Unity and difference of the racial problem in Cuba and the United States

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A recurring error in the understanding of the racial problem in Cuba and the United States is the emphasis on their differences; not because they are not true —determined by contrary conditions— but because of their irrelevance. Nor is it that there is a transcendent unity, identifying these problems beyond these differences; that there is, but that —as much as transcendence is the property of immanence and not an immanence in itself— it remains irrelevant.

Beyond all that, the racial problem in Cuba and the United States is determined by their historical relations; that without merging them makes them interdeterminant, coming to establish a political continuity between them. This continuity is what political interests tries to exploit, with its reduction to a transcendent unity; but whose moral value has made it inconsistent  —because its irrelevance— even as a principle, falling into its multiple contradictions.

The Cuban and American racial problems have been related since before the Cuban Republic of 1902; developing interests on the part of Black American since that country's intervention in Cuba, in 1898. Certainly, but not entirely, the appeal comes from the greater laxity of race relations in Cuba; that it is relative but undeniable, in a social structure that is mediated by poor Spaniards and Asians; while in the northern country it only has the belligerence of Irish immigration, in direct competition with black emancipation.

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However, this is a partial truth, which is superimposed in its density to the interest of Cubans in those of the north; too punctual —to the point of individuality— for development plans, such as those of Tuskegee University[1].  That means that this relationship has always been more active for Americans than for Cubans; but in a complementarity way, exchanging interests continuously, to the creating of a more or less common body.

Such a body would not be of moral significance —and inconsistent in it— but immanent, with its own consistency; even if it is not evident in its subtlety, providing the hermeneutic in which the world can be understood and resolved as a reality. This is about the possibility of a more effective understanding of the problem, actually subjected to the inadequacies of modern intellectualism; in that prevalence of American interest, with its object in the political function of an impossible transcendent unity.

That would have been the function of the Cuban side in its historical passivity, as the contraction of these deficiencies; for a greater dependence on the culture —rather than on the academy— as an existential praxis, contrary to that intellectualism. In this way, even the so-called disadvantage of a lack of black illustration in Cuba would be turned to advantageous; not by not incorporating these excesses of the Western tradition, but by correcting them in fact with their own[2], more effective and efficient; insofar as it would come from culture itself as an existential praxis, not from its conceptual reduction.

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That is important, because it is not in these reductions that the parameters for existential reflection are established; this happens in the culture as an existential practice itself, which thus serves as a reference in its experiential value. This would be what explains not only the errors and excesses of this occidental reductionism, but also its irrelevance; creating the social trauma in this contradiction, by retaining the political power, in its conventionalism. That starts then from the problem of the functional inversion of culture, as a reality of human value; of which politics is a natural expression and not determination but retains the effective power that directs it towards this determination.

Regarding to the problem in Cuba and the United States, this would mark the complementary function of their  differences; correcting the American excesses, in their practical —and existential and not political— nature. This is possible, precisely because both phenomena have been historically and structurally related one to te other in this difference;  It also implies the need to escape the political pressure of those in the North, with the development of their own unique marginality in that Cuban culture.

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[1] . Cf: El error del Sr Du Bois y otros textos negros.

[2] . Cf: Enrique Patterson: Lasoledad histórica

Mr. Du Bois' mistake, a view on blackness

By Miguel Alejandro Bignotte

As a category of analysis, negritude described a Marxist-influenced movement of political and literary elites; emerged in the Caribbean of the 30’s, with the purpose of specifying the sociocultural and aesthetic identity of black tradition; against the political positions of their colonial metropolis, with which they had a relationship of dependence. 

Léopold Sedar Senghor defined blackness as "the set of cultural values of black Africa"; while Aimé Césaire, defined it as  "the rejection of cultural assimilation", proposing  the cultural above the political". Years later, Césaire would retract this concept because of its apparent racist connotations; as well as by the circumstances that ruined the need for the movement, especially of that category of blackness.

For the author, however, blackness has a broader framework, with its roots in human trafficking in Africa; with these essays, he intends to analyze blackness in that sense, different from the movement that coined the category. As an expression of this, he addresses the elitist vision (necessity) of W.E.B. Du Bois, versus the industrialist of Booker T. Washington; for which it also analyzes other forms of this elitism, such as the Black Renaissance of Harlem and the Association for the Advancement of Colored People; and even other non-elitist expressions, such as pro-capitalism Garveyism or the case of Morúa Delgado. 

Thus, in tight synthesis, it opens the diapason of that spectrum of blackness, addressing broader stages and spaces; which include other former colonies of Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon descent, with only one mention of such emblematic cases as SouthAfrica and Liberia. For this, he analyzes outstanding figures in various fields such as military, political, academic, literary and journalistic; in which we can find Morúa Delgado, Quintín Banderas, Juan Gualberto Gómez, Evaristo Estenoz or Juan Gualberto Gómez. 

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The work is not easy to understand for those who are not familiar with specialized subjects, such as history or philosophy; in fact, a review of the sharp eye of a consecrated intellectual is essential. That does not mean that it cannot be studied by those who do not know these issues in depth, taking into account that the author does not use elaborate language, although he does use very specific categories; therefore, a first reading is recommended to point out those topics in which it is essential to deepen; and then a second reading of deepening, which allows a maximum apprehension of the concepts, facts and historical characters used by the author.

Granados perceives himself as a Black, not a person of color or an Afro-descendant; And it is elementary that he does not do it because of the banal argument of the mere color of his skin. He is born into a family with an awareness of what it means to be black, and why being black means a different existence; his mother, the poet Georgina Herrera, was inspired by the black woman, and it about her it was said that she walked with her race and poverty on her back; his father Manuel Granados, a black novelist, was marginalized by Cuban cultural authorities, because he was considered a "black mouthy and marginal". These harsh circumstances influenced the author's thinking, and because of them he was born black and lived conscious of being black and wrapped by blackness; marginal by vocation and marginalized by racial origin, are the circumstances that traced his path as a Renaissance and free man.

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Despite the abandonment of blackness as a category, the author continues not only to study it in this broader spectrum; but it is inscribed within it and approaches it without fear, although in certain literature —based on the work of Claude Lévi Strauss— it affirms that there is no racial division of humanity. However, regardless of the political influence —sometimes opportunistic— that this thesis of biology has had, blackness will continue to need these qualities; to be able to address social phenomena that have not yet been overcome, and that have –at least as a base– what we have called race, and that does not always coincide with ethnicity. 

In this way the essayist, although not unaware of it, distances himself from black nationalism, and uses concepts as "Afro-descendant" with moderation; and does not use terms as "defensive racism," "exclusion of other races or ethnicities", or "affirmative action". Finally, the suggestion to the reader is to not only read the work but also studies it, and complements it with other readings; the request to the author will be to extend his essays to the phenomena of discrimination that occurred in southern Africa.