Dominicans in NYC were known only as drug dealers, University Professor asys

Santo Domingo.- Aimed at contributing knowledge about national identity from social relationships by Dominicans in the United States, a prominent Dominican-American intellectual based in New York City, dictated a lecture in the Santo Domingo State University UASD.

Silvio Torres Saillant, Professor at Syracuse University and founder of New York University’s Dominican Studies Institute, recalled that seeing the conditions of exclusion which his compatriots withstood in 1992, spurred him to found the department on Dominican immigrants’ political, economic and social studies.

He said that’s the way he became aware of the Dominican population’s virtues and industriousness, noting that the diaspora’s ignorance of their rights led it to be unfairly prejudiced and was known only as "drug dealers."

Torres Saillant, chair of the Latino and Latin American Studies for New York State University at Syracuse, added that before that institute was founded, the situation of Dominicans living in New York wasn’t known.