Haiti $ The Dominican Republic: An Island divided

An Island Divided

After watching the video at PBS.org on  Haiti and the Dominican Republic: An Island divided by the professor Gates i can right away say that it is a bit of a biased compilation on the story. Throughout the video you can see how he chooses to speak with many of the Haitian communities but fails to interact with the Dominicans. Now from my understanding on the story the Dominicans and the Haitians share a terrible history and have had many conflicts, but in like every conflict there is always two sides to a story. Professor Gates talks about the massacre that happened at the border in order to keep the Haitian immigrants out of the Dominican republic; but again he does not elaborate much on the reasons behind it. In my opinion, this conflict is very much similar to that of the United States And Mexico, these two countries share a very distinct culture therefore they do not play very well together.

Although Haiti and the Dominican republic share the same land they are very different. Haitians are African descendant and are a French speaking country but they continue to share their African culture. Dominicans are also African descendant but they are a Spanish speaking country and have created their own culture after  winning the fight for their independence against Spain. Furthermore, Professor Gates brings up the question to a Dominican citizen of why they fight if they are both from black descendant culture, he responded its because they are a different type of black. This is a negative term that Dominicans used as a way to be separated from Haitians. In my opinion again not to pick on the United States but this is very similar to the segregation on African Americans. In the video we also see how that same Dominican denies that he is even black at all, he says he is indio or moreno; a term that they use to describe their non-black skin color.