PADF commissioned Dr. Gerald Murray to investigate mutual perceptions and attitudes that exist between Dominicans and Haitians, with a particular focus on the border area. The context for the assignment was the concern among development professionals, created not only by negative media coverage, but also various human rights reports and academic studies, that a situation of such conflict exists between Haitians and Dominicans in the border area that bilateral collaboration will be difficult. A companion report to the current one deals with the specific conflicts. This report will deal with the opinions that Dominicans and Haitians expressed about each other during six weeks of interviewing in the months.
The first part of the report deals heavily with the topic of race. A comparison and contrast is given of Dominican and Haitian racial classification systems. The guiding conclusion is that there is more concern with racial differences in the Dominican Republic than in Haiti, but that these strictly racial concerns (which affect black Dominicans as well) are not a major driving force in the perceptions and sentiments which Dominicans have of Haitians.
The next two parts of the report deal with Dominican perceptions of Haitians and then with Haitian perceptions of Dominicans. In each of these sections I report on what members of each group had to say about the other group. A major pattern emerged by which Dominicans in general are much more aware of and concerned about Haitians than vice versa. Except for the Haitian migrant sector for Haitians living along the border and participating in cross-border market activities, most Haitians may never see a Dominican. Because of the Haitian presence in the Dominican Republic, however, virtually every Dominican sees Haitians, usually engaged in lower status economic activities. Dominican generalizations about Haitians are consequently much more abundant than Haitian generalizations about Dominicans. Quite tellingly, however, the comments made by Haitians actually living in the Dominican Republic, who are receiving free medical care at Dominican facilities, and whose undocumented children are nonetheless attending Dominican schools for free, tend to be more balanced than the statements made by Haitians in Haiti, who may have never heard a Dominican, but whose highly negative opinions of Dominicans are shaped by radio reports which intentionally try to dissuade Haitians from going to the Dominican Republic by depicting life there as a long string of unmitigated abuses against Haitians by Dominicans.
The final section of the report deals with the currently delicate question of the refusal of the Dominican government to grant citizenship rights to individuals with Haitian parentage. A particularly difficult case is that of the arrayanos, children with a Dominican father and a Haitian mother, raised totally bilingual by both parents, who are generally denied citizenship. If the mother is Dominican and the father Haitian, the child is given a Dominican birth certificate. If the mother is Haitian, however, the child remains stateless under current practice, unless the Dominican father recruits a Dominican female relative or friend to declare herself to be the mother of the child.
The report (pdf) is available free of charge and can be downloaded by clicking on the link below:
This report has also been translated into Spanish and will soon be in French.
#1 by Arlette Bourgeois-Martinez on August 24th, 2010
It is so sad how people of color continue to divide themselves, based on self hatred.