Black Cubans: Restoring US Ties Is Cool, but America, Keep Your Hang-Ups About Race at BayPosted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, Interviews, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science on 2015-01-21 22:57Z by Steven |
Black Cubans: Restoring US Ties Is Cool, but America, Keep Your Hang-Ups About Race at Bay
The Root
2015-01-21
Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele, Staff Writer
Will the current racial tensions in America seep into Cuba and awaken a sleeping giant? Black Cubans say probably not.
It doesn’t matter how much Cuba’s culture changes now that the U.S. has restored diplomatic relations; if you’re waiting for black Cubans to set off some sort of racial revolution, don’t hold your breath.
That’s according to some black Cubans who shared their thoughts on race with The Root in the edited Q&A below.
Omar Diaz is a 28-year-old black Cuban actor living in Miami who immigrated to the U.S. when he was 4 years old. He said that while he’s rooting for a democratic Cuba, he hopes that black Cubans will continue to benefit from the Castro revolution’s decree that Cubans prioritize nationalism over race.
Ruben* is a 52-year-old black photographer and book publisher. He is the only interviewee still living in Cuba. Even though he spoke passionately about racial inequality in Cuba, he explained why he and most black Cubans don’t quite see themselves as Afro-Cuban or black Cuban—just Cuban.
First cousins Elia E. Espuet and Sira Perez, on the other hand, both strongly identify as Afro-Cubans. Both women, ages 63 and 62 respectively, immigrated to the U.S. when they were teenagers in the late 1960s, Fidel Castro having assumed power in 1959. They could easily pass as African Americans, though they vividly remember how they were advised not to, in order to escape the brutality facing black Americans fighting for civil rights. That distinction—Cuba’s kind of racism versus America’s kind of racism—stuck with them. They maintain that black Cubans have it better in some ways on that front.
Georgina Rodriguez, 53—their mulatto, as she describes herself, cousin (who was categorized as “white” in Cuba when she was born)—doesn’t want Americans spewing their “racial framework” and “neoconservatism” all over Cuba. She argues that the former doesn’t account for all of Cuba’s ethnicities, and the latter will only widen the inequality gap…
Read the entire article here.