When people speak of race and add the volatile term "purity" to the mix, the normally kinky hairs on the back of my head always prick up. I've always been the consummate outsider wherever I go, too much of a "Spic" for the purebred Arabs I meet, and too much of a "towelhead" for the Latin American community as a Muslim Latina. Know what I say to both of them? A gigantic fuck you with an extra serving of up yours, that's what! I choose to be me! The name is Cristobel Aisha Rafiq, and I was born in the City of Esperanza, Dominican Republic, to a Lebanese Muslim immigrant father, Abdullah Rafiq and an Afro-Dominican mother, Christina Dorvil-Martinez.
Sometimes, I feel ashamed of my Dominican nationality, seriously. The shit that my people do sometimes boggles the mind. Take the current Haitian-Dominican conflict for example. I don't know what Dominican president Danilo Medina was smoking when he declared that the descendants of Haitian immigrants who'd been in the DR for generations would face mass-deportation back to the island of Haiti but it must have been some powerful shit. Now, there's always been some racism against Haitians living in the DR but never to that extent. Not since the dark days of the Parsley Massacre has there been such anti-black sentiment across all segments of Dominican society.
If you were to look up stats on the Dominican Republic, you'd learn that everyone down there is seventy three percent mixed race, eleven percent sub-Saharan African and sixteen percent European. The average Dominican has Native American, African and European blood running through his or her veins. Our people are the descendants of three groups, the Native Americans who inhabited the various Caribbean isles before the arrival of the Europeans, the Spanish conquistadors who went around pillaging and raping everything in sight since 1492, and lastly, the Africans who were forcibly brought to the New World as a labor force by cruel Europeans.
No Dominican is pure anything, this I know for sure. My father Abdul Rafiq is Arab, having moved to the Dominican Republic from his hometown of Baalbek, somewhere in Lebanon, in the 1980s. My mother, Christina Martinez has mixed ancestry. Black and Hispanic blood are part and parcel of my family's history. My grandfather on my mother's side, Grandpa Joseph Dorvil, was pure Haitian and my grandmother Arianna Martinez was Hispanic. See? We're a mixed nation! Unfortunately, my people have been brainwashed to think of themselves as Europeans and to embrace Eurocentric thinking and adopt Eurocentric standards of beauty.
Let me clarify things a bit please. The average Dominican woman has dark skin, wavy hair, a curvy body, full lips, a big butt and other classical African traits. It doesn't matter if she's an olive-skinned chica or a dark-skinned sista. Take me for example. I'm five-foot-nine, chubby and busty, with wide hips and a big round ass. Yes I have light bronze skin and greenish eyes, but my hair is more than a bit nappy, my lips are full and luscious, and oh yeah, I've got a huge ass. Anyone with good sense can tell I've got a bit of black in me! The Haitian people have lived among us from day one, and aside from atrocious incidents like the Parsley Massacre of almost a century ago, and the Haitian invasion and occupation of the Dominican Republic in the 1800s, our history has been largely peaceful.
I left the Dominican Republic in 2011 to study abroad, having won a coveted international scholarship to study chemistry at Carleton University in Ontario, Canada. My family was beyond thrilled that I was able to get such an opportunity. Aside from my father, who studied at the University of Paris in France in the early 1990s, I'd be the first person in my family to complete university. My mother went to trade school, it's education but not at all the same thing as going to university. When I first set foot in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, in August 2011, I was beyond ecstatic. I'd heard so much about Canada and as an impressionable eighteen-year-old on her own for the first time, I drank it all in.
I became fascinated by all things Canadian. Indeed, I made lots of friends in my enthusiastic first days at Carleton, literally going from room to room on my residence floor, introducing myself to random guys and girls. My fresh face and enthusiasm charmed my new Canadian friends, especially this tall gal named Marjorie Vincent. Marjorie and I would end up becoming best friends. This tall, dark-skinned and curvy young black woman was born in Montreal, Quebec, to Haitian immigrant parents. Growing up in the Dominican Republic I had lots of Haitian friends. I spoke Haitian Creole as fluently as I spoke Spanish or the Lebanese Arabic I learned from my Padre.
Marjorie had been in metropolitan Ottawa a few months longer than I had and was delighted to show me all the cool spots in my new town. We went clubbing in places like the Living Room Lounge, Maverick and Mansion. We added each other on Facebook and sent each other Instagram pictures. We hung out in each other's dorms on weekends, smoking and talking about the cute guys on campus. Marjorie introduced me to her boyfriend, a tall, red-haired and green-eyed guy named Sean O'Neill. An international student from Galway, Ireland. Marjorie and I have very different tastes when it comes to men. The lovely Haitian-Canadian diva whom I considered the sister I never had is addicted to white guys. She's got pictures of Paul Walker, Channing Tatum and that dude from Twilight on her wall, all of them shirtless. Need I say more?
