Race in Cuba Quotes

“Of all the problems that the Revolution faced from the very beginning, the racial problem was the only one that did not receive specific, systematic, and consistent attention. • As a result of the above, the social policy of the Revolution never specifically addressed the question with reference to the different points of social departure from which blacks, whites, and mulattos arrived. • After intervention on the matter in March 1959 by Fidel Castro, Commander in chief of the Revolution, and a few initial attempts to promote the discussion, a zone of silence surrounded the racial question, which did not help at all to an understanding that it required an extensive and specific methodology. No doubt it was thought that including it within the general context of social justice for all would be sufficient. • The predominant thought that the racial problem would be resolved solely on the basis of a redistributive equity, framed by the great humanist work of the Revolution, generated an idealist error that has yet to be overcome. • The black and racially mixed population, feeling represented and protected by revolutionary work, plunged into forgetfulness of all the long years of suffering and discrimination. The Revolution had given them clear guarantees that such situations would not return. How are we to explain why such a position on the racial question was taken and accepted by the immense majority of the people, in particular blacks and mulattos?”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“They are underrepresented as directors of state companies and in administrative positions. • Except for the music and sport sectors and the armed forces, they rarely assume leadership positions of national and international projection. • The presence of blacks and mulattos in mass media is still feeble, especially in television and cinema. • According to statistics, black and racially mixed people occupy labor and social positions that do not correspond with the educational levels that they have attained.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“83.5 percent of emigrants are white.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“Racism, firmly set within the structures of Cuban colonial society, should have received specific attention from the beginning, alerting the masses to form a resistance culture and to face the problem, not to turn it into a dead zone, into a “taboo,” as was the case during the first years of the sixties. Until recently and in very discreet ways, we have begun to speak out against the racial problem.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“In present-day Cuban society, racial prejudices and discrimination have arisen in the midst of a situation generated by the economic crisis, with the expected psychological impact of a problem that was considered solved but was far from being solved. It was idealistic to think that solely on the basis of distributing equality and the great humanitarian work of the Revolution that the racial problem would be settled. It was inevitable that we would have to pay a high price for the social imbalances generated by the crisis.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“As if that was not enough, the economic measures required to face the crisis, which tended to further affect the equality that had been attained, forced the state to negotiate with foreign capital and increase competition for the best-paying jobs in two economic sectors: emergent (tourism and corporations) and non-emergent. Consequently, racial prejudice and discrimination entered the economic sphere, moving slowly but continuously to other spheres of social life. Such dynamics still affect present-day Cuban society.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“The social policy of the Revolution did not differentiate between racial groups. All benefited, but those whose lives were least privileged still remained in a state of inequality. Having improved their situations noticeably, they still had not attained sufficient stability or were left at a halfway house to dream about a better life. When the crisis at the end of the eighties crisis occurred, all this inequality manifested with special crudity clearly evident to the black and racially mixed population. The economic crisis seriously affected the developing model of welfare in Cuban society, which was barely consolidated or initiated for those Cubans, generally black and mulatto, who came from the lowest stratum.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“The so-called Cuban bourgeoisie, at first under the influence of colonial racism and later by North American racism, and feeling insecure under the latter, was the group that always paid the greatest attention to the sophisticated instruments of genetic racism, since it assisted them to exert its power and domination. This led to some rather ironic interpretations of race in Havana. Fulgencio Batista, the president of the Republic, as a mulatto, could not belong to the most aristocratic clubs. Josephine Baker, a most important international performer, suffered discrimination in Havana. The Spanish colonizers, despite close to eight hundred years under the Moors, never adopted their African ancestors, their own racial mixture. This shameful attitude was inherited and transmitted to the Cuban creole bourgeoisie and the white (virtually the only) middle class.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“One of the specific forms in which whitening operates today is in the underrepresentation of blacks and mulattos in television, cinema, in new businesses or in high positions of state structure and government. This phenomenon of exclusion exists despite the extraordinary educational effort of the Revolution, which places them almost on a par with the white population.12”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“Class discrimination is less difficult to eradicate because racial discrimination resides and is exercised within the working class itself. Racism and racial discrimination transcend the limits of classist structure, becoming a more general phenomenon that does not disappear with the elimination of capitalism.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“Racism, as an ideology that feeds racial prejudices and the exercise of discrimination, can only survive, and even resurge, in a society where to attain riches and the satisfaction of material and spiritual needs competition and individualism prevail as forms of social behavior. That is, a situation in which personal power and its continuous growth are indispensable conditions for occupying a prominent place in society.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“Historically, blacks and mulattos have always had to endure hurtful procrastination of their demands, ignorance of their aspirations, or mere silence. Instead of seeing the racial question as a matter to be confronted and resolved in a process that strengthens the nation, it has almost always been treated as a threat to national existence. Today, the dilemma has not been surmounted, although we have never enjoyed better conditions to face the problem and solve it.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“There is airtight evidence that without class consciousness racism can neither be understood nor opposed, and the absence of class differences is not enough to abolish them. We also need race consciousness.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality

“Most black people were poor in the Republican Period and had no civil mechanisms to defend their interests as the most discriminated sector. And it was even worse for those of Haitian and Jamaican extraction, who were deemed second-class blacks and discriminated against even by other blacks.”
― Esteban Morales Dominguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality