Posted on 07/19/2015 2:17:51 PM PDT by nickcarraway
In his PBS documentary Black in Latin America, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. reported that Cuba’s is a culture in which blackness is still in a battle for expression, inclusion and true equality, for an equal place at the social and cultural table.
ditor’s note: With the U.S. Embassy reopening in Havana on July 20, The Root is giving some insight and perspective into the lives of Afro-Cubans who suffer discrimination and economic distress, even in the midst of the Cuban revolution that Fidel Castro declared put an end to racism. Harvard professor and The Root Chairman Henry Louis Gates Jr. hosted the PBS documentary Black in Latin America in 2011. This excerpt is from a chapter in the companion book called “The Next Cuban Revolution.”
I decided to spend a little time with some Afro-Cubans who are making some noise about the state of race relations in contemporary Cuba. I headed to the home of a rapper known as Soandres. His proper name is Soandres Del Rio Ferrer, and his stage name is Soandry. He’s the leader of one of Cuba’s top hip-hop bands, Hermanos de Causa.
I was very eager to meet him. I knew the Cuban government had banned two of his songs because they are about racism. I’d actually planned to record one of his concerts during my trip, but the government told me I couldn’t attend. (We sneaked a camera crew in and recorded the concert anyway.) When I arrived, I realized Soandres hadn’t just invited me to his home—this was also his underground recording studio. After a very thoughtful and long discussion while we waited for a tropical rainstorm to pass, he agreed to perform one of his banned songs for me:
(Excerpt) Read more at theroot.com ...
I don't care who you are; that, right there, is funny.
In the late 60's, a number of prominent blacks traveled to various countries in Africa, from the US.
I guess they wanted to get in touch with their "roots".
Almost all of them came back within a couple of weeks, saying, "Nope, nope, nope".
Being black in America is only bad if you don't compare it anyplace else.
I saw this original PBS special I didnt’ realize how Blacks were treated in Cuba until I saw this special on PBS
I remember being in college and a student from Cuba told me she just could not understand the love for Castro and the lies about his supposed utopia heard all over campus.
One of the biggest lies is that Cuba is free of racism. Absolute crap.
Where is Sean Penn, Micheal Moore, Danny Glover on this issue...
They love Fidel and commies... but must hate the black man...
The Boston Globe today had a very long article on present day Cuba-——showing what a pit it is.
.
The leftist narrative had Cuba as a Utopia and that is already crumbling, many of them will still pretend
But the U.S. is evil dontcha know?
Haitians make a wide swath around Cuba on their way to Miami.
“According to anthropologists dispatched by the European Union (EU), racism in Cuban is systemic and institutional.[1] Black people are systematically excluded from positions in tourism-related jobs, where they could earn tips in hard currencies.[1] According to the EU study, black people are relegated to poor housing, were excluded from managerial positions, received the lowest remittances from relatives abroad, and were five times more likely to be imprisoned. Blacks also complained of suffering the longest waits in healthcare.[1]
Esteban Morales Domínguez, a professor in the University of Havana, believes that “the absence of the debate on the racial problem already threatens {...} the revolution’s social project”.[6] Carlos Moore, who has written extensively on the issue, says that “there is an unstated threat, blacks in Cuba know that whenever you raise race in Cuba, you go to jail. Therefore the struggle in Cuba is different. There cannot be a civil rights movement. You will have instantly 10,000 black people dead”.[6] He says that a new generation of black Cubans are looking at politics in another way.[6] Barack Obama’s victory has raised disturbing questions about the institutional racism in Cuba.[1] The Economist noted, “The danger starts with his example: after all, a young, black, progressive politician has no chance of reaching the highest office in Cuba, although a majority of the island’s people are black.”[7]
Jorge Luis García Pérez, who was imprisoned for 17 years, states that “the authorities in my country have never tolerated that a black person oppose the regime. During the trial, the color of my skin aggravated the situation. Later when I was mistreated in prison by guards, they always referred to me as being black”.[8]
As a black prisoner of conscience, Oscar Elias Biscet wrote to Coretta Scott King in January 1999, “They [black Cubans] have a very low political, economic, and judicial representation in contrast to the numerous prevailing black penal population. This situation is never publicly manifested by the government but is a component of Communism’s subtle politics of segregation.” Black Cubans such as Biscet and Jorge Luis Garcia Perez have been allegedly forcefully separated from their families for criticizing Fidel Castro.[9]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Cuba
“According to Voyages - The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, about 900,000 Africans were brought to Cuba as slaves. To compare, some 470,000 Africans were brought to what is now the United States, and 5,500,000 to the much vaster region of what is now Brazil. Slavery in Cuba was abolished in 1886, on a Royal Order by Regent Queen María Cristina of Spain.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Cuba
VERY common to see the old lawn jockey and mamma figurines outside homes and businesses, you can buy small ones at the gift shop at the airport.
When Eldridge Cleaver wrote about this decades ago, Abby Hoffman (who was living on the lam at the time, or "underground" as the ridiculous 60s imbeciles used to call it) had a letter printed in one of the newsmags (Time or Newsweek) which claimed that EC knew "more about the inside of Donald Duck's brain than he does about what's going on inside Cuba." Thanks nickcarraway.
Correct. In fact, many of the illegals coming in from Mexico are members of indigenous tribes from central to southern Mexico that can barely even understand Spanish. They often don't even understand Spanish-language radio/TV, let alone read the written language!
I would refrain from posting about Cuba until I had actually spent some time there.
This is not a negtive; rather, they are who they are. But the racist Spanairds want them out.
“The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese.”
“The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.”
—Che Guevara, 1952 Diary
Cuba imported almost twice the numbers of black slaves as did the entire US. I don’t have the exact numbers but I was amazed at the sheer numbers that Cuba imported.
I do not understand the love the left has for the murdering bastard Che
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