"I no Black, I Dominican": The Collision of Whiteness and Birthright Citizenship on the Island of Hispaniola

This paper will analyze the ways in which the racialization of birthright citizenship in the Dominican Republic targets the existence of Dominican-born ethnic Haitians, effectively dismantling birthright citizenship in the nation with systemic efforts to 'whiten' the country, leading to both physical genocide and what has been coined as civil genocide. My theoretical intervention will be based on the construction of the better colonized complex which investigates the role of Fanon's theory of internalization of white hegemonic structures during imperial rule on the Island of Hispaniola and the reproduction of these racial hierarchies as analyzed through Gani's theory of transferal. Coupled with the institutional desire for a mestizo majority nation in the reimagined racial triangulations of the Dominican Republic, whiteness, as a socially constructed phenomenon, will be cast as the civil and modern foil to the villainized, Black and Haitian Other. The evidence I will use to support this paper will be based on historical contextualization of the imperial conquest of Hispaniola, a case study of the Trujillato regime, and a legislative analysis of the progression of racialized legal processes that has manifested in the denationalization and massive statelessness of ethnic Haitians in the Dominican Republic.