The death of Fidel Castro brings reflection on how his country handled prejudice, writes William Gumede.
Cuba’s efforts to roll back racism offer valuable lessons for South Africa, where racism, because of the legacy of colonialism, slavery and apartheid, is deeply ingrained within institutions, social relations and everyday behaviour.
Cuba has done more to combat racism than South Africa, Brazil and the US - the globe’s other nations with racism allied to persistent race-based inequalities, which have their origins in historical injustices against black people, such as colonialism, slavery and Jim Crow segregation and apartheid.
The trouble in countries such as South Africa and Cuba is that racism, because of the particularly deep racist legacy of the past, infuses the DNA of almost every institution in society. Racist practices become so much a part of habits and routine, and social and professional interaction, that it is often not even recognised as such.
“Black South Africans on, or seeking welfare, are presumed to be scroungers”
In a racist discourse, South Africa’s persistent racial inequalities, whereby blacks are mostly poor, are often justified as to do with blacks allegedly being poor because of individual failure, especially given that some blacks are prospering.
A black child at school who is talkative in class may be deemed as a “problem”, while a white child would be “confident”. Or a black child may just be unconsciously overlooked for praise by a white teacher, but a white child would be routinely praised.
Black South Africans on, or seeking welfare, are presumed to be scroungers. Or blacks affected by HIV/Aids are supposedly more promiscuous.
Cuba in 1962 declared racism eradicated on the island. Cuban writer, Pedro Serviat came out with a book in 1986 called El Problema Negro en Cuba y su Solucia Definitive (The Black Problem in Cuba and its Definitive Solution).
However, the reality was more complicated. Cuba has a history of slavery. Whites were slave owners, and blacks slaves. Whites in Cuba were free and better-off.
In both South Africa and Cuba many whites denounce explicit racism, personally reject racism and see racism generally as something of the past, and their societies as supposedly “post-racial”.
Many well-meaning whites in both societies would argue that colour does not matter any more. They therefore dismiss the lived realities of their black compatriots.
“Close collaboration between whites and blacks reduced ‘many deep-seated prejudices’”
Joe Feagin, the US sociologist, describes such invisible racism as the assumption of “white” morality and assumption of lack of morality in other groups. This is the assumption that “whiteness”, emotions and cultural outlooks are the “norm”. They believe that Western civilisation and institutions are the only acceptable reference point, and deny of the existence of racism.
In both South Africa and Cuba, because many blacks have reached the top in government, politics and other sectors of society, the deeply ingrained inherited institutional, social and individual practices, habits and interactions that “reproduce racial inequality, have become largely invisible to many”.
In Cuba close collaboration between whites and blacks during the “revolution” reduced “many deep-seated prejudices” and “eased the boundaries between groups”.
Racism persisted in Cuba, in spite of the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro declaring it eradicated in 1962. Two Cuban thinkers on race, Rodrigo Espina Prieto and Pablo Rodriguez Ruiz wrote of how white middle and working class “residual racism” stubbornly persisted.
Cuba’s Socialist Constitution of 1976 declared that “discrimination based on race, colour, sex or national original” prohibited and punishable by law. Cuba adopted an anti-racism strategy which combined outlawing official racial practices, eliminating institutional racism, and racism at the social level.
The Cuban leadership made talking about race in public a taboo subject. In 1961, Cuba banned race-based exclusions of members of clubs and associations. It introduced rent control in 1959 and in some cases granted ownership of rented housing to occupants in 1960. It handed over land to tenant farmers - which were mostly blacks and mestizos (mixed race).
Before, blacks and mestizos as descendants of slaves could not own property. It made education and healthcare free. Over time race-based economic inequalities were reduced.
Schools were encouraged to see that students foster multiracial play circles.
Prieto and Ruiz, argued racism retreated to the “most intimate spheres of family life and interpersonal relationships”, where “prejudice was recognised with some guilt, like a sour note”. Furthermore, it “persisted in jokes and phrases used among family and close friends, or hidden in some forms of paternalism”.
“Blacks were still the ‘usual suspects’ if a crime was committed”
Research by Cuba’s Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment found that in spite of the progress against inequalities based on skin colour, historically racial legacies continued to partly perpetuate inequality based on race.
For example, in cities blacks continued to live in areas that were historically poor before the revolution, and areas that were well-of and lived in by whites before the revolution, continued to be so.
In spite of the remarkable progress made to increase the number of blacks and mestizos in professions and in managerial jobs, they still made up the majority of “workers” - low or unskilled jobs. Police still stop-and-searched blacks more than whites as blacks were still the “usual suspects” if a crime was committed.
Surveys by Prieto and Ruiz showed negative perceptions of blacks and mestizos (to a lesser extent) persisted among whites - and blacks and mestizos (to a lesser extent) about themselves.
This was a barrier to upward mobility.
Alejandro de la Fuente, the director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University, concluded that “perceptions of people of African descent as racially differentiated and inferior continued to permeate Cuban society and institutions”.
De la Fuente remarked on the specific issue of “social dangerousness”. Although not criminal under the Cuban Criminal Code, it is described as behaviour showing the “proclivity” to break the law and deemed against “the norms of socialist morality”.
The authorities make their decisions as to what “social dangerousness” constitutes mostly on “preconceptions and stereotypes”. De la Fuente found that in 1987, for example, although blacks represented 34 percent of the population, the proportion of blacks deemed socially dangerous was 78 percent.
Cuba experienced a recession immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union, its major trading partner. Incidents of racism spiked dramatically.
Gary Gutting describes how under market economies people compete for jobs, basic services and goods in what for all purposes seem like a non-discriminating, fair and equal way. However, Gutting says rightly that everyone, however, starts competing in the market with different social circumstances and capital. Those who already have a social capital and privilege advantage have better chances of securing more, while those who start from a social disadvantage, have fewer or none.
Race, specifically being “white” in societies, such as South Africa, the US and Brazil is one of those “advantages”. Clearly, as the Cuban case illustrates, in a socialist economy, whiteness in many cases remaining an advantage.
“Affirmative action, redistribution and welfare support is crucial to level the playing field”
What are the lessons from Cuba in dealing with racism? Denial of racism is clearly not an option. Greater awareness of the systemic nature, the multiple forms and the seeming invisibility of racism in institutions, social spaces and relations is needed.
There has to be education about racism at schools, workplaces and in communities. Greater integration of all races at all levels of society is crucial.
Racism must be firmly dealt with. Cuba correctly pursued a strategy of tackling inherited racial inequality in access to services, opportunities and skills. Affirmative action, redistribution and welfare support is crucial to level the playing field.
“White” racial “framing” dominates at a global level, too - from media messaging of racial assumptions, whether overt or subtle, of black inferiority, to cultural and social bias and interpretation - reinforcing racism at country level.
Initiatives to boost black confidence, cultural outlooks and social equality are crucial.
Cuba shows that much progress can be made if there is political will to deal with entrenched racism and race-based inequalities.
However, progress is often agonisingly slow, and can be reversed by such events as economic and other societal shocks.
* Gumede is chairperson of the Democracy Works Foundation. He is the author of “Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times” (Tafelberg).
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent