Dominican Wall Of Anti-Haitianism Keeps Neocolonial Inequity Alive
Like Palestinians in Israel and Latino, Asian and Muslim immigrants in the U.S., Haitians in the Dominican Republic are demeaned, harassed, and victimized in both extraordinary and mundane ways.
Pushed out of their homeland by centuries of neo-colonialism and exploitation, officially 751,080 Haitians call the Dominican Republic home. This is 7.3% of the official population. There are hundreds of thousands of other Haitians who are deemed “illegal” and do not appear in any statistics.
“Antihaitianismo,” or anti-Haitian racism, is but one glaring symptom of the economic and political elites’ mind-set in the Dominican Republic.