New Mexico and being able to count my black friends on one hand, I thought of all Dominicans as “Black” (this probably attributes to my aforementioned “colorblindness” that I was taught growing up). However, within the country, there were MANY different types of black. There was “café”, “dulce de leche”, “prieto”, and many more across the spectrum all the way to “azul”. What you wanted to be, of course, was as light as possible. That was not different. Most of the color titles described tones of color. The “azul” was the worst. I had Dominican friends that would joke that “he’s so black, he’s blue”. They would call these people “Haitianos”—Haitians. Again, as a thoughtless American, I thought of the Dominican Republic as one of the worse off countries. But it was nothing compared to Haiti. And so those were the ones who they singled out as the “worst”. They were the ones whom they were racist toward.

Power and privilege exists everywhere. And because it is human nature to seek power, it is important to mindfully discipline that desire. Perhaps the difference between power and privilege is that power is earned and deserved while privilege is not. But I can think of ten reasons why that statement is not true either. For me, power and privilege are still something I grapple with. I think on so many levels it is an unfair concept and gets ugly quickly. But the bottom line is that it exists regardless of whether we want to live by it or denounce it.

I guess I am just thankful not only to have had the privilege of traveling to a place that taught me something completely different about what I thought I knew, but also taught me something about myself. I learned that I am not as powerful as I thought I was. I learned that much of my confidence, ease of being, and natural happiness is indeed due to the privilege I hold. I’m also thankful to be here now and be learning about how to stop feeling guilty about this privilege and power I hold. The answer is to instead be creatively constructive with it and use it for accomplishing something greater for all. This is the answer to a question I have toiled with for many years.