The Orphan

I have two parents, but both of them deny me. One gave birth to me, raised me, supported me and gave me everything I need to be successful, but whenever the topic comes up, she insists that I'm not her child. I speak her language fluently, I know her history, I've lived all my life with her, but I'm still a black sheep because my last name doesn't sound like hers.

My other parent gave me his culture, I speak his language too (albeit with a smaller vocabulary), I wear his last name proudly, and I show interest in his well-being, but whenever I go to visit, my brothers and sisters think differently of me because I flew in with a blue passport.

So to one group I'm a "hyphenated American," and to the other I'm simply "un gringo que por casualidad habla español."

Nevertheless, I'm proud of my heritage, both of them. But I feel that I need to stress my American pride more for two reasons, neither of which is because I'm more proud to be American. First, because I outwardly display more Dominican pride (because I haven't gone in so long); and secondly because I'm a liberal and a lot of conservatives have gone out of their way to state that liberals are un-American and out to destroy the country. It's just silly name-calling, but coupled with my foreign roots, I feel I need to defend myself.

The United States gave me life, gave me a free education, gave me public assistance whenever I needed it, and lets me speak freely and do as I please. I don't have to be rich to get a decent education, and I don't have to inherit a fortune or be a corrupt businessman or politician to become a wealthy man in the U.S. These luxuries aren't birthrights to anybody; the American Constitution protects these principles, but that's no reason to take them for granted. But I'm also very aware of the fact that the U.S. twice invaded the Dominican Republic; on the first ocassion leaving a dictator in power and in the second blocking the reinstatement of a democratically elected president.

The Dominican Republic gave me its language, its food, its music, its popular culture, baseball (an American invention, but I definitely get my deep interest in it from my Dominican roots), my revolutionary spirit, and my open-minded worldview. Because I have plenty of family out there and I want the country to prosper, my perspective of the world stage is different from that of a purely American or purely foreign point of view. But I'm also ashamed of the fact that the Dominican upper class tries to deny its African heritage, even though the musical instruments in our music suggest a strong link to Africa. The evident multiracial physical traits of our people are attributed to the indigenous people of Quisqueya according to revisionist historians, in spite of the mass extermination of the Taino tribes by the Spaniards upon arrival.

This is part of who I am, an imperfect person from two imperfect cultures. On this day in 1844, the Dominican Republic regained its independence by defeating the occupying military of Haiti. I thought this would be an appropriate time to share this bit about myself. ¡Felicidades a todos los Dominicanos celebrando hoy! Que Dios bendiga nuestra patria.