“#PeroNoSomosRacistas: Examining Dominican (Anti)Blackness in a Time of Global Racial Reckoning

Black Lives Matter 2020 broke beyond the borders of the U.S. and spurred antiracist demonstrations across the world, showing both the pervasiveness of global anti-Black racism and the ways in which social movements can be adapted and applied across contexts, including the Caribbean and Latin America. I draw from in-depth interviews with Dominicans and Dominican Americans in the aftermath of Black Lives Matter 2020, and on data from X (formerly Twitter) around the online use of the #PeroNoSomosRacistas hashtag to examine how diasporic Dominicans in the U.S. and Dominicans in the Dominican Republic received, engaged with, and adapted the Black Lives Matter 2020 moment to address Dominican anti-Blackness. I find that this moment created a transnational space for Dominicans across contexts to engage in antiracist discourses that both reinforced and disrupted prevalent ideas about Dominicans and Blackness.