Dominicans never beat me up! #boricuasonline

Allegedly there is an unwritten beef between the Puerto Rican and Dominican community in New York City. I say allegedly because growing up I never had any problems with the Dominicans. In fact, a few of my best friends were Dominicans, and their entire family treated me very nicely.

My son is a U.S citizen who was born abroad. Take a guess where he was born? If you said Santo Domingo, you would be right. He was born there, and I had to sort out his immigration status so that he could come here to the U.S. This means that I spent a lot of time traveling back and forth to the Dominican Republic. The year he was born, I think I flew out there at least 2-3 weekends a month, and over the years since then I have accumulated more stamps on my passport from D.R than all of the other countries I have visited combined! And I have traveled quite a good deal! I went there so much, that the guys at the gym knew me, the colmado owner knew me, the barbers knew me, they all knew me and looked out for my ex-wife and son as we awaited our immigration situation.

Interestingly, when I was coming up in the hood, I was often treated badly by Latinos and blacks. I was treated especially badly by other Puerto Ricans. They called me a gringo, and said that I was not one of them. This among many other less than pleasant experiences forced me to pull away from the Puerto Rican community. However, the Dominicans never treated me badly. Whether I was in their homeland, or here stateside, these folks have always been relatively kind to me. In the streets, relatively kind means that they generally left me alone and that they never robbed, assaulted or beat me up.

I’m not sure where this little war rumor comes from, but from my perspective, it is invalid and just a source of humor between us. Harmless banter if you will. We are all one, and we should all love one another!

Image is a screenshot of a video covering this same topic by our good friends at The Flama!

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