I’m in Cuba with my family this week – well, actually an island off the coast of Cuba.
And while we are at an all inclusive, in a location with little else around (sadly), there is still enough going on here to be aware of race politics.
Cuba has a mixture of people of colour – the light-skinned decendants of the Spanish colonizers and the dark skinned descendants of the Africans brought here to work as slaves. The original Indigenous people (the Aruacos) are no longer (according to history, although this is being disputed) .
Like other countries, the colour (or racial) divide is here too. In my experience thus far:
The custom’s officers – light skinned
The “tour operator” in the bus – light skinned
The bus driver – Black
The front-facing hotel employees (front desk, bar tenders, wait staff, etc)- majority light skinned
The grounds keepers, maintenance at the airport, cleaners at the hotel – majority Black
This may just seem like “the way it is”. And this colour divide is often attributed to income, education, etc. But those things can be linked to the legacy of colonization, and racism. Even within cultures of people of colour, the lighter you are, the more social standing you have – which is called shadism (racism by another name).
So I’m not surprised that I’m seeing a racial divide in Cuba. It’s just one sad reminder of the pervasiveness of racism around the world. Trevor Noah in his recent stand up Afraid of the Dark talked about the wide reach of the British Empire in terms of colonization. But colonization was also done (to a lesser degree) by the French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. And because of that legacy, we continue to have the racial divide. In Cuba, this means that those with power are the lighter skinned Spanish decendants, and those with less are darker-skinned decendants of the Africans brought here to be slaves.
The legacy of colonization is a world-wide, hardly talked about hierarchy of worth linked to skin colour.
It’s everywhere.
How are we going to right this wrong?
See more.
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