June 26, 2015
I, like many others, never heard of the 2013 Dominican Constitutional Court ruling saying citizenship would no longer naturally be given to a person born in the Dominican Republic. Like others, I tripped over my own foot when I understood the people/government of the Dominican Republic (DR) approved a systemic change that could lead to the deportations of Dominicans of Haitian descent. I fell over my other foot when I understood the policy would be retroactive to 1929.
I might not know the intricacies of all that is going on, but I have two thoughts just the same. If it were my family, and my mother was four years younger, it would mean she is in danger of deportation at the age of 86. Of course, Belinda and I would be right behind her, our children right behind us, and our grandson right behind them. Imagine, four generations deported in one fell swoop. I find it hard to imagine one can argue a position of justice for this action.
Of course, DR did not come up with this throwing away of people. The US has been doing it for much longer. From throwing away of today’s south of the border generations, who came to work US farms, to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the DR did not have to look far to find a mentor.
Throwing away of people who have been on US or DR soil and worked for generations to better those countries is one example of what the Doctrine of Discovery (DoD) looks and feels like today. The DoD, from inception, has been about the extraction of resources. DoD countries have used law and power to mine mineral and people of other landscapes to benefit themselves. Then throw those people away when they no longer have monetary value. What is so very hard is the realization that landscapes who were once the victims of the DoD have often adopt DoD practices as they come into power themselves (under the guiding hand of their DoD oppressor).
Clearly much history has occurred between DR and Haiti since Christopher Columbus’ landing in 1492. Yet all their history, since that moment of landing, is constructed upon a Christian/European worldview that some folk are intrinsically (God created) better than others are. The ongoing actions in the Dominican Republic are but one more example of why a conversation about the Doctrine of Discovery needs to become normal in the teaching practices of public teachers, Christian pastors, and others who have public voice.
Chewing the Cud 