BernardJeanPierre previously said:



Well Guillermone, that is one thing you don't have to worry about. There are only a very few people who would ever conclude that any African originating practice is mainstream. Generally speaking most people already know that African aspects of Dominican culture are not mainstream at all. What they don't understand is WHY it's like that when there is such a considerably large genetic input from Africa. So I doubt you would find many people who assume African practices are universal, what you may find however are people who don't understand how the Taino aspects of Dominican culture are glorified much more than the African aspects (comparatively) even though considering the makeup of most Dominican one would assume it to be the other way around.

guillermone previously said:

I never said that the racial composition of the DR was an anomaly. What I did say however was that the Dominican Republic is the ONLY country in Spanish Latin America which has the most extensive amalgamation of races and it is precisely for this specific reason what makes the DR unique and in this sense we are most definitely an anomoly among all the countries of the region and maybe even the western hemisphere.

It is unfortunate, but it is actually this unusualness which provokes and leaves the door wide open for misinterpretation. Although, many make attempts at understanding our uniqueness, it is precisely those same people who immediately turn around and ridicule, point fingers and label us as if we were performers in a freak show, who come across as odd, peculiar or strange. Dominicans are not any of that but we are most certainly different.

I just can not think of any one single place around the world, where one can easily observe a large segment of its population to have a wide range, every skin hue of the color spectrum representated among its people. I mean where can you go and see relatives with close blood lines, as close as brothers and sisters to have distinct racial phenotypes which jumps from one extreme to the other? This is more then just common but happens all the time within the same family unit or ancestral lines all over the DR.

Nevertheless, I keep reading the usual rhetoric from people like yourself who constantly repeat and say that ".....the African aspects of Dominican culture receiving less attention and interest........" But I have always insisted and asked those individuals to please provide examples of how is it that we give it "less attention and Interest." The best they can come up with, just to state one example, if I recall correctly, has something to do and falls in the line of a Dominican preference to "pelo bueno vs pelo malo." Well, I mean this or anything which relates to esthetics is very personal in nature, most definitely subjective, a contemporary but transient view of beauty and hardly good enough to substantiate alegations of an African denial.

Doctor Gates in his documentary was unable to give us anything solid either. He could not prove without a reasonable doubt that Dominicans in general fail to recognize African elements in their culture and neither can you Bernard. Perhaps this "re-ocurring theme" which you talk about is subliminal in nature, manifested as an uncouncious reaction to racial identity. If true, then it remains strictly that, an unproven proposition and this is how your hypothesis needs to be presented. Other then that, it remains as simply conjecture.

mirabal4ever previously said:


"This is what ignites all sorts of controversy when ever an attempt is made to classify Dominicans into certain categories, all of a sudden we are some how in a kind of racial/cultural denial".

Write a letter to Henry Louis Gates and tell him that. Gui you are a Picasso!