It Is Beyond Exhausting & Maddening Being A Black Dominican-American Woman Who Is AWAKE! Part II
Notes on the 2026 World Baseball Classic, A Poem: I forgive you Sammy and the "I no Black, I Dominican" conversation...
Dear reader,
This initially was supposed to be only a poem, “I forgive you, Sammy,” but I wanted to share what led me to write this poem and this essay, especially in the weeks after Indigenous People’s Day.
It started with watching the 2026 World Baseball Classic in March. I enjoyed watching the joy of the Dominican team celebrate their roots and their love of baseball. What I also loved most was that for the first time in a really long time, I could visually see the diversity of my parents’ beautiful island on a screen. The richness in our hues, the different curls and coils. Our infinite swag and sazon through the music, the dance moves, and the celebration.
MIAMI, FL - MARCH 11: Dominican Republic players celebrate a home run by Juan Soto #22 during the 2026 World Baseball Classic Pool D game presented by Capital One between Team Dominican Republic and Team Venezuela at loanDepot park on Wednesday, March 11, 2026 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Scott Audette/WBCI/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
I thought to myself, “Wow! I wonder if Sammy Sosa thinks about how far Dominican baseball has gone?” Before the skin-bleaching and softening cream media fiasco, before the jokes about Dominican internalized anti-Blackness. There was a moment when Sammy Sosa was a baseball God that all the boys wanted to be like and (still do); he was rich and shiny like a Black Ken doll. I don’t know if Sosa knew that he meant something huge for Dominicans everywhere. And it was precisely because he was an unambiguously Black Dominican man that he stood out to us. He became a symbol that maybe he didn’t ask to be, nor did he understand how heavy his actions weighed on us. But as soon as we saw photos of his new skin care routine that included skin-bleaching cream, it felt like a quantum tear in the fabric of Dominican Identity and politics. And sometimes I feel like seeing someone that rich and successful and talented have insecurities about their complexion definitely impacted Dominican culture.
Sosa, Sammy Sammy Sosa, 2001.
I, like Sammy and many other Dominicans, do not get to wake up and decide to be Black. I have Type 4 hair, a light to medium skin complexion, and what is considered (according to Google), a Nubian nose. In other words, my Blackness walks into the room before I even do. I didn’t need a DNA test to tell me I’m Black because I am racialized as such. At a young age, I learned that the Black experience is lit but also filled with many microaggressions, heartaches, and dehumanizing experiences. To add insult to injury, I also had to grapple with being Black with roots in the Dominican Republic, a country that seldom showcases phenotypically Black women on TV.
I remember years ago asking an uncle from my father’s side what the racial dynamics were in our family, being that Abuela Luisa’s offspring were considered the darker and most African-looking of the bunch. He said it was brutal. That sometimes they would arrive, and someone would say, “llegaron los negritos de Luisa.” He told me that from a very young age, they understood that most of their family had a race issue and it permeated conversations and treatment. He could feel how it determined which child was deserving of love and respect. He understood young, especially living in the Cibaeño countryside, that skin color had currency and that they were at a deficit without ever having spent a dime.
I weep about that sometimes. I weep because I read. I weep the more I read about our history. I weep as I swallow the fears I have for my boys as they go out into the world. And then I stop. I take a deep breath, and I put on some lip gloss, and I get back to work. I get back to writing and speaking and creating the kind of world I want my kids to live in. And I do the hard internal work of being clear about my history and my lineage so that they can mirror that same pride and certainty back to me. So I want to be very clear about who I am and what I stand for.
I say this often: I come from immigrants who came from immigrants who came from stolen people who learned to survive on land they did not steal nor did they inherit. They simply plotted and peeled themselves a meal, an acre, a home. I come from loopholes and grievances and immigration lawyers who get paid to turn a “criminal” into an exceptional negro. I come from detention centers and green land, and busy saintly streets. I am a child of the Americas through and through. And I am a Black woman who is raising two beautiful Black boys to love themselves and all their tangled roots.
These are the facts I know. I am no longer wasting time in my private life or my artistic life, burdening myself with the labor of humanizing myself or defending the richness of my people.
Recently, at a field in my local park that a group of friends and I visited, a White lady and a Black man were seated across from my husband and me. They overheard us speaking in Spanish. The Black man asked us, “Where are you guys from?” I immediately knew he meant that he wanted clarity on the geography that could explain our particular speaking of Caribbean Spanish. I answered, “Oh, we’re Dominican.” To which he said, “Oh, okay, cool.” And immediately after, the White woman sitting next to him said, “Oh, like, I NO BLACK, I DOMINICAN.” I was furious. I rolled my eyes, stood up to leave, and before walking away said, “NO, I'M BLACK, AND I'M DOMINICAN.” I held those words in my mouth and pointed to the color of my skin before giving her one last stern look and walking away. Her Black friend sitting next to her said, “Oh, I like that. Good one.” She laughed awkwardly and said, “Oh, I should probably stop saying that.”
Just like not all Americans are White, not all Dominicans are Black. And the most frustrating part of this situation is the audacity of a White woman to think she should have any part in this conversation on race. I know that the internet has made people comfortable being in every cultural group’s business, but in real life, this can have serious consequences. Dominicans are not special in their racial diversity on the island. Most of the Caribbean countries have mixed-race European/African/Indigenous ancestry since the beginning of the wicked colonization of the islands.
But I want to be very clear, at least about my own DNA, since I have always navigated part of my indigeneity through my African ancestry because they feel connected in ways that rebel against my Spanish/European ancestry. And rightfully so, what little remains of our Indigenous ancestry on this island is because of those rich and interconnected relationships between the oppressed class of natives and African enslaved people. And when I honor my Blackness, I have always felt I am also honoring my indigeneity as well.
But why does that rub people the wrong way? Why does being unapologetically Black sour conversations around race in post-colonial America? Those on the island as well as in the states who cling to their nationalism tend to carry heavy anti-Black sentiments even at the expense of betraying their own mirrors. Why do people who subscribe to Latinidad love to revel in the perfect and most magical “three-race” rhetoric but run away from the real day-to-day systemic operations of race, where Black people’s struggles are flattened and punished for the crime of surviving chattel slavery? Surely, if race were just a construct, we would not still need to be having these conversations. Surely, if race were simply a thing of the past, equality and equity would reign supreme. If we are moving forward, then everyone has got to get on board because we can’t keep running from our past. But if you can’t stomach knowing your own history, you cannot be given the responsibility and power of envisioning the present and future.
I do center my Blackness because my racialization does not allow me to evade conversations around race, and most of me is glad it doesn’t. I love the way my lineage shows up on my face, on my skin, on my curves. I love that I can rest assured in my Blackness. And maybe that makes my European ancestry feel betrayed. So what? And maybe my Indigenous ancestry feels abandoned. For them, I am learning to be clear on my history and to be careful with my words.
My hope is that we teach all children to know their truth. I hope that Black Dominican children are not made to feel like my uncle, who, after 70-plus years, still remembers the racism he felt as a child. I dream that children are not raised to judge and dehumanize each other because of race, religion, or gender. That they can grow to be protectors of our planet, our cultures, and the beautiful people that make this world worth living. And that they can sense bigotry and stomp it out before it permeates over and over again into the fabric of humanity.
My hope is that my children can meet me at the foot of the Cibaeño mountains and rejoice in what we have survived despite the centuries of betrayal and grief of colonization. I hold onto the promise that little boys who play baseball won’t grow up with disdain for their African roots. That they will be proud of how strong and talented their ancestry makes them. And that is why I penned this poem, “I forgive you, Sammy.”
I forgive you, Sammy.
I forgive you, as a stranger forgives one who does not
yet hold power in the tongue to learn their name.
I forgive you, as a child of the Antilles who has
had to come home to her cracked
post-colonial mirror many a tired time.
I forgive you, because I know
your bruised blues like I know my own.
I forgive you, because while I spent my childhood
in the comfort of breezy libraries, you spent your
days in the heat of the relentless baseball fields.
I can only imagine the jokes that made your skin want to hide.
Who am I to judge you, diaspora child clinging to your wooden bat?
Who am I to curse you, fragile man still unraveling your own shadow.
I forgive you, like a historian who knows your success
story is an ancient atlas that ancestors sketched in tinfoil gold.
Dear Sammy,
I forgive you.
I forgive you,
because who am I to disown you?
You: my kin, my uncle, my son
a lonely shipwrecked soul who must walk
this venerable sandline,
dragging those scorched bare feet,
making that brave journey home.
Oh, Diaspora child,
I cannot do the undoing for you.
I cannot unmake this racist world.
But I can offer you this mud & clay,
this motherly love,
but you must unmask yourself.