To expand and revise a part of that last:
It was the growth of plantation slavery in America which drove racial segregation. That growth of an enslaved, ill educated, people absent of well-formed family was not only toxic to those directly caught in it, it was hobbling to all.
There simply were not enough free blacks in the population to undo the damage the common perception of enslaved, broken, blacks caused. In Puerto Rico there were many free blacks, and the image of enslaved, ill-educated, broken blacks never took hold as the cultural image of any black.
This is why a man like Herman Cain is SO MUCH a necessity of our time, as an example, perhaps.
Interesting comments.
As far as Cuba goes, extensive black slavery didn’t really get going till about 1800, when the sugar industry began its development as a replacement for falling production in Haiti.
I don’t think you can blame the low status of blacks in America vs. Cuba on the plantation system, since this system was even more widespread in Cuba than in southern states. The state with demographics closest to that of Cuba was probably SC.
In a perverse sense, I wonder whether the Declaration of Independence may have had some perverse contribution to the decline in status of blacks after independence that you mention.
In Spanish Cuba whites were superior to blacks, but nobody was really free by American standards, and black/white and slave/free were just two of the many gradations of status from a field hand to the Viceroy. Nobody was equal.
In US, the Declaration says all men are equal, but black slaves obviously were not equal. This is the only significant status difference in the entire country, contrasting with the multiple legal status variables in Cuba.
There are two logical ways to deal with this contradiction.
One can decide that therefore slavery is wrong and should be eliminated, allowing all to be equal. The route chose by the abolitionists and (eventually) the North.
Or one can line up with Calhoun, Taney and Stephens and decide that since all men are equal and blacks aren’t equal they must not really be men. Or, in Taney’s terms, they aren’t “people.”
BTW, blacks (using US definition) are somewhere between 30% and 60% of the Cuban population, depending on which statistics you believe. Discrimination against blacks is a good deal more common than the Cuban government and US media will admit.