Black folks love a good skin-bleaching speculation — see how we dug into the Beyoncé complexion “controversy” from late last year. The latest mess with retired MLB legend Alex Rodriguez is similar…but also completely different.
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A-Rod made waves Friday for being on the sidelines at a Minnesota Timberwolves game (he’s co-owner of the team) appearing darker-complected than he has throughout the entirety of his public persona. And it’s not just a little darker – dude looks like he applied Instagram filters on his face in real life.
Speculation regarding this “new look” went so viral that A-Rod dropped a video tweet in response: “I’m Dominican, I went on vacation and I fell asleep in the sun. So, everybody calm down.”
A-Rod’s tweet courted condemnation from people claiming that he gave the impression that the tan was an unhappy mistake instead of letting everyone know that it’s perfectly okay to be dark, Dominican or not. Several people posted the “I no Black, I Dominican” interview clip of comedian Godfrey explaining how Dominicans often reject their African heritage.
He also received several accusations of Blackface, with comparisons to Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder” or C. Thomas Howell’s infamously offensive role in “Soul Man.” But those seem to come from white people who don’t understand that folks who are already Black can’t do Blackface. And that Black people can get very dark when in the sun. That’s our melanin kicking in.
His supporters — like Beyoncé’s before him – informed folks that Dominicans can easily run the gamut of the skin tone gradient depending on the season or how much sun they’re getting.
The whole issue has been enlightening (pun sort of intended) for people who don’t know that Dominicans have complex relationship with their Afro-Caribbean background (whether they admit it) or simply didn’t realize that A-Rod – despite having had a generally buttoned-up “mainstream” public persona – is the product of two Dominican-born parents and can, gasp, actually speak Spanish!
I can relate to the education disconnect of U.S. residents who don’t understand the nuances of Latin American Blackness: Having grown up in the relatively homogenous Black American city of Detroit, I first learned of Black Dominicans in the early 2000s through Boston Red Sox slugger David “Big Papi” Ortiz, who looks like one of my cousins but caught me off guard with his Spanish accent.
That said, colorism in Dominican culture has been prevalent for generations, playing a large part in why Dominicans treat the Haitians with whom they share the Hispaniola island so poorly. Dominican ruler and dictator Rafael Trujillo sought to ethnically cleanse Haitians from the island in the 1930s via assassination. Trujillo also worked to “lighten” the country by bringing in Jewish refugees and Spanish exiles to make babies and take desirable jobs and positions of power. He even allegedly tried to lighten himself in photos.
It’s why Sammy Sosa, another Dominican MLB legend, is trending along with A-Rod: Following his retirement in 2009, Sosa was often seen in public much lighter than the dark complexion he had during his playing days. Sosa admitted to using a bleaching cream to “soften my skin” and insisted it had nothing to do with self-hate – an excuse no one with sense believes.
In 2014, Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr. explored the issue of colorism in the Dominican Republic on the “Haiti and the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided” episode of his “Black in Latin America” PBS series. During the episode Gates spoke with Juan Rodriguez from the Dominican Ministry of Culture, who said, explicitly, “Dominicans are in denial about who they are.”
If nothing else, A-Rod missed out on an opportunity to explicitly discuss the issue of colorism in his parents’ homeland. He could’ve gone a bit further to express pride in the diversity of Dominican skin tones and even vocally condemned the country’s treatment of Haitians, which could’ve gone a long way considering he has millions of followers.
But his response came off like, “I’m dark because I was in the sun…my bad, y’all…won’t happen again.” Which begs the question: Are A-Rod and Sammy Sosa on the same complexion-hating page?
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