Marc: I am only using your bame in the subject line to expand on the thread
about race and identity and baseball.I was unable to respond because of post
limits.Anyway I would like to take it from there.You are correct about the
beautiful women in the Dominican Republic.
Anyway,I never said that Americans accept Dominican players as black.I said
though that we use the "one drop" rule as labelling someone as black but only
for those born in the U.S.Now in the Dominican Republic and in all other areas
of the Americas where there are Afrodescendants like the
DR,Colombia,Brazil,Peru.Uruguay and the Central American republics racial
classifications are based on lots of factors,for examples.skin tones,type of
hair,
proximity to the Euro physiogonomy and so on.As a matter of fact what we have
in the Americas is the idea of "social race".It is one's physiological
appearances that matter.You see in the U.S,a U S black is someone who has an
African blood line.Appearances and type of hair does not matter.There are are
all types of U.S black skin tones and hair types but all are unified as black
from very light Tyra Banks to very dark Michele Obama.But the "one drop " rule
in the U.S unites all blacks.In the Dominican Republic ,social appearances ere
very critical
and they form the basis of racial classification and discrimination.The darker
the skin and
African physiological features like kinky hair ,ftat noses,flat noses the more
one gets discriminated against in the Americas. Dominicans do not like to be
called black and they may deny their black roots.Ironically,all the dances most
of the music of the Americas originated with the Africans brought to the
region:cha cha,rhumba.bachatta,salsa ,merengue,cumbia.
And there are some radical Afrocentric scholars who have researched and
proclaim that
the Argentinian "tango" has its origin with the Africans who were broughtin the
Rio del Plata region of Argentina.During Spanish occupation there were lots of
blacks in Buenos Aires.
Anyway skin whitening products are big in the DR.The people
in the DR and the other regions of the Americas are very obsessed about whites
to the point of neuroticism.More on this later.
Most American treat blacks from other countries miore favorable than U.S born
blacks.
The black comedian Dick Gregory used to dress up like an African tribal chief
and
he would stay in the finest hotels in the South,when American blacks could not
stay in one of those hotels.
Why Americans treat blacks from the Caribbean or Africa differently from their
own U.S blacks
calls for another later discussion.
Now re the baseball players,I did not say that there was a
conscious deliberative
effort by baseball authorities to get players from the DR as means of
diminishing the Afro-American stronghold of the game, But the feeling among the
Afrocentric scholars that
the increasing efforts of recruiting players from the DR are dimimuiting
efforts to
help black Americans prepare for a life in baseball and that just as strong
efforts should be made in the U.S
Maybe the Chicago situation would not have occured if those swings were in
sponsored
leagues swinging baseball bats on the fields than 2x 4s at each other's head.
Hope this helps.
Michael"resistant to extinction" Sylvester,PhD
Daytona Beach,Florida
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