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