Though the media covered these events as a sign of the local conflict between Latino and Black communities, something more complex was at work. Racial stratification of the sort that had existed throughout the South and the Caribbean was in operation. Racial stratification was the logic of slave societies long after slavery had ended, whether or not it fit the picture of White and Black Southerners. The concentration of political and economic power among high-status, politically conservative, and white-skinned Cuban Americans and others of Latin American origin was a factor in what transpired.
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