“From the moment that the State operates
on the basis of bio-power,
the killer feature of the state itself
can only be assured by racism.”
Michel Foucault
The racial question in Cuba is not only about contempt between actors with different skin pigmentation. Racism, in the context of political and civil identity, is also observed among blacks and carries a charge of contempt and hatred for one’s own race.
This is not a virtual assertion. Many black reject their peers in pejorative and violent ways with barbaric words that are not always the fruit of the social context in which they have grown up, nor are they by their nature an invention of political racism in any of its stages.
They constitute variables of differences that could well be a justification motivated by the dominate group toward the dominated, not a present reality. Not all negative stigmas and stereotypes can be blamed on the dominant, when on many occasions blacks and mixed race people contribute to this phenomenon and applaud the submission as pure slaves of the 21st century.
Perhaps the desire of more than a few blacks to appear white is one of the many causes that lead to contempt for oneself to reach a better social position. Their great mistake is to claim an alleged racial advancement through growing whiter: never ceasing to be mixed race.
“My daughter is not going to marry a black man”… “In Cuban there’s no racism because my wife is white”… “I’m a black woman but my daughter is white”… These are some of the expressions one years every day from poor black men and women, submissive toward those who step on them and mock them because they haven’t known how to emancipate themselves from mental slavery. These expressions only serve to reinforce what whites think of them, and delay the search for an inclusive homeland within the diversity and social equilibrium.
The test of a single drop of blood in the United States to prove is a person is white or black, could be classed as racists if only we stick to the practice. But this proof also gives a sense of belonging to Afro-Americans, who live with the African pride that belongs to them and have been able to take advantage, in a society which, although it hasn’t overcome all prejudices, is among the first in the world in recognizing and making room for differences.
In Cuba, where independent groups now struggle against racism and gender exclusion, we must learn to recognize, understand and know that our starting point was the same for everyone. De must stop believing that we are all equal when we are living a reality that contradicts it.
Published by Primavera Digital, December 13, 2012 • Year 5
8 January 2013
