Exactly people who say this don't know what they are talking about. They are exactly the same except DR went through more whitening later on. There's plenty of lightskinned haitians, I should know because I'm one of them. We have a native american burial site on our land over there too. There is no difference except that Trujillo invited a bunch of germans to come live in DR so he can make the population "less dark".
Me too ! People see me and think I'm puerto rican. People think my pops is cuban or even indian. I've heard people say my my mom looks like lena horne or straight up white. We come in all shades. People assume that all haitians are "dark as night" (as i've heard several times) but they dont realize that most of the lighter population were either slaughtered or fled the country during the papa doc days.