Dominicans want you to know a few things. First: they are not Puerto Rican. Second: the food is the best. Third: they will prove both points at volume, without apology, and they will be right about both. Dominican pride doesn't ask permission. It arrives fully formed.
What Is Dominican Pride?
Dominican pride is the cultural confidence of Dominican people and their descendants — the pride in a Caribbean island nation that has produced some of the world's greatest baseball players, one of the most recognizable music genres (merengue), one of the most influential fashion capitals in Latin America, and a diaspora that has transformed New York City. It is also the pride of survival — of a country with a complex history of colonization, dictatorship, and economic hardship that has produced a people who are, as a general matter, extremely good at being alive and extremely committed to making it count.
The Dominican Diaspora: New York as Second Home
The Dominican community in the United States is concentrated heavily in New York City — particularly in Washington Heights, the neighborhood in upper Manhattan that has been the heart of Dominican-American culture since the 1960s. According to the Pew Research Center, there are approximately 2.1 million people of Dominican origin in the United States, making it one of the five largest Hispanic-origin groups in the country. After New York, major communities exist in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
Washington Heights is not just a neighborhood — it is a Dominican cultural capital. The food, the music, the barbershops, the salons, the businesses, the churches, the political organizing, the street life — all of it reflects a community that brought its entire culture north and installed it permanently.
What Dominican Culture Brings
Merengue — the fast, accordion-and-tambora dance music of the Dominican Republic — is the nation's official popular music and one of the most joyful sounds in all of Latin music. Bachata (slow, guitar-driven, romantic) is equally Dominican, despite being initially dismissed as lower-class music before artists like Juan Luis Guerra and Romeo Santos transformed it into a global phenomenon. Dominican food is centered around la bandera — the flag: white rice, red beans, and stewed meat, the combination that appears on Dominican tables daily. Mangú (mashed plantains with fried cheese, salami, and eggs), sancocho (a rich multi-meat stew for celebrations), and pollo guisado are the foods the diaspora carries and misses.
Dominican-American Identity
For Dominican-Americans — especially the New York-raised, code-switching, bilingual second generation — identity is specific and layered. You are American. You are Dominican. You are from the Heights, or from Lawrence, or from Providence. You speak Spanish with the specific cadences and dropped consonants of Dominican Spanish (which has its own internal debates about "proper" pronunciation). You probably have opinions about whether merengue or bachata is the superior genre. You absolutely have opinions about baseball. Dominican identity in America is loud and specific and proud — and it would be annoying if it weren't also completely earned.
Keep reading:
Boricua Identity: What It Really Means to Be Puerto Rican
Cuba Pride: What It Means to Be Cuban in America
Colombiana Identity: What It Means to Be Colombian in America