Analyzes textbooks in the Dominican Republic for evidence of reproducing Haitian Otherness

Unmastering the Script: Education, Critical Race Theory, and the Struggle to Reconcile the Haitian Other in Dominican Identity examines how school curriculum–based representations of Dominican identity navigate black racial identity, its relatedness to Haiti, and the culturally  entrenched pejorative image of the Haitian Other in Dominican society. Wigginton and Middleton analyze how social science textbooks and historical biographies intended for young Dominicans reflect an increasing shift toward a clear and public inclusion of blackness in Dominican identity that serves to renegotiate the country’s long-standing antiblack racial master script.
 
The authors argue that although many of the attempts at this inclusion  reflect a lessening of “black denial,” when considered as a whole, the  materials often struggle to find a consistent and coherent narrative for the place of blackness within Dominican identity, particularly regarding the ways in which blackness continues to be meaningfully related to the otherness of Haitian racial identity. Unmastering the Script approaches the text materials as an example of “reconstructing” and “unburying” an African past, supporting the uneven, slow, and highly context-specific nature of the process.
 
This work engages with multiple disciplines including history, anthropology, education, and race studies, building on a new wave of Dominican scholarship that considers how contemporary perspectives of Dominican identity both accept the existence of an African past and seek to properly weigh its importance. The use of critical race theory as the framework facilitates unfolding the past political and legal agendas of governing elites in the Dominican Republic and also helps to unlock the nuance of an increasingly black-inclusive Dominican identity. In addition, this framework allows the unveiling of some of the socially damaging effects the Haitian Other master script can have on children, particularly those of Haitian ancestry, in the Dominican Republic.
 

Sheridan Wigginton is professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at California Lutheran University.

Richard T. Middleton IV is associate professor of political science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and adjunct professor of law at St. Louis University School of Law. He is author of Cities, Mayors, and Race Relations: Task Forces as Agents of Race-Based Policy Innovations and Unequal Protection of the Law: The Rights of Citizens and Non-Citizens in Comparative Perspective.

“Wigginton and Middleton not only offer critical information about textbook adoptions in the Dominican Republic, but also offer valuable insight into the benefits of culturally responsive (and inclusive) pedagogy, and the implications of vetting textbooks through culturally responsive lenses prior to use in the classroom. Their vivid examples reveal the impact of classroom materials on students’ identities, which may be informational to educators seeking to support the identity development of students who are often underrepresented or negatively represented in curriculum. The authors weave a thread of hope and admonition relevant to educators and policymakers striving for racial equity: reform is vital and overdue.”
—PALARA

“Examining the concept of race within the Dominican national rhetoric through the analysis of textbooks, Wigginton and Middleton offer an appropriate and rational interpretation of Dominican textbooks in public schools that is easy to follow and provides clear examples of racialist inculcation.”
—Dawn F. Stinchcomb, author of The Development of Literary Blackness in the Dominican Republic

"Through their examination of textbooks, Wigginton and Middleton reveal a shift taking place in the Dominican Republic surrounding ideas of blackness. They provide a rich example and show how blackness continues to be reconsidered in the Dominican Republic, reconstructing a sense of being Afro-Dominican.”
—Kimberly Eison Simmons, author of Reconstructing Racial Identity and the African Past in the Dominican Republic