“I’m Not Black, I’m Dominican”

By Julissa Castillo

For the first decade of my life, race and ethnicity were things I never thought about. For starters, I was a child. But my family also lived in Queens, New York, and lots of people looked like us, or didn’t look like us, and frankly nobody cared. All I knew was that we were Dominican and all my birthday parties were bomb.

Then we moved to Tennessee the summer before I was to begin fourth grade, and all of a sudden, things were very, very different. It marked the first time anybody ever asked me, “What are you? Are you mixed?” And it certainly wasn’t the last. In fact, it became common for strangers to ask me this moments after meeting me, as if they could not proceed further with our interaction without knowing exactly how to categorize me.

Soon, I learned that what people wanted to know was where my parents were from. The first time this happened, I was so taken aback, I truly did not know how to answer. I had never even heard the term “mixed.” Eventually, I came to understand that — to them — the term meant “mixed with black and white.” But since both of my parents were Dominican, I replied simply, “No, I’m Dominican.” In my small town, just a county away from where the KKK was first formed, I’m not certain people would have understood the nuances between race and nationality.