“One thing that I noticed is that we Dominican[s] have the political
in our veins, and baseball, those two things are with us.”
Domingo Dominguez, interview with the authors,
August 23, 2022
About the book
Dominican Americans are one of the largest and fastest-growing Latinx groups in the United States, with a population that has quadrupled from 517,000 to a little over 2.3 million as of 2023. While New York City is home to the largest Dominican community in the country—and is where most Dominican American elected officials (DEOs) are from—Dominican Americans continue to increase their representation nationwide. In Politics in Our Veins, Yalidy Matos, Domingo Morel, and Michelle Bueno Vásquez chart the rise of Dominican American political power across the United States, exploring the myriad factors that have contributed to their political success as thoughtful citizens, activists, and elected officials.
Drawing on original surveys, in-depth interviews with elected officials, and archival data, Matos, Morel, and Vásquez trace the past, present, and future of Dominican American political power, demonstrating how one group fought from the margins for a seat at the table. They explore how community, civic, and cultural organizations have played an important role in helping newly immigrated Dominican Americans gain political power through influential national coalitions like “Dominicans on the Hill” and the Dominican National Roundtable. They also examine how identity politics, in particular race and gender, influence the political attitudes and behavior of DEOs.
Politics in Our Veins shines a light on how Dominicans have created avenues for political engagement, identifying where barriers to participation have been dismantled, where they remain, and where new obstacles are emerging.
The authors
- Capture the complex journey of how Dominican Americans mobilized to become key progressive players in American politics
- Advance a new theoretical framework to understand immigrant political incorporation
- Examine the factors that help and hinder immigrant groups in their incorporation and integration journey
- Provide a novel theory of insurgent intersectional politics to analyze the role of Black and Afro-Dominican women elected officials
- Intervene and contribute to Black Latino politics and women in politics
Email Yalidy about Politics in our Veins at Yalidy.Matos@rutgers.edu
Reviews
★★★★★
“Using original data to provide the most comprehensive analysis of U.S. Dominican politics to date, Matos, Morel, and Vásquez lay out a theory of Dominican political incorporation that centers the role of community-based organizations, identity politics, specifically the intersection of race and gender among Dominicans, transnational dynamics, and local political context. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in how history, racial dynamics, and gender affect the political incorporation of different Latino national-origin groups in the United States.”
Lisa García Bedolla, co-author of Latino Politics, Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley
★★★★★
“In this timely study, Matos, Morel, and Bueno Vásquez narrate the emergence of Dominican-Americans as a formidable electoral constituency in the Eastern United States and beyond. They offer a much-needed analysis of Dominican political incorporation over decades and in multiple locations. The result is an expert guide to understanding people of Dominican ancestry as political participants and equally, or even more impressively, as leaders”
Ramona Hernández, co-editor of Building Strategic Partnerships for Development: Dominican Republic New York State, Director of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute and Professor of Sociology at the City College of New York
★★★★★
“Politics has long been a central arena through which immigrant groups make claims of belonging in American society. Drawing on an in-depth study of Dominican elected officials, this book traces how Dominicans have carved out a place within U.S. political life. Of particular significance is its analysis of how organizations structure, sustain, and mediate this process. This book is essential reading for scholars of immigrant political participation.”
José Itzigsohn, co-author of The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois: Racialized Modernity and the Global Color Line, Professor of Sociology, Brown University
About this research
The authors are available for keynotes, workshops, and speaking engagements. Email Yalidy.Matos@rutgers.edu
Yalidy Matos 