“Yo Llevo Mi Pañuelo Amarrao”: Gen-Z Afro Dominicans exploring their ethnoracial identities in NYC

Abstract

We have a great global illiteracy of Blackness (Hernández, 2024). As a global society, we do not know or care to know the history of the global Black diaspora beyond the scope of the Transatlantic Slave Trade period. While much literature can be found on the impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Blackness in The Caribbeans and Latin America has been understudied. We must learn about Blackness in The Caribbeans and Latin America as it is where most of the African enslaved people were exported to (Busey, 2017). Furthermore, while AfroLatines are one of the fastest growing racial/ethnic groups in the U.S., AfroLatine K-12 students/youth are underrepresented in research as compared to other Latine students and students of color. This study aims to highlight how 7 Gen-Z Afro Dominican youth in New York City refuse discrimination, antiBlackness, and colonial, historical misinformation. This study aims to inform readers how some Afro Dominican Gen-Z are changing the course of Dominican history through community, global advocacy, and education. This study used a conceptual framework that focused on the La Casta System and antiBlackness as foundational theories to the institutional racism in the U.S. and Latin America; along with Afro Dominicans in New York City as a subculture and Black-imiento (Dache et al., 2019) to explain how participants conceptualize their ethnoracial identity. It also employed Critical Race Methodology (Solórzano & Yosso, 2022) as its methodological approach. This study identified four key findings: (1) participants’ agency and efforts to “self-educate” on Dominican history and interrogate antiBlack and antiHaitian narratives through historical storytelling; (2) the methods participants used to recover from antiBlackness and racial harm; (3) the role of schooling experiences in the formation of participants’ academic and ethnoracial 6 identities; and (4) the participants’ perceptions of their generation identity and generational advocacy as Afro Dominican Gen-Zs. This research provides a timely and necessary study of how researchers, curriculum writers, policymakers, and other stakeholders can draw from the experiences of Afro Dominican and Dominican youths in New York City and support their schooling experiences. It also provides ways we, as educational scholars, can present research in disaggregated ways to help advance research on understudied populations. Note: After completing a full draft of this dissertation, I used Grammarly, an AI writingassistance application to assist with final editing.