How Did Seeking ‘Strong Men of Color’ Ever Become Acceptable in Cuba?

[El Presidente]

 

 

Very good article below.  The Black and Mulatto population of Cuba is 36%. For those here with black mates in cuba, you know how difficult it can be for them. 

Taking the below article into account, it shows how guys like Carlos, head barman at the nacional heritage bar, deserve an award. 

Barman. Best Mojitos in Havana. Part owner of a paladar (Rum Rum) and owner of two investment apartments for rental. 

 

 

 

How Did Seeking ‘Strong Men of Color’ Ever Become Acceptable in Cuba?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/cuban-revolution-racism.html

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a series of discriminatory labor practices have emerged that threaten the inclusion of Afro-Cubans in the island’s new economic reality.

By Alejandro De La Fuente

Prof. de la Fuente is a historian and an expert on slavery and racial inequality in Cuba.

 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A common scene plays out in Havana: four female Spanish tourists arrive at one of the city’s many nightclubs in the company of two Afro-Cuban men. “You’re in, but they’re not,” the bouncer tells them. “The house reserves the right of admission.” The tourists protest, citing such practices as those of “a racist country,” but in the end their companions are denied entry. They’ll have to try their luck elsewhere. Cuba’s social policies benefited most of the population, regardless of color, but it’s clear they did not succeed in putting an end to racism.

The club’s bouncer, Yúnior, is also black. He is a prime example of the contradictions and racialized tensions that characterize contemporary Cuban society. After completing his studies in accounting and finance at the University of Havana, he secured a teaching position at the university. But his salary, equal to about $20 a month, wasn’t enough to survive on. So he went to work in the private service sector where his physical attributes — especially those society attributes to his skin color — were more valuable than his education. Blackness is equated with brute force. Accounting and finance are for white people.

Private employment practices are openly racist (and sexist), as illustrated by the advertisement through which he found his job: “Seeking qualified experienced personnel: wait staff (good looking blonde or brunette women, who speak foreign languages) and security and protection (strong men of color).”

Afro-Cubans make up at least 36 percent of the country’s population, according to the 2012 census. Yúnior’s experience proves that they are able to find jobs in the declining public sector that require advanced training, and that historically implied a certain social recognition. But those salaries are unsustainable.

Although the Cuban leadership has been criticized in the past for a lack of diversity, Cuba’s egalitarian society was the product of several decades of policies in pursuit of equality. The public sector was the predominant source of employment on the island and an engine for equality. Salaries were legally regulated and applied equally, regardless of gender, skin color, socioeconomic origin, or social and family networks.

In 1959, Fidel Castro called for a “battle against racial discrimination,” particularly in the labor force. He envisioned an equal distribution of opportunities in areas such as education and employment that would ultimately unseat racism. The “new nation” would be built through social inclusion policies for the poor and disadvantaged, irrespective of color. Racism was conceived as a byproduct of society’s class stratification, and would disappear with time.

This framework guaranteed that income distribution margins would be narrow: In the 1980s the maximum wage differential in the public sector was 4.5 to 1. The government also guaranteed free and equal access to education, basic levels of nutrition, a public health system that was the envy of the developing world, and free access to art and culture. Consequently, by the 1980s, Cuban society had achieved unparalleled levels of racial equality in life expectancy, schooling, job distribution and even representation in power structures.

In this sense, the Cuban social experiment is an exceptional laboratory for analyzing the impact of the so-called universal policies on racism and racial inequality. How can we explain the creation of a private sector plagued by discriminatory practices, yet based on an egalitarian society such as the Cuba of the 1980s? Have the ideals of equality and inclusion that guided state management for decades been abandoned?

Scholars of racism in the Americas have debated various racial justice policies and the usefulness of specific laws against racism and discrimination. The achievements and limitations of affirmative action in the United States is frequently cited. On the one hand, it led to the creation of an African-American middle class along with the benefits that this implies. And yet, these policies benefit the relatively few, those already favored; they have not trickled down to the large sectors of the population that the sociologist William Julius Wilson deemed “the truly disadvantaged.”

 

Cuba has experienced a kind of bifurcation: The public sector continues to operate under an egalitarian logic, but it is no longer a source of mobility and social advancement. According to official figures, 32 percent of the labor force works in the nonstate sector. But the growing private sector has engendered discriminatory occupational structures and contributed to the growth of income disparities according to skin color.

A private sector, which generates the best-paid jobs on the island, has flourished since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. But Afro-Cubans have faced mounting racism and been excluded from these opportunities. The argument is that to work in the service sector, one must have a “good presence,” a quality supposedly incompatible with melanin.

A recent report found that while 58 percent of white Cubans have incomes under $3,000, among Afro-Cubans that proportion is as much as 95 percent. Afro-Cubans, moreover, receive a very limited portion of the family remittances from the Cuban-American community in South Florida, which is mostly white. There are two conflicting national visions within Cuba, but only onevision is white and has access to dollars.

To confront these new challenges a vibrant Afro-Cuban movement, born out of various civic, community and cultural organizations, has emerged that demands effective inclusion policies. These demands begin with the need to impose inclusive and anti-discriminatory employment practices so that labor at all levels reflects the racial composition of the Cuban population.

After the revolution of 1959, all Cubans regardless of color were able to obtain a free education. The universal access to education is, in fact, one of the most important legacies of the Cuban revolution. The Cuban Penal Code condemns racial discrimination. Private businesses that put in place admissions policies based on discriminatory criteria, racial or otherwise, are in violation of the law and must be penalized.

With no access to capital, and no family living abroad to send back money, Afro-Cubans are being excluded from the benefits of economic liberalization. Credit policies that counteract their lack of access to investment funds must be developed. The universal policies of yesteryear are of little use. What Cuba needs now are specific policies that guarantee the inclusion of Afro-Cubans in all sectors of society.