‘Indio’ skin color reveals Dominicans’ latent racism: poll

Santo Domingo.- The “study on citizenship and democracy in the Dominican political culture” published Wed. by outlet Hoy found that 46.38% of the population manifests internalized racism that emerges when asked which skin color represents Dominicans.

The poll found that the color “Indio” has the function of supressing the blackness and is a remnant of dictator Rafael Trujillo’s vision of “Dominicanness.”

It notes that in terms of identifying a skin color that most represents a people, the desirable responses can be “none” or “all equally,” which would mean the same thing since the point is that there’s no specific color and, in any case, even “mestizo (mulatto)” would imply a recognition of the mixture that doesn’t highlight a particular color.

“Indio is a way of referring to dark-skinned mestizo people, hiding the black influence in miscegenation, but not necessarily highlighting the Taino culture,” the study says.

Racism and anti-Haitianism

The survey, whose technical details weren’t provided, also found that a majority of people, nearly three fifths, acknowledged the historic racism that has affected people of color.

There is also an important 40% that expresses discriminatory opinions regarding the causes of greater prevalence of the poverty among that population.

“The reason why dark-skinned people tend to be poorer was asked and 57.31% answered that it is because they have been treated unfairly; 33.41% see the cause in their culture and another 6.18% because they do not work. On the Haitian issue, most agree that the children of Haitian immigrants born in Dominican territory are Dominicans.”