FULL EPISODE: Haiti & The Dominican Republic: An Island Divided | Black in Latin America | PBS
pbs.orgFor all of those who have been anticipating Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr’s documentary series on black identity in Latin America here is a link to the first episode. Reading Junot Diaz’ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao provided me with a (very) brief insight into Dominican and Haitian race relations making it clear that Dominicans considered Haitians socially inferior mainly because of their typically darker skin tone. Oscar’s mother Belicia Cabral is a dark skinned Dominican and the narrator profusely expresses how beautiful she is, but her blackness is seen as a fuku (curse) by her community and she’s considered more Haitian looking by other Dominicans. Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr takes this social commentary further by delving deeper into socially constructed notions of race and African identity on the island of Hispaniola.
“Shaquille O’Neil did not get that name in the Congo if you know what I’m talking about.”
—This past monday at the 92nd Street Y, I watched a great conversation unfold between Henry Louis Gates, Jr and Ilan Stavans.
Salient facts learned:
- ‘Only’ 450,000 of 11.2 million Africans stolen over to the New World actually came to the present-day United States.
- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is 56% white.
- The island of Hispaniola is fucked up, and all the racial hemming and hawing in the MLB about the rise of Dominican players (vis-a-vis the diminishment of black players) is entirely wrong in a weird way.
- Really nobody, white or black, is descended very much from Cherokee princesses.
- The average African American is 20% white.
- “Deconstructing” race doesn’t have to be terrible or tedious.
- Ilan Stavans and Gates are tenacious, wonderful educators.
“One of the things that will disturb people much more than the use of the n-word, or much more even than the horrors of slavery, was Samuel L. Jackson's amazing depiction of Stephen. His character, Stephen, makes Stepin Fetchit look like Malcolm X.”
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in interview with Quentin TarantinoWho’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?
…a new book by Touré, exploring race and the liberating pursuit of individuality in America.
—
Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?
251 pp. Free Press. $11.99
iTunes (audio or iBook).
Tarantino talks to Henry Louis Gates Jr. about Django and the representation of slavery after taking some heat from Spike Lee and others. Great interview.
theroot.comListening to Tarantino talk about his films, always entertaining. Can’t wait for him to publish this book of film criticism he mentions at the beginning.
Great demonstration of why top tier academics should ALSO be interviewers rather than just be interviewed.
Tarantino on the Brutality of 'Django Unchained'
Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Why do you think we’ve had to distance ourselves from the pain as we have — which makes your representation shocking?
Quentin Tarantino: I don’t know the answer to that question because I don’t feel that way. I can’t understand why anybody would feel that way. I think America is one of the only countries that has not been forced, sometimes by the rest of the world, to look their own past sins completely in the face. And it’s only by looking them in the face that you can possibly work past them. And it’s not a case where the Turks don’t want to acknowledge the Armenian holocaust, but the Armenians do. Nobody wants to acknowledge it here.
(via)
