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16. Oral History and Constructions of Racial Memory
- University Press of Florida
- Chapter
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16 Oral History and Constructions of Racial Memory Yvette Louis In 1891 José Martí, Cuba’s most prominent and popular intellectual, wrote, “There is no racial hatred because there are no races.” The Cuban revolution would later take up Martí’s call and revive his status as icon in its own campaign to eradicate racial inequality. The Preamble of the Cuban Constitution ends with a quotation from Martí: “I want the first law of our Republic to be the Cuban devotion to the total dignity of man.” In 1959 Fidel Castro affirmed this goal by declaring, “Let whites and blacks all get together to end hateful racial discrimination.”1 Racial constructions are remarkably resistant, however, and rhetoric extolling a nation free of racial prejudice often does little to change racist paradigms, social practices, or the material conditions of blacks. Oral history provides a window into precisely how individuals are affected by and experience race in their daily lives within these larger political systems. Clearly, institutional racial practices have changed since the revolution. How do Cubans perceive and experience postrevolutionary racial constructions compared to pre-revolution racism? The oral histories of Cubans of African descent living on the island or abroad not only highlight how national racial constructions are enacted upon the lives of individuals, but also reveal how racial constructions persist or change across historical and national boundaries. Despite social policies set in place to do away with institutionalized racism , race discrimination remained alive and well in Cuban society. In a 2006 interview, after nearly half a century of antiracist policies, Castro admitted “the Revolution, over and above the rights and guarantees achieved for all its citizens of whatever ethnic background or origin, has not had the same success in its fight to eradicate the difference in social and financial status for the black population of the country. Blacks don’t live in the best houses; you find that they still have the hardest, most physically wearing and often worst-paid jobs and that they receive much less help from their family members no longer in Cuba, in dollars, than their white compatriots.”2 This statement merely articu- Yvette Louis 272 lated within the public sphere what had long been the experience of Cubans of African descent. In 2002 Nancy Morejón, the first black woman to be awarded Cuba’s most prestigious literary prize, El Premio Nacional de Literatura, explained , “Racial prejudices still exist, which these forty years of efforts have not been able to eradicate completely. This is a reality. I can tell you that, in this sense, racial prejudice is defeated but not dead.”3 Racist attitudes cannot be legislated away. Racial constructions are transmitted culturally, socially, and discursively, and they tend to resist legislation. The assumption that without an institutional base, racism would gradually disappear over time has been proven wrong. The Persistence and Signifiers of Racism Refusing to discuss race will not make it cease to exist. Alejandro de la Fuente writes about how “race became a taboo in public discourse, its open discussion tantamount to an act of divisionism” and how, paradoxically, Cuba’s “official silence contributed to the survival . . . of racist ideologies and stereotypes.” According to de la Fuente, “What disappeared from public discourse found fertile breeding ground in private spaces, where race continued to influence social relations among friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members.” Nadine Fernandez proposes that “racist ideologies were reproduced in part despite and in part because of the revolution’s color-blind stance on the racial question.”4 Because racial constructions are transmitted discursively and analysis occurs through discourse, both public and private conversations are essential to unraveling the problems of racial discrimination—resistance notwithstanding. Analyses of racial discrimination often focus on the differences in social and financial status between blacks and whites, but the modus operandi of race is much more complex. There is a logical tendency to view race as a social construction that results from political or economic ideology, but racial constructions play an important role in social mythologies. In 2010 a Cuban report to the United Nations not only connected racial constructions to the private sphere, but also correctly historicized race: “some personal prejudices have survived for historical and socio-cultural reasons. Fifty years of non-discriminatory Revolution have been unable totally to eradicate stereotypes from a society which had been racist for more than 500 years. The ways in which the family is structured and functions do not change as quickly as legislation...