The DAP Hand Gesture May Not Be What You Think

Black soldiers in Vietnam faced racism, were overrepresented in early combat deaths, and some faced violence from some white soldiers. A survival mechanism that came out of those conditions is not surprising to me. That survival mechanism can be called the DAP hand gesture, which some claim to be an acronym for “Dignity and Pride.” This may be folklore etymology, not settled history.

The origins of the acronym and the practice are contested, and “Dignity and Pride” appears to be a definition after the fact. Presenting a contested origin as a settled definition risks turning folklore into history.

The main problem with the DAP hand gesture is racial essentialism

Racial essentialism is the belief that racial groupings have a fixed, underlying “essence,” some deep, inherent set of traits shared by all or most members of a “race” that makes them what they are. This is the belief that “race” is not just a surface label but a real biological or natural kind and that belonging to a race carries with it inherent characteristics, whether physical, psychological, behavioral, moral, intellectual, or cultural.

Recall that “race” is a social construction that is arbitrary and subjective and changes from time to time and place to place, so being “Black” in one time or place may not mean you are Black in another time or place. I also prefer the term “ethnicity” because it has softer boundaries than race does.

Shared race is not shared kinship

Trying to ground “brotherhood” and “unity” in race itself can imply that sharing an arbitrary racial category confers shared consciousness or automatic kinship. It does not. All of our skin folk are not our kinfolk.

It is preferable that people be bound together by shared values, not by an unchosen category they were assigned to at birth. Treating race itself as the source of solidarity can give race an essential significance it does not possess. It can also encourage tribal thinking by defining solidarity primarily according to who is inside and who is outside the group.

Racial essentialism is not the same as shared racialized experience

There is an important distinction here. Rejecting racial essentialism does not require denying that people classified as "Black" can have overlapping experiences because society treats them as Black. Black people in America have a lived experience: the Black experience. A socially constructed category has real social consequences. People who are racialized similarly may encounter some of the same discrimination, biases, stereotypes, exclusions, or dangers, and those shared conditions can reasonably produce solidarity. People who are racialized as Black face white supremacy and its fallacies.

But shared experience of racialization is different from an inherent racial essence. The first is produced by social conditions; the second treats racial membership as carrying intrinsic characteristics or kinship. My objection is not to people responding collectively to shared mistreatment. It is to turning that response into the claim that race itself creates a natural or permanent bond among the people placed within the category.

Solidarity is a response, not an ideal

It is not surprising to me that solidarity would develop among a group of people under attack. Under those circumstances, solidarity can be practical, protective, and psychologically important. I can understand and accept it as a response without accepting race-based solidarity as an ideal.

That distinction matters. Black soldiers in a racist environment have good reason to recognize one another as potential allies because they were being subjected to related forms of racialization. That does not mean Blackness itself created an intrinsic brotherhood. The solidarity can be explained by shared circumstances rather than by a shared racial essence.

What I want as an ideal is a human community grounded in shared humanity and, shared values, not a set of competing racial groups each certain of its own.

Brotherhood is gendered

“Brotherhood” is also gendered. Gender is arbitrary and subjective. The larger principle is that human solidarity should not depend on arbitrary or unchosen group boundaries, then "manhood" should not be treated as the basis of an intrinsic human bond either. Recall that "masculinity" and "femininity" are also arbitrary and subjective. A solidarity defined exclusively through brotherhood carries a built-in gender-based exclusion.

It is celebration, not examination

I would rather understand the DAP as what it actually was, a response to specific and brutal conditions, than automatically accept later interpretations of it as a timeless symbol of Black racial consciousness. A context-specific coping strategy does not have to become an identity ideology.

This is a disagreement about principles rather than a rejection of the men who dapped. I accept the men who dapped as brothers in humanity. Their behavior can be understood in the historical conditions in which it developed without requiring us to turn those conditions into a permanent model of racial belonging. Historical oppression can explain and justify situational solidarity without trying to establish race as the proper foundation for human kinship. Common humanity in the human family is preferably as the basis for kinship.

References

Hamilton, L. (2014, September 22). Five on the Black Hand Side: Origins and evolutions of the dap. Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. https://folklife.si.edu/talkstory/2014/five-on-the-black-hand-sideorigins-and-evolutions-of-the-dap

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Dap. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved August 8, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dap

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2025). Rethinking race and ethnicity in biomedical research. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/27913

National Museum of African American History and Culture. (n.d.). Giving dap. Smithsonian Institution. https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/giving-dap

PBS. (2015, May 12). The mailbag: More on race then (Vietnam) and now. https://www.pbs.org/publiceditor/blogs/ombudsman/the-mailbag-more-on-race-then-vietnam-and-now/

University of Washington Medicine. (n.d.). Racial essentialism. Office of Healthcare Equity. https://equity.uwmedicine.org/training_glossary/social-determinants-of-health/racial-essentialism/

World Health Organization. (2021, May 24). Gender and health. https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/gender-and-health