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E-book
Author Wigginton, Sheridan, author

Title Unmastering the script : education, critical race theory, and the struggle to reconcile the Haitian other in Dominican identity / Sheridan Wigginton and Richard T. Middleton IV
Published Tuscaloosa, Alabama : The University of Alabama Press, [2019]
©2019

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Description 1 online resource (113 pages) : illustrations
Contents La Trinitaria : the elevation of whiteness and normalization of a pigmentocracy in Dominican society -- Truth and Trujillo : a critical approach to studying the Trujillo dictatorship -- The "masters" of the script : Joaquin Balaguer, Jose Francisco Pena Gomez, and the anti-Haitian nation -- Dominican national identity : social science textbooks and the boundaries of blackness -- Color, classrooms, and the Haitian other
Summary Analyzes textbooks in the Dominican Republic for evidence of reproducing Haitian Otherness Unmastering the Script: Education, Critical Race Theory, and the Struggle to Reconcile the Haitian Other in Dominican Identity examines how school curriculum-based representations of Dominican identity navigate black racial identity, its relatedness to Haiti, and the culturally entrenched pejorative image of the Haitian Other in Dominican society. Wigginton and Middleton analyze how social science textbooks and historical biographies intended for young Dominicans reflect an increasing shift toward a clear and public inclusion of blackness in Dominican identity that serves to renegotiate the country's long-standing antiblack racial master script. The authors argue that although many of the attempts at this inclusion reflect a lessening of "black denial," when considered as a whole, the materials often struggle to find a consistent and coherent narrative for the place of blackness within Dominican identity, particularly regarding the ways in which blackness continues to be meaningfully related to the otherness of Haitian racial identity. Unmastering the Script approaches the text materials as an example of "reconstructing" and "unburying" an African past, supporting the uneven, slow, and highly context-specific nature of the process. This work engages with multiple disciplines including history, anthropology, education, and race studies, building on a new wave of Dominican scholarship that considers how contemporary perspectives of Dominican identity both accept the existence of an African past and seek to properly weigh its importance. The use of critical race theory as the framework facilitates unfolding the past political and legal agendas of governing elites in the Dominican Republic and also helps to unlock the nuance of an increasingly black-inclusive Dominican identity. In addition, this framework allows the unveiling of some of the socially damaging effects the Haitian Other master script can have on children, particularly those of Haitian ancestry, in the Dominican Republic
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Black people -- Race identity -- Dominican Republic
Dominicans (Dominican Republic) -- Ethnic identity
National characteristics, Haitian -- Foreign public opinion, Dominican
Textbook bias -- Dominican Republic
National characteristics, Dominican.
Curriculum change -- Dominican Republic
Ethnicity -- Dominican Republic
Black people -- Race identity
Curriculum change
Ethnicity
National characteristics, Dominican
Race relations
Textbook bias
SUBJECT Haitians -- Dominican Republic -- Ethnic identity
Dominican Republic -- Race relations
Subject Dominican Republic
Form Electronic book
Author Middleton, Richard T., IV, 1974- author.
ISBN 9780817392451
0817392459
Other Titles Education, critical race theory, and the struggle to reconcile the Haitian other in Dominican identity