Dominican Americans

SIGNIFICANCE: Dominican Americans are among one of the fastest-growing Hispanic immigrant populations in the United States. In 1995, they were ranked sixth among those who had arrived in the country between 1990 and 1994, and they are the largest immigrant group in New York City according to the 1994 figures from the city’s Department of City Planning. Their significant presence there has led to the emergence of a Dominican American community. In 2024, there were 2.7 million Dominican Americans.

Situated between Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea, the Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with its neighbor Haiti. The country is known primarily for its warm tropical climate, its sugarcane and tobacco exports, and its contributions to the international community in the personages of fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, musician Juan Luis Guerra, and major league baseball players such as Sammy Sosa, Juan Marichal, George Bell, and Pedro Guerrero.

In the early 1960s, after the assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Léonidas Trujillo, the Dominican Republic was affected by political and economic turmoil. The ensuing unrest resulted in the outbreak of civil war on April 25, 1965, which led to a US military occupation of the country in an effort to protect American economic interests. Following the US intervention, many political activists were granted visas to the United States in an effort to stem political dissent against the new US-sponsored right-wing government of Dominican president Joaquín Balaguer. This marked the beginning of a continued pattern of Dominican emigration to North America that was fueled by political as well as economic reasons.

Following a brief period of industrial growth under the new leadership of President Balaguer, Dominicans saw their country’s economy worsen. The middle class all but disappeared in the wake of escalating oil prices, a massive foreign debt, and a decline in exports that resulted in a 23 percent unemployment rate as of 1990. This factor, coupled with the increased sentiments of frustration by Dominicans toward the leadership of the country, led to a Dominican diaspora in search of a place in which to obtain political and economic freedom. The Dominican population in the United States doubled from 1990 to 2000 as a large wave of Dominicans left their country for the United States. Like other immigrant groups in the United States, Dominicans have tended to settle in only a few states. The vast majority of Domincan Americans live in New York.

A New Community

The Dominican American community is made up of people who have obtained US citizenship after their arrival to North America as well as those that are born in the US of Dominican parents. So salient is the Dominican migratory pattern to the New York City area that it has earned Dominican Americans the nickname of Dominicanyorks. Mass migration into New York City has resulted in the “Dominicanization” of neighborhoods such as Washington Heights. However, Dominican Americans have found some challenges in adapting to their new environment. Some resistance from the established residents, as well as political challenges in their local community, has led many Dominican Americans to become more actively involved in the political and economic activities of their community.

Part of the acculturation of Dominican Americans into mainstream society was brought about through active participation in their neighborhood schools. In the early 1980s, a campaign was mounted to gain greater control over the schools in Washington Heights in order to make them more responsive to the needs of the local community. In 1980, the Community Association of Progressive Dominicans confronted the school board to demand bilingual education for newly arrived immigrants. Their presence in the political arena was also established in 1991 with the election of Guillermo Linares, the first Dominican ever to sit on the New York City Council. However, as is often the case with newly arrived immigrant groups to the United States, the moderate success of Dominican Americans has been considered by some as a challenge to the established residents of Washington Heights (mainly Jews, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans).

Dominicans branched out from New York, though large populations of Dominicans remain in the city. Based on a 2021 Pew Research survey, New Jersey had the second largest concentration of Dominicans, with 15 percent of the Dominican population calling the state home. Other states with large Dominican populations include Florida, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

Dominican Americans continued to build community in their new country and became further involved in the politics of the nation. In 2016, Adriano Espaillat became the first Dominican American elected to Congress, representing New York's thirteenth congressional district.

Ethnic Relations

As Steven Lowenstein explains in his 1989 work entitled Frankfort on the Hudson: The German-Jewish Community of Washington Heights, 1933-1983, the move by Dominican Americans to gain greater control over the local schools came at the expense of the established Jewish population in that area. Some see this as a source of tension between the two groups. One Jewish leader is quoted as saying: “In order to save our own congregation, we have to live with our neighbors, even if they are different from us, even if we don’t like them. But we cannot help it. We have to live with the Blacks, with the Spanish.” In the initial migration years, Dominicans rented apartments in the mostly Jewish-owned tenements; however, as the years progressed, the Jewish population became increasingly sparse in the Washington Heights area.

The newly arrived Dominican immigrants found acceptance within the Puerto Rican community in the early 1960s. Many Dominican immigrants were able to find housing and employment through friendships with Puerto Ricans. Some argue that the preexisting presence of the Puerto Rican community was helpful to the newly arrived Dominicans in that it led both Jewish and African Americans to come to terms with the unavoidable reality of a Latin American presence in New York City. However, as more and more Dominicans began migrating to the area, tensions arose within the Puerto Rican community. The growing sentiment was that Dominican Americans were accepting low-wage jobs and undercutting the Puerto Ricans in the job market. Likewise, as the Dominican population grew, many Dominican Americans began to feel that the Puerto Rican agenda followed by most of the Latino community leaders was not representative of the ever-growing Dominican population.

Similarly, African Americans have found themselves in competition with Dominican Americans for jobs and housing. Some African American business owners have complained about the aggressive tactics of some of the Dominican business owners. According to Linda Chavez’s study entitled Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation (1991), Dominicans owned 70 percent of all Hispanic small businesses in New York. Although sociable relations between these two groups continued, they tended to reside in slightly segregated neighborhoods, perhaps because of racial and ethnic preconceptions held by both groups. Not unlike their African American neighbors, Dominican Americans have also been subject to racial discrimination based on physical appearance. As Patricia Pessar points out in her 1995 book A Visa for a Dream, often Dominicans who are perceived as “white” by Caucasians are treated better and offered better jobs than Dominicans who are dark-skinned.

The mixture of races found among Dominicans has frequently led to many dark-skinned Dominican Americans being misidentified as African Americans and subsequently being subjected to the same kind of racism experienced by American Blacks. In Sakinah Carter’s 1994 work entitled Shades of Identity: Puerto Ricans and Dominicans Across Paradigms, a twenty-two-year-old Dominican is quoted as saying:

All we see on television when we arrive is how bad Blacks are, so we cling to our difference, our Latino-ness, in order to say we are not those Blacks that you hear about in the streets or see on the news. We aren’t bad. But at the same time, it feels ridiculous not to embrace our Blackness because many dark Dominicans do live as other Blacks, treated as Blacks by White people, and other Latinos who act like there is one Latino phenotype, like there’s a way to look Latino. . . . I’m Black and Latino, a Black Latino—we exist, you know.

However, dating back to the initial wave of Dominican immigrants in the 1960s, and in spite of some social challenges, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Jews, and African Americans have all been able to coexist as productive members of their respective communities despite their cultural differences and racial preconceptions.

Bibliography

Afro-Latin Americans Today: No Longer Invisible. Minority Rights Group, 1995.

Behnken, Brian D., and Simon Wendt. Crossing Boundaries: Ethnicity, Race, and National Belonging in a Transnational World. Lexington, 2013.

Guarnizo, Luis E. “Dominicanyorks.” Challenging Fronteras, edited by Mary Romero, et al., Routledge, 1997.

Krohn-Hansen, Christian. Making New York Dominican: Small Business, Politics, and Everyday Life. U of Pennsylvania P, 2013.

Marrow, Brandon, and Jeanne Batalova. “Immigrants from the Dominican Republic in the United States.” Migration Policy Institute, 13 Aug. 2024, www.migrationpolicy.org/article/dominican-immigrants-united-states-2024. Accessed 21 Oct. 2024.

Moslimani, Mohamad, et al. “Facts on Hispanics of Dominican Origin in the United States, 2021.” Pew Research Center, 16 Aug. 2023, www.pewresearch.org/fact-sheet/us-hispanics-facts-on-dominican-origin-latinos/. Accessed 21 Oct. 2024.

Pons, Frank Moya. The Dominican Republic: A National History. Hispaniola, 1995.