Genealogy 2021, 5, 1. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy5010001 www.mdpi.com/journal/genealogy 

Article 

New Blacks: Language, DNA, and the Construction  

of the African American/Dominican Boundary of Difference 

Aris Moreno Clemons 

Department of Spanish and Portuguese, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA; 

amc6957@utexas.edu 

Abstract: Given the current political climate in the U.S.—the civil unrest regarding the recognition 

of the Black Lives Matter movement, the calls to abolish prisons and U.S. Immigration and Customs 

Enforcement (ICE) detention, and the workers’ rights movements—projects investigating moments 

of inter-ethnic solidarity and conflict remain essential. Because inter-ethnic conflict and solidarity in 

communities of color have become more visible as waves of migration over the past 50 years have 

complicated and enriched the sociocultural landscape of the U.S., I examine the ways that raciolin-

guistic ideologies are reflected in assertions of ethno-racial belonging for Afro-Dominicans and their 

descendants. Framing my analysis at the language, race, and identity interface, I ask what mecha-

nisms are used to perform Blackness and/or anti-Blackness for Dominican(-American)s and in what 

ways does this behavior contribute to our understanding of Blackness in the U.S.? I undertake a 

critical discourse analysis on 10 YouTube videos that discuss what I call the African American/Do-

minican boundary of difference. The results show that the primary inter-ethnic conflict between 

Dominican(-Americans) and African Americans was posited through a categorization fallacy, in 

which the racial term “Black” was conceived as an ethnic term for use only with African Americans.  

Keywords: race; Blackness; Latinidad; raciolinguistics; language and identity 

 

1. Introduction 

On Tuesday 25 June 2019, Belcalis Almenzár, better known as Cardi B, took to Insta-

gram live in order to defend her Blackness. Her aim was to clarify confusion about her 

ethno-racial identity following a wave of criticism resulting from her Black Entertainment 

Television (BET) Album of the Year and Best Female Hip-Hop Artist awards. People ar-

gued that she should not be eligible for the awards because she is not Black, maintaining 

that her use of the Spanish language and her previous claims of Latinidad precluded her 

from Blackness. This policing of Blackness is not new (Fanon 1967; Davis 2010; Shange 

2019); however, increased migration from Latin America and the Caribbean over the last 

fifty years has complicated and enriched the sociocultural landscapes of the U.S. In her 

response, Cardi B attempts to dispel the myth of the mutual exclusivity between Black-

ness and Latinidad (Flores and Román 2009; Cahuas 2019). “People don’t be understand-

ing shit. It’s like, ‘Cardi’s Latin, she’s not Black’. And it’s like, ‘Bro, my features don’t come 

from… white people f—ing, Ok’?… But because Cardi speaks Spanish to people, she’s not 

Black even though we have similar features, same skin complexion. But no, they want to 

not put Cardi in it because I speak Spanish”. She then goes on to explain that the problem 

is a fundamental misunderstanding of the differences between race, ethnicity, and nation-

ality. Attributing this ignorance to a lack of proper education in the U.S. school systems, 

Cardi B arrives at the core of the matter regarding public discussions of race in the United 

States: first, that as a society we have not yet agreed upon set definitions for terms of 

identity that are used in everyday language; and second, that part of the reason that we 

have not agreed is because there are societal institutions that either willfully obscure our 

Citation: Clemons, A.M. New 

Blacks: Language, DNA, and the 

Construction of the Af-rican Ameri-

can/Dominican Boundary of Differ-

ence. Genealogy 2020, 5, 1. 

https://doi.org/10.3390/geneal-

ogy5010001 

Received: 10 October 2020 

Accepted: 17 December 2020 

Published: 24 December 2020 

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neu-

tral with regard to jurisdictional 

claims in published maps and insti-

tutional affiliations. 

 

Copyright: © 2020 by the author. 

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. 

This article is an open access article 

distributed under the terms and 

conditions of the Creative Commons 

Attribution (CC BY) license 

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses

/by/4.0/). 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 2 of 22 
 

 

understandings or that at the very least have done very little to historicize the rise of these 

notions (Nagel 1994, 2003; Telles 2014). 

I recognize these moments of identity negotiations as both personal and political. In 

my own life, being the child of an African American father and an Afro-Caribbean mother, 

I have lived on the margins of identification. Often, these choices were made for me, given 

my dark complexion and racialized features. Nonetheless, significant travels outside the 

United States has shown me that my features can be (and are often) read differently in 

different locations. Moreover, I have learned that the political projects of race and raciali-

zation in different sociopolitical contexts often bear heavily on my own construction of 

self. The complexity of racial constructions becomes acute when considering the political 

implications of who gets to authentically claim identification within a particular group. 

Think for example of the ways that Barack Obama has been positioned as the first Black 

president and Kamala Harris as the first Black vice president elect. These politicians and 

the political organizations on which they have situated their careers have relied on the 

maintenance of racial formations developed during U.S. colonial formations.  

The mutability of racial categories has led the majority of social and natural scientists 

to an agreement that race is constructed socially (Boas 1982; Montagu 1997; Omi and 

Winant 2014). Literature across the social sciences investigates the use of race as a tool to 

construct and maintain power within a society (Fanon 1967; Lopez 1994; Hall [1980] 1996; 

Crenshaw 1991; Delgado and Stefancic 2017). It is this organization of power that leads 

sociologists Omi and Winant (2014) to posit race as a “master category”, noting that “race 

is a fundamental organizing principle of social stratification. It has influenced the defini-

tion of rights and privileges, the distribution of resources and the ideologies and practices 

of subordination and oppression” (p. 107). Moreover, the authors assert that the corporeal 

aspects of race, i.e., the distinction created between “white men and the others whom they 

ruled as patriarchal masters” (p. 108), gives “race” its ability to dominate all other social 

categories including gender, social class, and sexuality. Nonetheless, Omi and Winant 

note a key conundrum for those who theorize race, in that “race and racial meanings are 

neither stable nor consistent” (p. 2). The mutability of racial meaning suggests that cate-

gories that are used to define racial identity are in constant flux, with emerging categories 

alongside the reconstitution of existing categories in the struggle for sociopolitical, eco-

nomic, and cultural power. Nonetheless, boundaries exist and individuals are ultimately 

unable to escape some form of category ratification—an inevitable click on a U.S. census 

classification for race and ethnicity, a school or grant application, a health care form. In 

making these selections, individuals are collectively defining the bounds of these catego-

ries, pushing up against the walls of what has been dictated to them. The question re-

mains, how exactly are these boundaries created and what are the effects of the bounda-

ries? Given the differential social constructions of race and ethnicity in contexts of origin 

and migration, the competition for scarce resources among marginalized groups, and the 

complex relationships with differing colonial histories, it is nearly impossible to have a 

comprehensive understanding of Blackness in the United States from a singular discipli-

nary lens. This study thus takes up concepts developed in linguistics, sociology, anthro-

pology as well as critical race theories from both Black and Latinx studies. In doing so, I 

attempt the development of an initial framework for an understanding of Blackness as it 

currently exists for differing ethnic groups that represent Black subjectivities in the U.S.  

I situate Blackness as an organizing concept of American life (Hartman 1997; Wilder-

son 2010; Kendi 2019). That is, much like Hartman’s construction of the subjugated liberal 

individual that is at once equal yet forever inferior, American society exists within a hier-

archy—one that necessitates the continual reconstitution of white supremacy for a repro-

duction of all that has been defined as “American life”. Blackness, as a concept, therefore 

becomes the tool by which white supremacy can claim social capital. This capital, which 

can be traced back to the rules and regulations that structured the U.S. as a slaveholding 

society, manifests in the ability to enact policies, both legal and social, over its public. 

“Here I want to focus on a singular aspect of the slave’s existence in civil society—the 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 3 of 22 
 

 

submission of the slave to all whites… to be sure, the laws of slavery subjected the en-

slaved to the absolute control and authority of any and every member of the dominant 

race. At the very least the relations of chattel slavery served to enhance whiteness by ra-

cializing rights and entitlements, designating inferior and superior races, and granting 

whites’ dominion over blacks” (Hartman 1997, p. 24). Hartman describes the condition of 

Blackness in the United States as always posited in relation to the dominant, such that 

allowing Black self-determination becomes a threat to the very existence of whiteness. 

Moreover, whiteness is forever reliant on Blackness as a way to re-imagine, re-construct, 

and re-insert itself as the dominant race (Bloom, forthcoming).  

Nevertheless, this refashioning of whiteness has never been able to successfully stifle 

the move toward Black self-determination, evidenced by ever-growing movements such 

as the Black Power movement of the 70s and more recently the Black Lives Matter move-

ment (Hooker 2016). I argue that to understand Black self-determination, we must look 

beyond the Black/white binary in negotiations of race and identity in the Americas. The 

current project therefore explores several moments of cross-ethnic conflicts and solidari-

ties and the role that language plays in mapping the margins of identity and ethno-racial 

categorizations for Dominican(-American)s in the United States. I use the term ethno-ra-

cial throughout this article to note the inextricable link between ethnicity, as heritage 

linked to a particular nation state, and race, as the corporeal manifestation of colonial cat-

egorization projects. In certain cases, I will refer to the use of nationality as a distinguish-

ing characteristic that was taken up in my data. In these cases, nationality refers to the 

political belonging or citizenship in a particular nation state as it is currently defined. 

Lastly, I use the terms pan-racial to refer to racial categories that cannot be linked to one 

particular ethnicity or nationality. What should be noted is that all of these categories are 

constructed in contextualized and flexible ways. As such, the marking of boundaries of 

belonging is complex and should be considered in relation to sociohistoric moments, nar-

ratives of identity, and political commitments (Yuval-Davis 2011). Through investigations 

of interactions between members of the pan-racial group—Black—we are able to theorize 

about the ways that we define boundaries of belonging [at a particular time in a particular 

place and context]. In other words, we are able to negotiate where Afro-Latinxs, Afro-

Caribbeans, and Africans and their U.S.-born children fit into the schema of Blackness in 

this country. More importantly, and for our purposes here, we can begin to empirically 

theorize race through analyses of language and language ideologies. In this study, I ex-

amine how four raciolinguistic ideologies are reflected in assertions of ethno-racial be-

longing for Afro-Dominicans and their descendants in the United States. I formulate my 

investigation with two guiding questions. What linguistic ideologies are implicated in the 

construction of Blackness for Dominicans and Dominican-Americans in the United States? 

And, what mechanisms are used to create what I call the African American/Dominican 

boundary of difference?  

In centering Blackness in the United States, I focus on Dominican(-American)s for a 

variety of reasons, including the numerous linguistic repertoires to which Dominicans 

have access and employ in their daily lives (Bailey 2000, 2007; Nilep 2006; Rubinstein-

Ávila 2007); research has shown that Dominicans contest socially constructed race in the 

United States (Bailey 2000, 2002; Duany 1998, 2008); and the unique historical situation of 

the enslaved and freed African populations in the Spanish-controlled region of Quisqueya 

(the indigenous name of the island which now hosts the Dominican Republic and Haiti) 

(Torres-Saillant 1999; Candelario 2007). Further, Dominicans have been racialized both in 

the Dominican Republic—as a result of the tumultuous history of colonialism and subse-

quent imperialism—and in the United States, as transnational beings. Thus, in the move 

toward Dominican self-determination, there is often an abrupt and contradictory negoti-

ation of the ideological rupture between Blackness and Latinidad. In this case, a focus on 

Dominican subjectivities allows us to understand how the project of Latinidad is impli-

cated in the refashioning of Blackness as it has historically existed in the United States.  



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 4 of 22 
 

 

Examining people’s choices in regards to identity (terms) can be taken up through 

the lens of linguistics. It has long been understood that language performances shift in 

relation to interaction (Ochs et al. 1992; Fairclough 2001; Alim et al. 2016; Rosa and Flores 

2017), and that these interactions are integral in the understanding of self and others (Bu-

choltz and Hall 2005; Coupland 2007). In other words, processes of dialectical language 

production are closely aligned with the processes of dialectical ethno-racial construction 

(Ochs et al. 1992; Nagel 1994). Further, as Ochs (1993) argues, “speakers attempt to estab-

lish the social identities of themselves and others through verbally performing certain so-

cial acts and verbally displaying certain stances” (p. 288). In order to explore the combined 

process of ethno-racial identification and shifting linguistic practices, I call on the concept 

of raciolinguistic enregisterment. Rosa and Flores (2017) submit raciolinguistic enregister-

ment as “an overarching framework with which to investigate relations among prevailing 

sociolinguistic concepts that are often approached as distinct phenomena, such as code-

switching, style-shifting, footing” (p. 11). So, where the concept of linguistic enregister-

ment was previously defined as the process “whereby distinct forms of speech come to be 

socially recognized (or enregistered) as indexical of speaker attributes by a population of 

language users” (Agha 2005, p. 38), Rosa and Flores incorporate the “racial emblematiza-

tion” inherent in many of these processes. Thus, raciolinguistic enregisterment refers to 

processes whereby distinct forms of linguistic practices become racialized. In this study, I 

expand the concept of raciolinguistic enregisterment to theorize about how certain ideo-

logies that link language, race, and identity are central to our understanding of category 

binding. The framework of raciolinguistic enregisterment not only allows for an analysis 

of identity performances of individuals, but also for an analysis of the discourses complicit 

in the construction of ethno-racial boundaries, therefore allowing for a more nuanced un-

derstanding of Blackness as it currently exists in the United States. 

In addition to the linguistic expressions of identities taken up through raciolinguistic 

enregisterment, the “external validation of individual or group ethnic boundaries” is an 

important aspect in the discursive processes of ethnic categorizations. According to Bon-

nie Urciuoli (1995), linguistic forms (i.e., language practices), are “the shape in which bor-

der making elements come [to be]” (p. 538). Urciuoli describes “borders” as the place 

where commonalities end and notes the symbolic possibilities for language to do that 

work. A border can therefore be a place where mutual intelligibility is no longer possible. 

While this was originally applied to the actual ability to understand linguistic forms, I 

contend that mutual intelligibility also occurs at the ideological level, whereby a disagree-

ment on ideological premises is more difficult to overcome than a linguistic misunder-

standing. Thus, my analysis of linguistic ideologies becomes an analysis of the construc-

tion of bounded ethno-racial categories and their connected bounded linguistic categories. 

I, therefore, take up the concept of stance in the interactional ideological construction of 

self and others. Stance is defined, in this case, as the way that individuals signal relation-

ships to particular concepts through linguistic choices (Johnstone 2007, 2009). In the cur-

rent paper, the multilectal nature of ethno-racial performance and negotiation are enreg-

istered through explicit pronouncements of raciolinguistic ideologies examined through 

a critical stance-taking analysis, adapted from Kiesling et al. (2018).  

2. Materials and Methods 

2.1. Procedures 

In order to explore the construction of Afro-Latinidades through the ethno-racial pro-

nouncements of Dominican Americans and other Black diasporic beings, I begin with a 

critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2001) of ten YouTube videos and selected com-

ments posted between 2018 and 2020. I follow with a critical conversation analysis of 

stance taking in the comment section of the original posts. I adapt an approach developed 

by Kiesling et al. (2018) in their analysis of Reddit online forums. The concept of stance is 

defined by Kiesling et al. as “the discursive creation of a relationship between a language 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 5 of 22 
 

 

user and some discursive figure, and to other language users in relation to that figure” (p. 

687). While the authors use a grounded theory approach to investigate the emergence of 

discursive figures—called stance foci in their study—my adaption phenomenologically 

proffers the existence of four raciolinguistic ideologies as the stance foci of investigation, 

including discussions of Blackness, Latinidad, Spanish or English usage and competences, 

or ethno-racial identifications. The videos each take up the topic of Dominican identity 

and Blackness and are produced by Dominican(-American)s, African Americans, and oth-

ers who identify as Afro-Latinx. Titles, subject positionalities, dates and metadata of the 

videos analyzed can be found in Appendix A.  

Several notions taken up in the construction of racialized and linguistic value can be 

located in what Flores and Rosa (2015) term raciolinguistic ideologies. These are ideolog-

ical frames that conflate racialized bodies to objective linguistic practices. Work in the 

emerging field of raciolinguistics has begun to explore the remapping of race onto lan-

guage so that we can understand the ways that language ideologies are implicated in re-

inforcing already existing hierarchies of power (Lawrence and Clemons, forthcoming). 

For the purposes of this paper, I take up three raciolinguistic ideologies that have been 

previously defined in the literature (Rosa and Flores 2017; Lippi-Green 2012), as well as a 

dominant racial ideology that has structured much of the previous understandings of race 

in fields such as anthropology and linguistics: (i) co-naturalization of language and race; 

(ii) regimentation of linguistic and racial categories; (iii) standard language ideology; and 

(iv) genetic race. Each of these ideologies was adapted based on a grounded theory ap-

proach, which allowed me to explore how they appeared in the data set. Using the themes 

drawn out from my discourse analysis as well as the theoretical framework of Rosa and 

Flores (2017), I demarcate four novel raciolinguistic stance foci that I applied and analyzed 

in my data: (i) genealogy, DNA ideology; (ii) categorization fallacy; (iii) co-naturalization 

of language and race; and (iv) accent ideology. Definitions of these ideologies are pro-

vided in Table 1. The appearance of these ideologies in explicit pronouncements makes 

central the stances that individuals are taken towards Blackness as a named category.  

Table 1. Focal raciolinguistic ideologies. 

Raciolinguistic Ideology Definition 

DNA Ideology 

This is any reference to the body, blood, or features in relation to claims of a particular race or 

ethnicity. This is also any reference to heritage or genetic connections to a particular space. 

Lastly, this included references to genetic testing and DNA as indicative of ethno-racial 

identifications. 

Categorization Fallacy 
This is any reference to conflation of race and ethnicity; a confusion about how to categorize race 

or ethnicity; or the actual conflation of race and ethnicity. 

Co-Naturalization of 

Language and Race 

This is when participants conflate their racial identity with a language category. In some cases, 

this will also refer to someone not belonging to a race because of a lack of ability to speak a 

particular language. 

Accent Ideology 
This is any reference to increased belonging in a particular ethnic group because of an accent (or 

lack thereof), or it is references to accents as indicative of belonging to a particular ethnic group. 

Video data amounted to 128 min of footage, which was hand transcribed and then 

entered into the qualitative analysis software Dedoose (Dedoose 2018, Version 8.3.35). 

Collection of the video data consisted of the transcription of each YouTube video in its 

entirety, as well as a selection of comment threads from each video. Comment selections 

were taken from the most recent threads that had between 15 and 50 responses in order 

to ensure that there was enough conversation to analyze engagement with the ideologies 

presented in the parent comments. Parent comments that did not engage any raciolinguis-

tic ideology were excluded from analysis. For each video, five comment threads display-

ing raciolinguistic ideologies were selected for coding by hand, with between 15 and 20 

child comments coded by two independent raters for the parent comment ideology along-

side any additional ideologies that emerged in the discussion. Excerpts were extracted at 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 6 of 22 
 

 

the sentence level in the content videos, while each comment represented an individual 

excerpt in the conversation analysis. 

2.2. Measures 

To evaluate attitudes toward the stance focus (the focal raciolinguistic ideologies), I 

weighted three stance dimensions of affect, investment, and alignment for each excerpt 

on a 1 to 5-point Likert scale, with higher scores indicating greater alignment and invest-

ment or more positive affect toward coded ideologies. These measures are operationalized 

as follows: affect represents “the polarity or quality of the [raciolinguistic ideology]” 

(Kiesling et al. 2018, p. 688). For this measure, we identify the interlocutor’s positive or 

negative evaluation of the raciolinguistic ideology. Investment is “the dimension of how 

strongly invested in the talk the speaker is, [and] how committed they signal their rela-

tionship to the [raciolinguistic ideology]” (p. 688). This was evidenced through interlocu-

tors’ recognition of and perceived willingness to qualify and take part in discussion of the 

indicated raciolinguistic ideology. Last, alignment refers to interlocutors’ agreement, or 

“alignment”, with the respective raciolinguistic ideology. Alignment ranged from explicit 

agreement to outright objection. Stance dimension definitions can be found in Table 2.  

Table 2. Stance dimension definitions. 

Stance Dimension Definition 

Affect 

The positive or negative attitude (or affect) toward the raciolinguistic ideology. Coders take 

into account additional emoticon symbols for affective power. A score of 1 indicates highly 

negative feelings toward the ideology, with 5 indicating highly positive feelings toward the 

ideology. 

Investment 

The level of interaction with the posited ideology. Coders ask whether the commenters take 

up the ideology in their responses. A score of 1 indicates that the ideology was not taken up 

at all. In these cases, the ideology is not marked for affect or alignment. A score of 5 indicates 

a complete focus on the ideology and received a score for affect and alignment. 

Alignment 

The level of support for the posited ideology. Coders asked whether the author agrees or 

disagrees with the posited ideology. A score of 1 indicates high disagreement and 5 indicates 

complete accord with the ideology. 

The evaluation of these stance dimensions can be illustrated with the YouTube com-

ment in (1), which was left on the “Gina Rodriguez Miss Bala (Spanish)” video.1 

Her Spanish is good. What y’all talking about? It’s a new era for me. I came to 

this country when I was 12 and I have problems with my Spanish because my 

goal was to learn perfect English with no accent. So now I speak Spanglish. It’s 

a new culture and I love it. 

For this comment, the interlocutor is discussing the public figure’s Spanish speaking abil-

ity as demonstrated in the content video. The topic is reflective of accent ideology as it 

refers to good or bad language abilities. Thus, “accent ideology” is coded as the stance 

focus or raciolinguistic ideology. The affect is coded as positive through the evaluation of 

this ideology expressed through “good” and “I love it”. The investment is high, as the 

commenter committed to the evaluation of language as a deviation of certainty toward 

the ideology. The alignment is high because the commenter is demonstrating agreement 

with standard language ideology through the evaluation of the public figure’s language 

proficiency. Other indicators of affect, alignment, and investment came with the analysis 

 
1  This video was analyzed for the purposed of a tangential study and is used here purely for 

illustrative purposes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPSMnSMClfs. 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 7 of 22 
 

 

of emojis. Symbols such as � were evaluated and incorporated into the weighted scores. 

Scale rating definitions can be found in Appendix B.  

2.3. Analyses 

Descriptive analyses were completed for the presence of each ideology, represented 

by the number of tokens over the entire data set. Analyses were also conducted to capture 

differences in frequency of ideologies based on the subject positionality of the original 

video posters—Dominican, African American, or Afro-Diasporic. Additional analyses 

were run to ascertain how ideologies co-occurred and whether co-occurrence differed 

based on subject positionality. Lastly, each ideology was run separately for the three 

stance dimensions: affect, investment, and alignment, represented by average weighted 

scores for each stance dimension. Co-occurring ideologies were analyzed as sets to indi-

cate shifts in stance dimension when both ideologies were present in a statement. Exem-

plars were extracted from representative excerpts.  

2.4. Methodological Limitations and Future Directions 

Drawing data from online social media platforms allows for a widescale surveying 

of ideas and language sampling. However, the use of this data is not without its compli-

cations. Though the current study focuses on the ways that race—Blackness in particu-

lar—is taken up, there is no legitimate way of surveying the ethnic, racial, gender, sexu-

ality, or other social identifications of the participants. In his twitter analysis of linguistic 

presentation of null subjects in two varieties of Spanish, Adrian Rodriguez Riccelli (2018) 

notes the drawbacks of using online language data by noting that “[o]ne drawback to this 

methodology is the difficulty in accessing sociolinguistic and language background, as 

well as biographical information. Information posted on a user’s profile may be inaccurate 

or absent all together and is currently not easily extracted. Nevertheless, the relative ease 

of access and exorbitant amounts of data makes for a tempting tool of use. So long as its 

limitations are acknowledged” (p. 311). In our case, the extraction of large-scale ideologi-

cal constructions can still be achieved, though we are not able to immediately assess the 

ways that other characteristics such as gender or sociocultural subjectivity impact the pro-

nouncements. Further, the use of conversation analysis relies on the words being pro-

duced, leaving space for an analysis of non-verbal communication in the production of 

ethno-racial ideologies on these platforms. Nonetheless, the use of the current methodol-

ogy allows us to move beyond anecdotal or interview data regarding racial ideologies by 

providing access to large amounts of data with relative ease. In the future, this work could 

be combined with digital media studies investigating the ways that subject positionality 

informs social media interaction in order to submit a framework for understanding the 

subjective nature of race construction on these platforms.  

3. Results 

In this section, I present the appearance of the raciolinguistic ideologies. First, an 

overall description of the amount of times each raciolinguistic ideology appeared over the 

entire data sample is presented. Each ideology is then evidenced with a sample of exem-

plar tokens from the overall data set. Lastly, I provide a brief description of the ways that 

the ideologies occurred together, showing the inter-relatedness of some of these concepts 

in strengthening or contesting the boundaries of difference between African Americans 

and Dominicans. After the presentation of raciolinguistic ideologies, I provide a descrip-

tive analysis of the public engagement through a discussion of the weighted stance di-

mensions associated with each raciolinguistic ideology in the comments. Additionally, I 

note the ways that many of these ideologies appear with explicit moments of conflict, sol-

idarity, or anti-Blackness.  

Across the entire data set (with videos and comments), there was a total of 933 ex-

cerpts, which yielded 925 tokens of the focal raciolinguistic ideologies identified. Table 3 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 8 of 22 
 

 

provides an overall summary of the number of times each raciolinguistic ideology ap-

peared. DNA ideology was the most prevalent with 535 appearances. This was closely 

followed by categorization fallacy with 372. Overall, the data set suggests that people are 

still heavily dedicated to negotiating and discussing both scientific race and the modern 

conceptions of nation state and identity. Language, on the other hand, took a backseat in 

conversations about race, with co-naturalization of language and race only presenting 16 

tokens and accent ideology producing 2. The ideologies are discussed in order of magni-

tude, with the most frequent occurring first.  

Table 3. Raciolinguistic stance foci frequency. 

Ideology Frequency 

DNA Ideology 535 

Categorization Fallacy 372 

Co-Naturalization of Language and Race 16 

Accent Ideology 2 

Total 925 

3.1. DNA Ideology 

While social scientists and the major scholarly organizations to which they belong 

have generally moved away from race as a biological or scientific concept (Morning 2007), 

an adherence to eugenic and scientific projects of race persist (Omi and Winant 2014; 

Morning 2007; Williams 2013). These notions are reified through public narratives of iden-

tity based on DNA testing, ultimately linking the life sciences to popular culture (Nelson 

2016; Yudell et al. 2016; Roth and Ivemark 2018). DNA ideologies were the most prevalent 

in the current data set, with genetics as an indicator of racial belonging appearing most 

often in discussions of ethno-racial belonging. Thus, despite an apparent shift in academic 

knowledge about race, scientific race is not only persisting, it is dominating ideas about 

identity and belonging. References to DNA, blood, African, Indian, and European ances-

try and heritage were all called on to validate or contest Blackness for Dominicans on the 

island and in the United States (1).2 Moreover, we see reference to DNA as something that 

is quantifiable, present in the qualifier “more”. 

(1) Dominicans acknowledge their African ancestry just like they do their Indian and 

European. I’ve never heard a Dominican that has obviously African features say that 

he doesn’t have African blood. 2. The Average Dominican has more European DNA 

than they do African. Yet we don’t run around saying we’re European. 3. I’d be just 

as ashamed to claim African ancestors as I am to claim whites/Europeans. Like y’all 

say “whites were rapist”, but you forget that the Africans sold their own to the whites 

making their rape and mistreatment possible. That’s one of the reason we as well as 

other nations in Latin America developed our own identity. 

In this case, we see the calling of the DNA ideology into the construction of a unique Latin 

American identity that transcends the bounds of Blackness or Whiteness.  

Genetic declarations were also found in insistences of phenotypic characteristics as 

indicative of race (2). Here we see dark skin and African features as demonstrative of both 

African heritage and supposed belonging in the ethno-racial category Black. In this way, 

the commenter is privileging notions of “ascribed race”, i.e., race assigned to an individual 

by others and “street race”, i.e., the race you think you would be ascribed on the street 

(Lopez et al. 2018), which cannot be subverted by self-identification since they rely on 

 
2  Examples are represented exactly as drawn from source, including orthographic irregularities. As internet talk allows for the 

creation of new forms of talk, respecting the original form of the post provides a more nuanced reading. Additionally, it allows 

for a more pointed understanding of negotiations of meaning occurring at the level of the word.  



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 9 of 22 
 

 

undeniable physical attributes. This comment is representative of the use of genetic nar-

ratives and ideologies to reify notions of phenotype as a marker of racial difference. The 

commenter goes further to indicate that the sociopolitical aspects that are indexed by 

Black as a racial category are responsible for the disconnect between true racial categori-

zation—indicated by skin color—and the claiming of racial categorization. Additionally, 

the commenter notes the historical subjugation that indicates an alignment with Blackness 

and Indigeneity, despite the recognition of the negative conditions that such an alignment 

produces.  

(2) la verdad es que hay muchos dominicanos de piel oscura y con rasgos africanos que rechazan 

su herencia africana. Si la raza negra estuviera en buenas circunstancias, apuesto a que más 

dominicanos se clasificarían como negros orgullosamente. Sin embargo, como dices, mucha 

gente latina/dominicana si tiene herencia mezclada y no quiero decir que TODOS los latinos 

son “africanos”. Solo refiero a los dominicanos que se ven muy africanos. Además muchos 

españoles son racistas contra los latinos así que no podemos olvidar lo que hicieron a nuestros 

ancestros nativos y africanos � no se debe ser tan orgulloso de tener sangre española cuando 

a ellos no les importa un carajo de la cultura caribeña.  

[The truth is there are a lot of dark skinned Dominicans with African features 

who deny their African heritage. If the Black race was in better conditions, I bet 

more Dominicans would identify themselves as proudly Black. In any case, like 

you say, a lot of Latin@/Dominican people do have mixed heritage and I don’t 

want to say ALL Latin@s are “African”. I am only referring to the Dominicans 

who look very African. Plus, many Spanish people are racist against Latin@s so 

we can’t forget what they did to our native and African ancestors � We should 

not be proud of having Spanish blood when they could give a F—K about 

Caribbean culture.]. 

Commenters who ascribed to the DNA ideology often relied on percentages of an-

cestry ascertained through DNA profiling services such as 23andMe and AncestryDNA 

to posit belonging in one group or another, or to contest belonging in any particular group 

(3). These percentages were often mobilized in conjunction with assertions of phenotype 

as indicative of racial belonging (3). For hundreds of years, the United States has func-

tioned on a racialized dichotomy of black and white, characterized by what is popularly 

known as the one-drop rule of hypo-descent, which cast anyone with 1/32 or more African 

blood into the category of “Black” in the United States (Omi and Winant 1994). In addition 

to comments about DNA, phenotype and ancestry, genetic distinctions were called into 

the ratification or contestation of notions of hypo-descent, noting that a small percentage or 

“one drop” of African blood was not enough to cross into Blackness as a racial identifier (4).  

(3) It’s mostly Black Americans who want you to be Black lol, if you go to any Dominican 

DNA video you will see Black Americans commenting. Even though the person is 

only 30% Black lol. And most Dominicans are too mixed to be Black. They don’t have 

the skin or hair texture. 

(4) I am only 10%African that doesn’t make me only African. Some people are delusional 

and thinks Dominican are only black. 

In these examples, we again see the tension between DNA as indicative of racial categori-

zation and imagined phenotypic representations of these boundaries. Nonetheless, with 

hypo-descent as the organizing principle for racial stratification in the United States, com-

menters often relied upon these zero sums categorizations of Blackness indicated by Af-

rican DNA (5). Others contextualized the rule of hypo-descent as an American invention 

that did not function to categorize people in other parts of the world (6).  

(5) when was the last time you did a DNA analysis? If no Sub-Saharan DNA shows up 

I’ll personally call you: a white person, okay. 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 10 of 22 
 

 

(6) yes, IN AMERICA. But America isn’t the entire world. The reason why Obama is 

viewed as “black” and not biracial is because of the racist one drop rule that Ameri-

cans love holding on to. 

Quite to the contrary of the one-drop rule in the United States, in the Dominican Republic, 

one drop of European blood meant that you were cast out of the racial categorization of 

“Black” and into a racialized concept of “mixed”, creating a tripartite conceptualization 

of race in which Black, white, and mixed can co-exist (Duany 1998). “Mixed” as a racial 

category is quite common in Latin America, stemming from notions of mestizaje devel-

oped by Vasconcelos, as the defining characteristic of Latinidad (Hooker 2017). 

In contesting the rule of hypo-descent, many relied on notions of mestizaje as an or-

ganizing principle for racial stratification (7). Instead of the racial binary created by the 

rule of hypo-descent, notions of mestizaje are called upon in order to allow for a third 

category of “mixed”, referencing Afro, Euro, and Indigenous descended peoples (8). This 

incongruency between notions of hypo-descent and mestizaje often prompted conflict (9) 

and (10). While the Dominican commenter refuses to accept categorization, they attribute 

the incorrect classification to “Black Americans”, which places the blame on a group of 

people who have acquired systems of racial categorization from the ruling class (9). At the 

same time, when the African American commenter questions Dominican racial identifica-

tion practices, it evidences an adherence to concepts of hypo-descent by presupposing 

that a lack of desire to be categorized as Black must be indicative of a denial of African 

ancestry (10).  

(7) there is a such thing as multiracial dumb ass...and the majority of us… almost the 

whole island is multi racial 

(8) Ok I am claiming I’m not black but I’m multi racial … beautiful white lovely native 

American… Gorgeous African… so is this offensive .... 

(9) the problem is when black americans claim mixed race latinos as black...we not black 

we mixed. 

(10) why do a lot of them [Dominicans] just refuse to acknowlege that they’re black 

though? … or at least have african ancestry? That is wild and bizarre 

Mestizaje is weaponized against African Americans in a way that does not allow for 

mixed-ness to be applicable to African Americans. Mestizaje is thus called into the con-

struction of Latinidad in a way that reinforces the mutual exclusivity between Blackness 

and Latinidad. Additionally, it at once claims a genetic understanding of race, while re-

jecting it completely. The contradiction must be maintained in order to reinforce the 

boundary of difference between Dominicans and African Americans (11). 

(11) … you self haters are nowhere near as mixed as Dominican are ... so stfu..the average 

Dominican is more European than they are african..I’m not claiming black when I’m 

60% European and 23% African..the average black American looks like Whoopi 

Goldberg and obviously black..most of y’all are 80 to 90% African, look at the dna 

videos..slavery in the dr was a breeze compared to America..there was no segrega-

tion or Jim Crow laws and the Spaniards freely intermixed with the african and in-

digenous people. The British on the other hand were ruthless..we have been mixing 

for more than 500 years..mixed and proud �” 

Nonetheless, the DNA ideology was also used to promote solidarity between African 

Americans and Dominicans. Similar physical features were marked as indicative of shared 

“roots”, which indicates alignment with a DNA ideology as a way to engender intra-racial 

solidarity. Additionally, the comments suggest an adherence to race as a static category 

that can be achieved with a named and bounded category determination, as shown 

through the suggestion to “google the different races” (12). In example (13), the com-

menter says that mixed cannot be a marker of Latinidad since several Latinxs are not 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 11 of 22 
 

 

mixed. This is a result of atrocities of colonization and slavery that were perpetrated 

against Afro Cubans as well as African Americans, and indicates a desire to form solidar-

ities based on historical oppression of enslaved ancestors.  

(12) Cardi may not be a 100 percent black like most are these days but she does have black 

roots. Look at Cardi and Hennessy’s features, their skin tone and afros as kids. Once 

again Google the different races and place them in the one they most identify with. 

Contrary to what most ignorant people think Spanish is not a race bc I’m sure we are 

not English white men and women. 

(13) … that’s not fair to us Afro Latinos who are not mixed. My entire Afro Cuban lineage 

has NO white ancestry. We are not mixed but are just as Latino as anyone else having 

been in Cuba since slavery. You wanna claim Latino to cover up the multitude of sins 

committed against Blacks and Indigenous people by hiding behind mixed identity. 

There are more white Latinos than mixed Latinos. Idk why we lie about this. 

The DNA ideology presented a frame for claiming an identity; it was used as a way 

to place Dominicans both within the boundaries of Blackness that includes African Amer-

icans and other Afro-descended people and also as a way to mark them as separate due 

to a claimed unique mestizaje not shared by African Americans (or Haitians). The way 

that commenters took up this ideology is explored later in this paper with stance dimen-

sions that nuance the utilization of this ideology.  

3.2. Categorization Fallacy 

Much like Cardi B warned, the presence of a categorization fallacy in the data sug-

gests a general discord in the definition of ethnicity, race, and nationality. As such, much 

of the debates surrounding who was able to claim Blackness or Latinidad were bound up 

in the conflation of these categorical notions, such that race and ethnicity were often of-

fered up as simultaneous categorizations. In these cases, “Black” was no longer a racial 

identification that could be used to promote some sort of solidarity, but rather an ethnic 

term to create a boundary between African Americans and those who had claim to another 

national or ethnic “culture”. Many of the comments that demonstrated this ideology were 

offered to “educate” fellow commenters about the distinction between the categories (1) 

and (2).  

(1) Dominicans come in variety of races, not just white dummy. There are also black 

Dominicans, taino Dominicans and Asian Dominicans. Dominican is only a 

nationality. Any race can be Dominican as long as they are native born citizens of the 

island. 

(2) I don’t think you get the point. Dominican is a nationality. If you say you want a 

black girl, how do I know if you want Jamaican, Trinidadian, Bahamas, Haitian. If 

she’s darker completed then she’s Afro Latina race wise. if your trying make point 

with black & Dominican then you have generalized it with different type of black 

women. Its 2019 c’mon man let’s educate each other. 

Others justified Dominican denial of Blackness as a result of the term being applied 

as an ethnic, rather than a racial term (3) and (4). In (3) and (4), we see the explicit connec-

tion of Black as an ethnic marker for African Americans rather than a racial marker incor-

porating a more wide-range of subject positionalities. Moreover, the mention of 100% in 

example (4) indicates the frame under which Blackness is constructed in the Dominican 

republic, with one drop of European ancestry as indicative of a move out of the category 

of Black. 

(3) Tu tiene razon en mucha cosas k dijiste aki hermano ... pero cuando se dice “no soy black soy 

dominicano” es cuando los dominicans estan hablando de los afroamericanos, a ellos se llaman 

“black” en USA. 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 12 of 22 
 

 

[You are right about a lot of things you say here brother. But when they say, “I 

am not Black, I’m Dominican” it’s when Dominicans are speaking about African 

Americans. They are called Black in the United States]  

(4) Black means African American. I have African in me and that doesn’t make me 100 

percent black. Silly Americans. 

The categorization fallacy was often contested in comment threads, where disambig-

uating notions of ethnicity, race, and nationality were often accompanied by commentary 

about levels of intelligence (5). It was in these comments that Latinidad was also imagined 

as a racial category rather than an ethnic one. Additionally, “Dominican” is posited as an 

all-encompassing category that supersedes race and ethnicity, while insisting on nation-

ality as the defining characteristic of racial categorizations (6). These comments support 

narratives of “racial democracy”, where Latinidad gives all those who lay claim to it an 

ability to transcend ethno-racial categorizations as they exist in the context.  

(5) They think you telling them they are African Americans, if you call a white 

Dominican hey white boy they will tell you I’m Dominican, because they think you 

calling them Americans. In Dominican everyone is Dominican black Dominican or 

light skin or white Dominicans. In Dominican Republic there is colorism but is not 

like in the US that black and white are divided in DR everyone is Dominican. 

(6) Dominican is based on territory and culture of a home land which is a nationality so 

yeah Dominican is a race. 

These comments rely on a comparison with racial structures in the United States, such 

that racism is a feature unique to the United States. This is similar to Christina Sue’s (2013) 

concept of an ideology of non-racism in Mexico, which is maintained through a variety of 

strategies including the postulation of the U.S. as the only society organized by race. In 

our case, the prioritization of ethnicity and nationality as the defining category of differ-

ence allows Dominicans—or those speaking about race in the Dominican Republic—to 

negate the existence of a racial hierarchy and of anti-Blackness as an organizing principle 

of both societies. 

Categorization ideologies often relied on citizenship ties in the ratification of ethno-

racial belonging (7). Additionally, it allowed for the creation of categories of difference 

based on historical notions of race in a particular location (8). In this way, the categoriza-

tion fallacy often called on racialized narratives (or scripts) rather than full historical 

knowledge in an attempt to create solidarities (9).  

(7) Obviously you don’t because of what you just said ... 100% Africans who become a 

citizen in America are the true African-Americans. 

(8) I think Afro indigenous and Latina might be mutually exclusive politically speaking 

but let’s consider the implications of putting these three political locations identities 

together what we might be referring to is a desire to identify the ways in which 

people are of African descent indigenous descent and from places and geographies 

that were established through Spanish. 

(9) … love your comment!!!! Thank you for looking at it from the correct perspective. 

Many people don’t know that slavery and all that it entailed in America lasted way 

longer than it ever did in the Dominican Republic. The British and their descendants 

and the Spaniards, French and Portuguese and their descendants did not act in the 

same manner. In the Dominican Republic, the initial wave of slavery was brutal. 

However, the new “criollos”, which is the name given to the generation of the 

children of Spaniards who were born in the Dominican Republic and all their 

descendants just continued to mix with each other without any slavery involved. 

And this is our real history. So we cannot disqualify one or embrace one when 

generationally, we haven’t been taught that. I understand that in America, the one 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 13 of 22 
 

 

drop rule has been established and applied as the one and only rule of thumb for 

anyone of color. This is not a European concept. The descendants of the English 

created that rule! At the end of the day, there is no such thing as race. We are one 

race, the human race and the concept of race has only served the purpose of dividing 

and not uniting us as a human race. So when I see ignorant comments about race or 

even when they concern my people, I don’t entertain those conversations because 

they’re useless! However, I really liked your comment and needed to let you know. 

While the DNA ideology provided the basis and justification for racial belonging, the 

categorization fallacy was more so implicated in the formation of a boundary between 

Dominicans and other Blacks. This ideology posited Dominican-ness as a racial category 

in order to blur the stark line between Blackness and Latinidad while also drawing a 

strong line between themselves and other Blacks both on the island of Hispaniola and in 

the United States. This ideology was often accompanied by anti-Black sentiments, which 

will be taken up in subsequent sections.  

3.3. Co-Naturalization of Language and Race 

Language is often posited as the unifying factor in the construction of Latinidad in 

the United States (Aparicio 1999, 2017b; Flores 1997). As such, the current project hypoth-

esized a large proportion of Dominicanidad and Latinidad to be attributed to the co-nat-

uralization of language and race—that is the conflation of race into the bounded notion of 

a particular language variety such that one who speaks Spanish takes on “Spanish” as 

their racial category (1). Nonetheless, only five percent of the tokens were represented 

through the co-naturalization of language and race ideology. These comments not only 

used language categorizations as racial categorizations but also called on language in or-

der to justify belonging to a particular ethno-racial category (2). 

(1) Spanish is a different category from black even though obviously we know now that 

it’s not it is when people use it it’s a different category from black… 

(2) I am Dominican I am Hispanic I speak Spanish you know. 

There were also contestations of the co-naturalization of language and race (3). These 

contestations often called into question the use of other bounded language categorization 

in the identification of individual speakers who have not traditionally been labelled by 

their language affiliation (4). Assuming the commenter in example (4) speaks both English 

and Spanish, they note the absurdity of using one language as a racial marker, while the 

other remains solely an indicator of linguistic ability. Further, if it were used as a racial 

identifier, it would be reserved for those in England, which would erase the existence of 

a large group of people who use and speak English as a native language and who are not 

racialized as English.  

(3) Stop talking about education when you said Spanish people. Spanish is a language 

not an ethnicity, nor a race. Wow the ignorance is appalling. 

(4) Contrary to what most ignorant people think Spanish is not a race bc I’m sure we are 

not English white men and women. 

In some cases, the co-naturalization of language in race was used to block entry into 

a particular racial category. In this case, the inability to speak a particular language inval-

idated belonging (5). In this example, the speaker was referring to a poster who self-iden-

tified as both Cuban American and bilingual in the original video. The comment came 

after another individual who asked if the original poster could do a version of the video 

in Spanish in order to educate more people about the existence of Black Latinos. In the 

context of the United States, where English is the dominant language, the manifestation 

of this ideology was couched in claims of bilingualism with Spanish representing 

Latinidad and English representing a belonging within the borders of the United States. 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 14 of 22 
 

 

Bilingualism as a marker of difference was also posited alongside anti-Black and misogy-

noir declarations. Bilingualism, thus, becomes a mark of mestizaje, where ideals of the tri-

racial were transposed onto multilingualism in the U.S. context (6). More specifically, the 

comments take up the bounds of Blackness, constructing racial categories by dictating 

language as the marker for true identity categorization (7).  

(5) … He can’t only Dominicans are bilingual.  

(6) … envy jealousy .. why .. cause ys wanna be us .. have our mixture be bilingual.. 

Dominican men chase Dominican women..black men chase white girls and 

latinas .whites sre not afraid of us .we mixed with white black native american..no 

one sees us as black they see African Americans as black ... were never slaves in 

America. African American never beat white man british.. Dominican beat both 

white man Spain & black man haitians.... Dominican was in usa before blacks..black 

men ur men get on planes to travel to date a poor Dominican girl than educated with 

bling black woman.....dud i answer u.. Dominican women are desired soooo much. 

(7) Dominicans need to stop acting black. Y’all are Dominican. Act Spanish. 

Commenters also took part in assigning blame for the creation of these disjunctive 

categories, indicating Black Americans as the creators of the co-naturalization of language 

and race, rather than recipients of colonial frames of socialization (8).  

(8) It has to be jealousy, In all honesty I can’t imagine why else they would take time out 

of their day to come here and other platforms to tell Dominicans they should identify 

as “black” and not Dominican. That’s why I don’t agree with all these new terms like 

“latinx, and Afro Latino”. Latinos who do that are just playing in to what black 

Americans want. And Americans are never satisfied. I remember back in the day 

when I first moved out here, Americans (specifically black Americans) would notice 

a person speaking Spanish and instead of taking the time to find out where that 

person was from they would just label them as Spanish. Now it seems to upset some 

of them when we say we’re Spanish. Which isn’t accurate, but that’s one of the labels 

that America has placed on us. Now they’re trying to do even more with these new 

r—d terms. I’m Dominican, I may go further to identify as Latino, but that’s where it 

ends. 

3.4. Accent Ideology 

Attributing one’s ethno-racial identity to an accent ideology was limited but did man-

ifest in key ways: First, individuals ratified belonging in a particular ethnic category based 

on accent presentation (1). The ellipsis at the end of this example can be assumed to rep-

resent the subtext that her accent provided the evidence of her authentic belonging in the 

ethnic category, Dominican.  

(1) I thought she was a black girl from some random place n not Dominican when I first 

click the vid until her accent then... 

Secondly, some enacted an accent to embody a particular ethnic stance (2). This comment 

came from a video in which a Nigerian American imitated a Dominican accent while he 

disavowed belonging in the racial category Black. In this case, the accent ideology ap-

peared in mocking Dominicans who denied Blackness. While accent ideology did not ap-

pear in the smaller data set examined here, notions of language and the performance of 

language as indicative of belonging were suggested. 

(2) he try to salsa that shit off and be like “no it’s not the same. I no black negro no no 

nunca nunca no I no black”. i’m like no, you’re black. “no no no i no black 

Dominican”. I go, I know but you’re black. 

3.5. Co-Occurrence of Raciolinguistic Ideologies 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 15 of 22 
 

 

Examinations of the raciolinguistic ideologies that were presented together give us 

an indication of how these ideologies are marshaled in the creation of ethno-racial bound-

aries between Dominicans and African Americans. Of all of the co-occurrences the most 

common co-occurrence of ideologies was categorization with (or alongside) the DNA ide-

ology, with 106 instances of overlapping between the ideologies. The second-most com-

monly co-occurring ideology was the categorization fallacy alongside co-naturalization 

(16), followed by the DNA ideology with the co-naturalization ideology (12). Overall, the 

co-occurrences reinforced the strength between genetic conceptualizations of race and the 

terminology that is used to categorize individuals in different contexts. From this analysis, 

it seems that while language often functions to create and uphold notions of Latinidad 

(often being mobilized as evidence that Dominicans are not Black but rather Spanish), 

DNA functions to confirm (or to disprove) Blackness. The lack of co-occurrence between 

DNA and co-naturalization of language and race suggests the stronghold of a mutual ex-

clusivity between Blackness and Latinidad in these data. Nonetheless, there was a strong 

co-occurrence between ideologies that aided in the definition of the African American/Do-

minican boundary of difference with the DNA ideology being used to support the cate-

gorization fallacy that conflated ethnicity, race, and nationality marking Dominican as a 

racial category. Table 4 provides an overview of the number of tokens that were coded for 

two ideologies at the same time.  

Table 4. Co-occurrence of focal raciolinguistic ideologies. 

 (1) (2) (3) (4) 

(1) Accent -    

(2) Categorization 1 -   

(3) Co-naturalization 0 16 -  

(4) DNA 1 106 12 - 

3.6. Stance Dimension Weights by Ideology 

While the frequency of ideologies gives us an indication of how racial categories are 

being constructed, the mention of the ideology does not tell us whether the public is taking 

the ideology up or contesting it in their comments. The following analysis allows for a 

more refined understanding of the ways that these ideologies were represented in con-

versations about Dominicans and Blackness. The stance dimensions (affect, investment, 

alignment) for each excerpt were weighted on a 1–5-point Likert scale, with higher scores 

indicating greater alignment and investment or more positive affect toward coded ideo-

logies. Across all of the data, the mean scores for each (affect, alignment, and investment) 

are presented for each raciolinguistic ideology as seen in Table 5. As we can see, the scores 

reflected a narrow window of variation between each raciolinguistic ideology.3  

Table 5. Mean stance dimension weights by ideology. 

 Accent Categorization Co-Naturalization DNA 

Affect 3 2.76 2.762 3.224 

Alignment 4 3.01 3.482 3.988 

Investment 3.5 3.108 3.798 3.302 

Nevertheless, the variations provide interesting information about the ways that the 

ideologies are being mobilized to create boundaries of difference. Taking each raciolin-

guistic ideology separately, the highlighted scores demonstrate some key differences as 

shown in Table 6. Scores were measured for the stance dimension by subject positionality 

 
3  Note, accent ideology was eliminated from this analysis as it only appeared in two instances.  



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 16 of 22 
 

 

for each raciolinguistic ideology investigated. Averages were taken across each ethno-ra-

cial identifier, with one video from an African American, two from Panamanian, one from 

Cuban, one from Nigerian, and five from Dominican subject positionalities. Overall, the 

categories analyzed for the stance dimensions confirm the strength of the DNA ideology 

in the construction of race, with alignment being the highest for all subject positionalities. 

The DNA ideology displayed an average score of 3.988 on alignment, followed by co-

naturalization of language and race (3.483) and then categorization fallacy (3.01). It is im-

portant to note that the scores presented for each ideology do not indicate a neutrality but 

rather a trend toward an equal number of individuals who were not aligned (0–1) along-

side those who were completely aligned (5). In fact, there were rarely times where an ex-

plicit score of 3 was given as most commenters had strong feelings and opinions associ-

ated with their comments. 

Table 6. Raciolinguistic ideology by subject positionality. 

Co-Naturalization Ideology by Subject Positionality 

 African American Cuban Dominican Nigerian American Panamanian 

Affect 3 2.75 2.31 3 2.75 

Alignment 4.14 3.5 2.77 3.5 3.5 

Investment 3.62 4.5 2.12 4 4.75 

DNA Ideology by Subject Positionality 

 African American Cuban Dominican Nigerian American Panamanian 

Affect 3.26 3.04 3.2 3.33 3.29 

Alignment 3.93 4.02 4.01 3.91 4.07 

Investment 3.37 2.95 3.1 3.35 3.74 

Categorization Fallacy by Subject Positionality 

 African American Cuban Dominican Nigerian American Panamanian 

Affect 2.84 2.89 2.7 2.71 2.66 

Alignment 2.9 3.33 2.85 3 2.97 

Investment 2.34 2.87 3.21 3.94 3.18 

Though the co-naturalization of language and race was not as prevalent in the data 

as hypothesized, investment scores show the ideology to be taken up more by non-Do-

minicans than by Dominicans themselves. In fact, the Dominican videos not only elicited 

minimal participation in the ideology, but also when the ideology was introduced, it was 

mostly contested eliciting a slight trend toward disagreement with the ideology (2.77). In 

other words, when people brought up the co-naturalization of language and race, it was 

mostly to oppose its validity. The scores indicate a lack of participation in the deployment 

of co-naturalization of language and race as a valid tool for the construction of racial iden-

tity. Lastly, the video produced by the Nigerian American elicited the most investment in 

the categorization fallacy (3.94).  

3.7. Anti-Haitian and Anti-African American Sentiments Taken up in Conflict and Solidarity 

Another fruitful example of the way boundaries of difference were created was ex-

plored through an examination of moments of conflict and solidarity. Three codes were 

developed in order to explore these moments: (i) Anti-Blackness; (ii) inter-ethnic conflict; 

and (iii) inter-ethnic solidarity. Anti-Blackness referred to moments where there was a 

combined use of the n word with derogatory comments against “Black” identity catego-

rizations (1). Inter-ethnic conflicts, on the other hand, were characterized by an explicit 

mention of disagreement between individuals regarding identification practices (2). Inter-



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 17 of 22 
 

 

ethnic solidarities were characterized by explicit moments of racial accord between indi-

viduals from different Black subjectivities (3).  

(1) I never seen a Dominican as black or blacker than Godfrey, this n—a burnt y’all got 

us confused with Haitians … the darkest we go is will smith color 

(2) … parts of our culture may come from West Africa (nothing to do with American 

blacks) … but American blacks themselves, yes they envy us Dominicans becuz of 

our mixed race heritage.  

(3) She never said that she wasn’t black and being that this ignorant ass comment got 

pinned disgusted me. You do know that the freeways from West Africa came over to 

the Caribbean and Latin America first right? Before the slave trade. How can black 

people be so ignorant to black history. Latina is a culture not a damn race. 

What is interesting is the ways that these moments of anti-Blackness, conflict, and solidar-

ity appeared in conjunction with the raciolinguistic ideologies explored. In Table 7, we see 

the number of times a raciolinguistic ideology appeared alongside an instance of anti-

Blackness, conflict, or solidarity over the entire data set.  

Table 7. Conflict and solidarity by raciolinguistic ideology. 

 DNA Co-Naturalization Category Accent 

Anti-Blackness 40 2 32 0 

Inter-ethnic Conflict 26 1 12 0 

Inter-ethnic Solidarity 69 3 49 0 

Based on frequency, the data indicate a high presence of moments of solidarity (69) along-

side genetic explanations of race, which evidences a pan-racial solidarity. Nonetheless, 

moments of anti-Blackness alongside the DNA ideology show that genetic race is also 

used to create boundaries of separation and to contest belonging in a pre-determine racial 

group (40). Genetic race prevailed in Anti-Haitian sentiments, with comments noting phe-

notypical differences between Haitians and Dominicans (4). It is assumed here that Mor-

gan Freeman, who has a deep brown skin complexion, is more representative of Blackness 

than Arod, who has a caramel-colored skin complexion. In this case, a caramel skin com-

plexion shows mixed-ness, which pushes him out of the categorization of Black. This strat-

egy was also used to distance Dominicans from African Americans (5), with African 

American culture often being aligned with notions of paucity and depravity, even in mo-

ments of attempted solidarity (6).  

(4) Haitian look like Morgan freemen ..so do afro Americans. Dominican look like Arod 

(5) If Dominicans are so “racist” and “confused” why do you African-American men go 

down there for an orgasm? I never see you self haters visiting Haiti or Africa? Or 

predominantly black countries..y’all stay going to Dominican republic to fuck mixed 

light skin women with good hair..you guys hate your own black women you hate 

black features so much so that you have to go down to a predominately mixed 

country to chase after light skin women! You black men need to worry about your 

community and being a father! Y’all stay praising light skinned mixed women but 

don’t like ur own women..sad existence..worry about your own damn self instead of 

worrying about people of a different culture and background than you. 

(6) I don’t think that they hate Africans or African Americans. I think it is the negative 

image given to them by the media many times, especially about African Americans. 

What I think many dislike are the street life/culture of African Americans which gets 

more promoted everywhere and make people think thats how all African Americans 

are or act even though I know thats not the case. Stupid media just pick the bad 

apples to represent African Americans just like I see many African Americans picking 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 18 of 22 
 

 

the bad apples to represent all of us Dominicans and say that were like that which is 

bs. 

African Americans contested the anti-Blackness, suggesting that Dominicans (as well as 

others) benefited from Black culture while also creating a hierarchy of superiority over 

African Americans (7). They also contested the idea of mestizaje, re-inserting notions of 

hypo-descent as the prevailing racial ideology (8).  

(7) Kings n queens of colorism, nationalistic pride and coat tale riding off black culture 

but hate blackness. N feel superior for 0 reason. 

(8) African American question: why do a lot of them just refuse to acknowlege that 

they’re black though?..or at least have african ancestry? That is wild and bizarre. 

It is worth noting that the videos represented an even split of Black diasporic solidar-

ity and Inter-ethnic conflict and boundary justifications. Of the five videos presented by 

those who claimed Dominican identities, just two represented inter-ethnic conflict. None-

theless, the comment sections of each video contained the majority of the discord, with 

90.3% of the anti-Blackness and 91.5% of the inter-ethnic conflict being located in the com-

ments. While social media influencers and content producers intended to create solidari-

ties, narratives of DNA and categorization fallacies prevailed, ultimately resulting in a 

strengthened boundary of difference between African Americans and Dominicans.  

4. Discussion 

The subject of inter-racial conflict forms the cornerstone of many race studies, but 

inter-ethnic conflict is far less studied in the United States (examples of ethnic conflict 

studies can be found in European contexts). In fact, the boundaries of difference drawn 

between groups that can exist within one census box is rarely examined, though many 

have noted the effects of homogenization in studies of Latinidad (Oro 2016; Aparicio 

2017a, 2019). Additionally, the way that the terms race, ethnicity, and nationality have 

been operationalized in these contexts offers a foundation for the development of U.S. 

racial logics (e.g., Blackness, whiteness, and racism) (De Genova and Ramos-Zayas 2003; 

Hoy 2010). The current study presented several examples of raciolinguistic ideologies 

from individual YouTube users. While many of these examples seem to come from one 

user, each excerpt represented a unique assertion by different individuals. Although the 

methodology did not allow for a survey of the subject positionality of each of these users, 

the fact that—even down to the phrasing—the ideologies represented were repeated by 

different users is indicative of the scripted nature of raciolinguistic ideologies in this con-

text. Nevertheless, focusing on the ways that the raciolinguistic ideologies surfaced within 

inter-ethnic conflict allows for a nuanced understanding of racial construction. While the 

construction of Blackness continues to rely on colonial logics of scientific race, taken up in 

the DNA ideology, the mobilization of national borders and language allowed for a novel 

racialization of Latinidad that marked it as distinct from Blackness. Nonetheless, the use 

of language as a distinguishing feature of Latinidad seems to be part of the larger project 

of Latinidad, not necessarily taken up by Dominicans themselves, who often recognize 

that you can both fit into the scientific racial logics of Blackness while possessing the cul-

tural norms that are being marked as mutually exclusive. Since language is enregistered 

as the boundary making element between Blackness and Latinidad, Dominicans are often 

forced into a position of either accepting or contesting the boundary in a move towards 

their own self-determination. 

Nevertheless, DNA narratives were often posited as objective fact adding to the lit-

erature showing the subjective nature of “scientific race” (Morning 2007; Williams 2013). 

Users evoked DNA as a way to both construct and deconstruct boundaries of belonging. 

Further, the use of this ideology in conjunction with the categorization ideology was often 

mobilized in order to promote a conflation of race and ethnicity that supported a mutual 

exclusivity between Black and Latino as pan-racial categories. This mutual exclusivity was 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 19 of 22 
 

 

further constructed by the co-naturalization of language and race ideology, which posited 

language ability as the true indication of race. Data from the current study provide evi-

dence of the ways that language is being used to transcend the boundaries of “ascribed” 

and “street race”, such that individuals are able to take a stance toward or away from 

assigned racial categories and even physical representations of race through the use or 

knowledge of particular language not generally indexed to their ascribed or street race. 

Although many Latinxs may transcend the boundaries of Blackness and Latinidad, Black-

ness has been a defining characteristic of U.S. social order, linking individuals to notions 

of poverty, violence, ignorance, and laziness (Fanon 1995; Yancy 2012). Therefore, it is no 

surprise that for Dominican(-Americans) a negotiation and possible distancing from 

Blackness may be employed in the performance of racial identity.  

In looking at the presented data from an anti-racist stance, I turn to the question of 

social justice and liberation. I ask, “what happens when you fight for the visibilization of 

African descended people without disrupting the colonial logics under which you were 

socialized”? It seems that without centering decoloniality in constructions of self and oth-

ers, one ultimately reproduces colonial logics. Ethno-racial logics may manifest differently 

based on the terminology and language given to the structures. However, the result is the 

same—erasure and dehumanization via the indexing of Blackness with stereotypes of ur-

ban crime (ghetto) and undesirability. In this paper, anti-Black stereotypes were most of-

ten attributed to African Americans. As the most established Afro-descended population 

within the colonial frame of the United States, it makes sense that these ideologies would 

have taken hold, even for newly arrived populations. The fact that these ideologies occur 

even within a population that may suffer from negative stereotypes related to anti-Black-

ness proves the strength of colonial formations of power. So terminology matters—the 

way that we marshal identity categories for ourselves and others has an effect on our abil-

ity to create inter-ethnic solidarity. When does one get to claim a Black identity? Do they 

have to look Black? Do they have to have a certain percentage of African DNA? Do they 

have to speak a certain language? Or have a certain accent? The debate about Blackness 

in these forums often called on colonial logics of scientific race and reproduced structures 

of white supremacy. Those who have limited ability to negotiate Blackness through lan-

guage or culture because of physical characteristics such as skin color and hair texture 

were often the ones who engaged in acts of policing Blackness, calling on notions of hypo-

descent while also questioning authenticity based on linguistic and cultural practices that 

were seen as mitigating whiteness. The policing of Blackness is a direct re-formulation of 

colonial structures of power. In trying to fight for pieces of this power, Afro-descended 

people often rely on the same tools that uphold white supremacy. In doing this, they are 

often forfeiting liberatory action for debates on description and a place in the already de-

fined system.  

Funding: This research received no external funding.  

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. 

Appendix A. Video Data 

Video Title 
Subject 

Positionality 
Date Posted URL 

# of Overall 

Comments 

# of Views (as 

of 10/1/2020) 

Dominicans are not 

black explained � 

(read description 

below) 

Dominican 
24 November 

2019 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oseIP_fm

Fds 
604 4697 

�� Are Dominicans 

black??? Final answer! 

(with pictures of my 

family 

Dominican 27 August 2018 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TcfxRX3

Nco 
2216 46,240 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 20 of 22 
 

 

Why Dominicans say 

they are not Black they 

Dominican 

Cuban 
28 February 

2019 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZlbPxL

_zJE 
808 12,595 

Dominicans—“The 

Self-Hating Black 

Latinos…” �� 

Dominican 2 February 2019 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSMcM4

ax0bA 
816 12,978 

I’m not Black, I’m 

Dominican 

Dominican 

and 

Panamanian 

29 December 

2019 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKBezkCi

TJ8 
616 8525 

Dominican Girl Says 

SHES NOT BLACK 

goes viral WHAT ARE 

YOUR THOUGHTS? 

Dominican 22 January 2019 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZDQjP

X0-lE&feature=youtu.be 
1002 24,642 

Cardi Says She’s Afro 

Latina 
Black (U.S.) 29 June 2019 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-

SBX2qPPa0 
11,689 493,388 

Cardi B is an Afro 

Latino Now|An Afro 

Latina Opinion 

Panamanian 26 June 2019 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1nJzcq

y4g 
856 28,810 

Godfrey Impersonates 

Dominicans Refusing 

to Accept They’re 

Black (Flashback) 

Nigerian 

American 
4 June 2020 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxpgx0D

ts6w 
3369 244,569 

BLACKS VS 

DOMINICANS 

Dominican 

(woman) 
4 June 2020 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFBE9if

RBDM 
948 4786 

Appendix B. Stance Dimensions 

Stance 

Dimension 
1 2 3 4 5 

AFFECT 

This indicates 

strong negative 

feelings towards 

the stance focus 

This indicates 

negative feelings 

towards the 

stance focus 

This indicates 

neither negative 

nor positive 

feelings towards 

the stance focus 

This indicates 

positive feelings 

towards the 

stance focus 

This indicates 

strong positive 

feelings toward 

the stance focus 

INVESTMENT 

This indicates very 

minimum 

investment in the 

claim towards the 

stance focus 

This indicates 

low investment 

in the claim 

towards the 

stance focus 

This indicates 

neither high nor 

low investment 

in the claim 

towards the 

stance focus 

This indicates 

medium 

investment in 

the claim 

towards the 

stance focus 

This indicates 

high investment 

in the claim 

towards the 

stance focus 

ALIGNMENT 

This indicates high 

disalignmentin the 

orientation 

towards the stance 

focus as either the 

original poster, or 

the commenters 

prior 

This indicates 

some 

disalignment in 

the orientation 

towards the 

stance focus as 

either the 

original poster, 

or the 

commenters 

prior 

This indicates 

neither alignment 

or disalignment 

in orientation 

towards the 

stance focus as 

either the original 

poster, or the 

commenters 

prior. 

This indicates 

some agreement 

(or alignment) in 

orientation 

towards the 

stance focus as 

either the 

original poster, 

or the 

commenters 

prior 

This indicates 

high agreement 

(or alignment) in 

orientation 

towards the 

stance focus as 

either the 

original poster, 

or the 

commenters 

prior 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 21 of 22 
 

 

References 

Alim, H. Sami, John R. Rickford, and Arnetha F. Ball. 2016. Introducing raciolinguistics: Racing language and languaging race in 

hyperracial times. In Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes our Ideas About Race. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–30. 

Agha, Asif. 2005. Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15: 38–59. 
Aparicio, Francis. 1999. Reading the “Latino” in Latino studies: Toward re-imagining our academic location. Discourse 21: 3–18. 

Aparicio, Frances R. 2017a. (Re) constructing Latinidad: The Challenge of Latina/o Studies. A Companion to Latina/o Studies 18: 39–48. 

Aparicio, Frances R. 2017b. Latinidad. In Keywords in Latina/o Studies. New York: NYU Press, pp. 113–18. 

Aparicio, Frances R. 2019. Negotiating Latinidad: Intralatina/o Lives in Chicago. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, Volume 1. 

Bailey, Benjamin. 2000. Language and negotiation of ethnic/racial identity among Dominican Americans. Language in Society 1: 555–

82. 

Bailey, Benjamin H. 2002. Language, Race, and Negotiation of Identity: A Study of Dominican Americans. New York: LFB Scholarly Pub. 

Bailey, Benjamin. 2007. Language alternation as a resource for identity negotiations among Dominican American bilinguals. In Style 

and Social Identities: Alternative Approaches to Linguistic Heterogeneity. Berlin: De Gruyter. pp. 29–56. 

Bloom, Nicholas. Forthcoming. The Reactionary Romance of American Slave Revolt: Telling the Story of the 1811 German Coast 

Uprising. Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, under review. 

Boas, Franz. 1982. Race, Language, and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2005. Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies 7: 585–614. 

Cahuas, Madelaine. 2019. Interrogating absences in Latinx theory and placing blackness in Latinx geographical thought: A critical 

reflection. Society & Space 38: 6. 

Candelario, Ginetta. 2007. Color matters: Latina/o racial identities and life chances. A Companion to Latina/o Studies 1: 337. 

Coupland, Nikolas. 2007. Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1991. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford 

Law Review 43:1241–99. 

Davis, F. James. 2010. Who Is Black?: One Nation’s Definition. University Park: Penn State Press. 

De Genova, Nicholas, and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas. 2003. Latino racial formations in the United States: An introduction. Journal of Latin 

American Anthropology 8: 2–16. 

Dedoose 2018. Web Application for Managing, Analyzing, and Presenting Qualitative and Mixed Method Research Data. Version 8.3.35. Los 

Angeles: SocioCultural Research Consultants, LLC. Available online: www.dedoose.com (accessed on 3 October 2020). 

Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. 2017. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York: NYU Press, Volume 20. 

Duany, Jorge. 1998. Reconstructing racial identity: Ethnicity, color, and class among Dominicans in the United States and Puerto 

Rico. Latin American Perspectives 25: 147–72. 

Duany, Jorge. 2008. Quisqueya on the Hudson: The transnational identity of Dominicans in Washington Heights, Dominican Research Mono-

graphs. New York: The CUNY Dominican Studies Institute. 

Fairclough, Norman. 2001. Language and Power. London: Pearson Education. 

Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press. 

Fanon, Frantz. 1995. Black skin, white mask. San Francisco.: California Newsreel. 

Flores, Juan. 1997. Pan-latino/trans-latino: Los puertorriqueños en el “nuevo New York”. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 2: 90–121. 

Flores, Juan, and Miriam Jiménez Román. 2009. Triple-consciousness? Approaches to Afro-Latino culture in the United States. Latin 

American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 4: 319–28. 

Flores, Nelson, and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. 

Harvard Educational Review 85: 149–71. 

Hall, Sturart. 1996. Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance. In Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader. Edited by 

Houston A. Baker Jr., Manthia Diawara and Ruth H. Lindeborg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 16–60. First published 

1980.  
Hartman, Saidiya V. 1997. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford 

University Press on Demand. 

Hooker, Juliet. 2016. Black Lives Matter and the paradoxes of US Black politics: From democratic sacrifice to democratic repair. 

Political Theory 44: 448–69. 

Hooker, Juliet. 2017. Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos. Oxford: New York. 

Hoy, Vielka Cecilia. 2010. Negotiating among invisibilities: Tales of Afro-latinidades in the United States. In The Afro-Latin@ Reader: 

History and Culture in the United States. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 426–30. 

Johnstone, Barbara. 2007. Linking identity and dialect through stancetaking. In Stance Taking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, 

Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjarnins, pp. 49–68.  

Johnstone, Barbara. 2009. Stance, style, and the linguistic individual. Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives 29: 52. 

Kendi, Ibram X. 2019. How to Be an Antiracist. New York: Random House. 

Kiesling, Scott F., Umashanthi Pavalanathan, Jim Fitzpatrick, Xiaochuang Han, and Jacob Eisenstein. 2018. Interactional stancetaking 

in online forums. Computational Linguistics 44: 683–718. 

Lawrence, Anna, and Aris, Clemons. Forthcoming. (Mis)languaging and (Mis)translating Identity: Racialization of Latinidad in the 

U.S. mediascape. Latino Studies, under review. 



Genealogy 2021, 5, 1 22 of 22 
 

 

Lippi-Green, Rosina. 2012. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge. 

Lopez, Ian F. Haney. 1994. The social construction of race: Some observations on illusion, fabrication, and choice. Harvard Civil Rights-

Civil Liberties Law Review 29: 1–62. 

López, Nancy, Edward Vargas, Melina Juarez, Lisa Cacari-Stone, and Sonia Bettez. 2018. What’s your “street race”? leveraging mul-

tidimensional measures of race and intersectionality for examining physical and mental health status among latinxs. Sociology 

of Race and Ethnicity 4: 49–66. 

Montagu, Ashley. 1997. Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. Ranham: Rowman & Littlefield. 

Morning, Ashley. 2007. “Everyone Knows It’s a Social Construct”: Contemporary Science and the Nature of Race. Sociological Focus 

40: 436–54. 

Nagel, Joane. 1994. Constructing ethnicity: Creating and recreating ethnic identity and culture. Social Problems 41: 152–76. 

Nagel, Joane. 2003. Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 

xii308. 

Nelson, Alondra. 2016. The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome. Boston: Beacon Press. 

Nilep, Chad. 2006. “Code switching” in sociocultural linguistics. Colorado Research in Linguistics 19. doi:10.25810/hnq4-jv62. 

Ochs, Elinor. 1993. Constructing social identity: A language socialization perspective. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26: 

287–306. 

Ochs, Elinor, Alessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin. 1992. Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Edited by 

Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 335–58. 

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge 

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 2014. Racial Formation in the United States. London: Routledge. 

Oro, Paul Joseph López. 2016. “Ni de aquí, ni de allá”: Garífuna Subjectivities and the Politics of Diasporic Belonging. In Afro-Latin@ 

s in Movement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 61–83. 

Riccelli, Adrián Rodríguez. 2018. Espero estén todos: The distribution of the null subordinating complementizer in two varieties of 

Spanish. In Language Variation and Contact-Induced Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 299–333. 

Rosa, Jonathan, and Nelson Flores. 2017. Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society 46: 

621–47. 

Roth, Wendy D., and Biorn Ivemark. 2018. Genetic options: The impact of genetic ancestry testing on consumers’ racial and ethnic 

identities. American Journal of Sociology 124: 150–84. 

Rubinstein-Ávila, Eliane. 2007. From the Dominican Republic to Drew High: What counts as literacy for Yanira Lara? Reading Research 

Quarterly 42: 568–89. 

Shange, Savannah. 2019. Black girl ordinary: Flesh, carcerality, and the refusal of ethnography. Transforming Anthropology 27: 3–21. 

Sue, Christina A. 2013. Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Telles, Edward. 2014. Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America. UNC Press Books. Chapel Hill: The University of 

North Carolina Press 

Torres-Saillant, Silvio. 1999. Introduction to Dominican Blackness, CUNY Dominican Studies Institute. New York: City College of New 

York. 

Urciuoli, Bonnie. 1995. Language and borders. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 525–46. 

Wilderson, Frank B., III. 2010. Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms. Durham: Duke University Press. 

Williams, Johnny E. 2013. Biological Pre-emption: “Race”, Class, and Genomics. Sociology Compass 7: 711–25. 

Yancy, George. 2012. Look, a White!: Philosophical Essays on Whiteness. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 

Yudell, Michael, Dorothy Roberts, Rob DeSalle, and Sarah Tishkoff. 2016. Taking race out of human genetics. Science 351: 564–65. 

Yuval-Davis, Nira. 2011. Power, Intersectionality and the Politics of Belonging. Aalborg: FREIA (Feminist Research Center in Aalborg), 

Aalborg University.