Mixed Race Studies

You took a DNA test and it says you are Native American. So what?

PRI’s The World
Public Radio International
2016-11-24

Andrea Crossan, Senior Producer
Boston, Massachusetts

Have you been tempted to try one of those genetic testing kits, like the ones sold by Ancestry.com or 23andme.com?

Maybe you’ve seen a commercial featuring Kim Trujillo.

In it, Trujillo talks about how she discovered she was part Native American.

So you get the kit, swab your mouth, mail it back and you find out you are Native American. Then what?…

Read the story here. Listen to the story (00:05:15) here. Download the story here.

You may not know it — but if you speak Spanish, you speak some Arabic too

PRI’s The World
Public Radio International
2015-10-15

Joy Diaz, Reporter

Rihab Massif, originally from Lebanon, was my daughter’s preschool teacher in Austin. As a little girl, Camila, my daughter, spoke mostly in Spanish. And Massif remembers a day when Camila was frustrated because she couldn’t remember a word in English.

“She was telling me about her camis,” Massif says.

Camisa is the word in Spanish for “shirt,” and Massif understood it perfectly because camis means the same thing in Arabic.

“And I was like ‘Oh! There are some words related to Arabic,’” she says.

To see just how many, Massif and I did an exercise. I’d say a word in Spanish, and she’d say it back in Arabic.

“Aceite?”

“We say ceit,” Massif says.

“Guitarra?”

“We say guitar.”

Now that I am aware, it seems like I hear Arabic words everywhere…

…Linguist Victor Solis Parejo from the University of Barcelona in Spain says part of the language Spanish speakers use comes from a legacy of the Moorish influence. “Moors” was the name used to refer to the Arabic-speaking group from North Africa that invaded what would become Spain back in the eighth century. Their influence lasted about 700 years and is still visible today.

“Especially if you travel [in the] south of Spain­. For example in Merida, in the city where I was born, we have the Alcazaba Arabe, an Arabic fortification,” Parejo says. “So, you can see that in the cities nowadays, but you can also see that Islamic presence, that Arabic presence in the language.”…

Read the story here. Listen to the story here. Download the story here.

There’s a long story behind ‘anti-Haitianismo’ in the Dominican Republic

PRI’s The World
Public Radio International
2013-11-14

Christopher Woolf, Producer

Tens of thousands of people in the Dominican Republic are being stripped of their citizenship, on the grounds that they or their ancestors were illegal immigrants.  Thousands have already been deported across the border to Haiti, because it is assumed all illegal migrants come from there.

The court ruling applies to anyone whose family arrived in the country after 1929 and can’t document their status. Being born in the Dominican Republic doesn’t make a difference.

Some are calling it the latest manifestation of “anti-Haitianismo” in the Dominican Republic. Both countries are on the same island of Hispaniola.

Their relations are a story of race, identity, and money. The Dominican Republic is not a rich country, but it’s a lot better off than its neighbor, Haiti.

In terms of per capita GDP, it’s about six times richer. So thousands of Haitians go to the Dominican Republic to find work. Haitians and their descendants may make up as many as one in ten of the Dominican Republic’s population. Some Dominicans are unhappy about that, as they see Haitians as different, and some fear for the identity of their nation.

Haitians are different from their Dominican neighbors in several ways. Firstly, language: most Dominicans speak Spanish, while most Haitians speak Creole, based on French. Then, there’s the issue of race.

Haiti is overwhelmingly black; whereas Dominicans identify more with the European part of their heritage, rather than the African part. Most Americans would describe most Dominicans as black. And DNA tests taken over the last decade confirm that most Dominicans have black ancestry in their family history to varying degrees.

But race in the Dominican Republic and in other parts of the Caribbean does not mean the same thing as it does in the United States. Dominicans use a variety of words to self-identify, such as moreno, trigueno, and blanco-oscuro, indicating different colors or different types of mixed racial origins. But not many will choose the term “black.”…

Read the entire article and listen to the story here.