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Sheridan Wigginton & Richard T. Middleton IV, Unmastering the Script: Education, Critical Race Theory, and the Struggle to Reconcile the Haitian Other in Dominican Identity. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019.113 pp. (Cloth US$ 64.95)
Unmastering the Script joins a number of recently published studies that have focused on the origins, uses, and consequences of anti-Haitianism in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Supreme Court's 2013 decision to retroactively deny Dominican nationality to hundreds of thousands of people born to Haitian immigrant parents has added a sense of urgency to these issues. Sheridan Wigginton and Richard Middleton argue that while education could serve as an important vehicle to improve Dominicans' relationship with Blackness and Haitians, contemporary textbooks fail to provide students and teachers with the critical tools and historical perspectives they need to address and counteract Dominican racism. Specifically, they argue, this failure derives from the missed opportunity to grapple with the "Haitian Other," which they argue serves as a master script that frames popular and academic common sense about race and national identity in the Dominican Republic.
In their examination of social science textbooks and curriculum used...