Why Sammy Sosa Hates Himself

When I first saw this photo of Sammy Sosa with his wife at the Latin Grammy Awards, I had no clue who the man was. When I learned it was retired major league baseball slugger Sammy Sosa, I had to download an older picture just to be sure it was the same guy.

At first Sammy Sosa, a native of the Dominican Republic, denied that he had intentionally whitened his skin. Instead he put forth the explanation that his lighter complexion was the unintentional by-product of a chemical peel. I suppose that for someone as unversed as I am in the science of skincare, this explanation might have been plausible were it not for Sosa’s newly green eyes and straightened, Count Basie-inspired hairstyle. These three factors, combined with the blue-eyed, olive-skinned woman he’s so proudly flaunting in the pic, all lead me to believe that the true cause of Sosa’s dermal lactification is nothing more than Michael Jackson syndrome.

Thanks to the legacy left behind by slavery and colonialism, many people of African heritage in the Diaspora carry massive amounts of baggage surrounding our image and identity as Black People. This baggage can often take the form of intense insecurity and a desire to acquire the physical traits of the dominant group. During slavery and in the period immediately following, Caribbean society was strictly stratified along racial lines, with white slaveholders/landowners occupying the upper strata. Blacks were on the bottom, and those of mixed heritage were situated according to the percentage of European heritage in their ancestry. Blacks and so-called mulattoes enjoyed increased status if they were able to mold their appearance in order to accentuate indicators of white ancestry and downplay indicators of African ancestry. As a result, the use of skin whitener (commonly referred to as bleach) and various hair straightening products was ubiquitous in Black Caribbean society. Tragically skin bleach is still fairly common today in the Caribbean despite its proven health risks.

Having grown up in an English-speaking Caribbean family, I remember vividly the lexicon of a culture that subconsciously venerated whiteness. If someone’s hair was soft and curly (or even better, almost straight) they were said to have "good hair". Hair that was kinky with very tight curls was referred to as being "tough". Women who managed to snag a suitor of a lighter or "higher" complexion than themselves were said to have "married up", as though they had earned some type of advanced degree. And in all honesty, not long ago marrying up could well have gone further toward guaranteeing a prosperous future for your offspring than marrying a dark-skinned man with a PhD. However, in fairness (no pun intended) to my parents’ generation, the term ‘marrying up’ is much less common nowadays.

In the Spanish-speaking Caribbean nations of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, complexion politics is further complicated (and in my estimation, intensified) by the presence of multiple non-black ethnic classifications, all of which constitute significant portions of the total population. Whereas a country like Jamaica contains a Black majority of more than 95%, only 11% of the Dominican population identifies as Black. So while Jamaican Blacks enjoyed multiple vibrant black consciousness renaissances in the early and mid 20th century, Blacks in the Spanish-speaking Islands underwent no parallel process. Furthermore, their status as ostensible minorities (this is somewhat controversial since majority of Cubans and Dominicans have some degree of African heritage) meant that they wouldn’t benefit from the privilege and empowerment that comes from being a majority in ones own nation and which helped to engender a sense of legitimacy, belonging, and racial pride in places like Jamaica.

During the colonial period, the Spanish rulers enforced an elaborate caste system which ranked the various racial groups and determined what rights one was afforded by the state as well as what jobs one could expect to hold. At the top were the castizos (or "pure" Spaniards). These were followed by the mestizos (those of mixed Spanish and Native Indian heritage), then the Native Indians, then the mulattoes (people of mixed Spanish and African ancestry), then the zambos (mixed Native and Black - can you see the pattern emerging?). Last, and most certainly least, were those Black slaves, who had the misfortune of having no discernible admixture with which to dilute their wretched Blackness.

As if this weren’t cause enough for any Black Dominican to repudiate her or his African heritage, this entire dynamic is even further exacerbated by the republic’s neighbors to the West. In 1804, Haiti became the first modern Black republic when former slaves led a successful revolt to expel their French enslavers from the island and unilaterally declared independence. On two separate occasions (1801 and 1822) Haitian forces captured Santo Domingo and took control over the Spanish-speaking eastern portion of the island. Therefore in 1844 when Dominicans ultimately gained independence from all foreign rulers, they were in the incredibly unique position of having fought off the rule of Black ‘colonizers’ as opposed to European ones. Relations between the two countries have been frosty ever since.

Furthermore, because Haiti is so poor (a result of the international isolation imposed on them in retaliation for forcibly winning their own freedom) hundreds of thousands of Haitians have come pouring over the border (both legally and illegally) in search of some economic livelihood. The Haitians, who tend to be darker than Dominicans on average, are the target of vitriolic racism and xenophobia, even at the hands of Black Dominicans. As a result, Blackness, in addition to all its negative historical connotations, is now associated with being Haitian, which in turn means being an outsider and an economic burden on the country.

So, considering all this, I wasn’t surprised when I read today that Sammy Sosa has now admitted to using a cosmetic skin-whitener in order to achieve a lighter complexion. Sosa offers an interesting rationalization for his behaviour, claiming, "It’s a bleaching cream that I apply before going to bed and whitens my skin some…It’s a cream that I have, that I use to soften [my skin], but has bleached me some. I’m not a racist, I live my life happily."

Not a racist? I believe you Sammy. In fact, I bet you even have Black friends.