Here's More of the Interview Highlights On the difference between US and Dominican perceptions of identity:
"When I came here ... I was really, really small. I never had gotten the question of what I was. I never really understood what that was. So when I encountered other kids who had grown up here more than I had, and they asked me ... what was I. And I was a little confused. I was like, "Well, I'm from the Dominican Republic," you know. They always said, Oh, well, you know, I thought you were black. And I had never gotten that.
[For] Dominican kids, it's always ... You're Dominican. So national identity was placed above racial identity, whereas here I found that racial identity was pinpointed first.
On 'black-on-black' racism:
I've seen ... Afro-Latinos, to use that phrase — Latinos who have obvious Afro-descendency — separate themselves from blacks by putting them off ... using stereotypes, like, Oh my goodness, they're so uneducated and blah blah blah. And I've always thought, "Well, you look like 'them.' And they're referring to ... American blacks. And I'm just thinking, So you look like them, you're putting these people in, you know, this category, but what about you? And that's always been something that's bothered me.
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