Black behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops

by Ginetta E.B. Candelario

Black behind the Ears is an innovative historical and ethnographic examination of Dominican identity formation in the Dominican Republic and the United States. For much of the Dominican Republic’s history, the national body has been defined as “not black,” even as black ancestry has been grudgingly acknowledged. Rejecting simplistic explanations, Ginetta E. B. Candelario suggests that it is not a desire for whiteness that guides Dominican identity discourses and displays. Instead, it is an ideal norm of what it means to be both indigenous to the Republic ( indios ) and “Hispanic.” Both indigeneity and Hispanicity have operated as vehicles for asserting Dominican sovereignty in the context of the historically triangulated dynamics of Spanish colonialism, Haitian unification efforts, and U.S. imperialism. Candelario shows how the legacy of that history is manifest in contemporary Dominican identity discourses and displays, whether in the national historiography, the national museum’s exhibits, or ideas about women’s beauty. Dominican beauty culture is crucial to efforts to identify as “indios” because, as an easily altered bodily feature, hair texture trumps skin color, facial features, and ancestry in defining Dominicans as indios. Candelario draws on her participant observation in a Dominican beauty shop in Washington Heights, a New York City neighborhood with the oldest and largest Dominican community outside the Republic, and on interviews with Dominicans in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Santo Domingo. She also analyzes museum archives and displays in the Museo del Hombre Dominicano and the Smithsonian Institution as well as nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European and American travel narratives.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Latino

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[zara · Rating 3 out of 5]

solid book! just realizing how long it took me to read it. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who’s not specifically interested in Dominican racial identity development lol, but it is really interesting for people who are Dominican, people who live in New York/interact with NYC Dominicans, and people trying to understand the “i no Black I Dominican” jokes on twitter.

[Fern · Rating 5 out of 5]

My former spouse was Dominican and this book revealed issues that I am already familiar with and to this day it seems to remain an issue with Dominicans until they move to the U.S. (I am African-American) and they really see racism up close and personal. A good read!

[emi ⋆]

dnf on pg 45

[Valeria · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too much sociology for me but still interesting

[Meg Petersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great contribution to the literature on the Dominican concept of race. It added some pieces to the puzzle for me, and was lively and well written. I recommend it to anyone interested in the topic. At first I thought the author was going to explore how Dominicans went wrong in their ideas about race, but by the end the book came around to what I found to be an intelligent and balanced view of this complicated issue.

[Torzilla · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was incredibly boring for me, but I am also not interested in this sort of history. When I had to read an Italian book with a similar format, I was enamored with the contents... but that is because I am Italian, and would love to learn more about that history.

For anyone interested in the Dominican Republic, or their own personal history, you will probably enjoy this book. For everyone else, avoid.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a grad school class on Race and Mestizaje. I found the various case studies interesting and informative in terms of both a historical and current analysis of Dominican ethno-racial identity, both on the island and in the US diaspora. It was, however, somewhat disjointed in trying to cover too many aspects and loci of identity.

[Gordon Kwok · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book and an informative one for me that explains the mindset of a nation.