Cuba's Desire For Equality Ignores Obvious
By Courtland Milloy
Monday, April 19, 2004; Page B01
HAVANA
Whenever Fidel Castro, 78, announces a new program to advance the cause of social justice, his comrades in this tropical socialist republic lavish him with praise. Even when the inner workings of his central government muck up and fail to deliver, there is no public criticism of the leader -- just a hopeful refrain from the faithful that the problem would be fixed "if only Fidel knew."
As a first-time visitor to this city of intrigue, I took a kind of "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" approach. Whenever I was impressed by, say, Cuba's free education system -- which includes master's degree programs and even medical school -- I'd give Castro his props; whenever I saw a problem, such as the disproportionately high poverty rate among African Cubans, I'd say, "If only Castro knew."
That's because most of the people I met insisted that race doesn't exist and skin color doesn't matter.
"What we are striving for is equal access and the same chances for everybody," a member of the National Assembly told me. He added that programs were being developed to help "dysfunctional" families -- meaning those who showed a lack of "culture" and whose lives had been affected by a "heritage of poverty."
Never mind that most such families are dark-skinned people with African features, who also happen to have the highest incarceration rates in Cuba.
One physician, when asked if blacks experienced certain diseases in greater proportion -- as they do in the United States -- immediately answered, "No." An assistant actually seemed to scowl at the question. It was, after all, counterrevolutionary to suggest that there would be distinctions based on race or skin color in a "classless" society.
But how could there not be?
Even as some officials acknowledged that the effects of centuries of slavery and Jim Crow-style oppression could not be erased after only 45 years of revolutionary effort, they seemed less willing to admit that solutions may require taking race into account.
I'd come to Cuba to learn more about this struggle and look at the influence that Africans have had on Cuba since their arrival as slaves in 1700s. Among the places I visited was the National Museum of Literacy, which documents an unprecedented effort, after Castro came to power in 1959, to teach millions of Cubans to read and write.
I was not only impressed, but also moved by photographs of the martyrs -- black and white teenagers who had been tortured and killed for advocating literacy for poor people under the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
From this literacy effort, Cuba began producing thousands of black teachers, doctors and other working-class people of color. But during my short stay, I did not encounter a single black man who was nearly as articulate as the Afro Cuban women I met, to say nothing of the men and women of Spanish heritage.
I did, however, see lots of black men working as police officers -- and more often than not, they were stopping and questioning black people.
During a meeting with a group of university professors who were studying race and gender issues, I asked which aesthetic -- African or European -- was most influential in Cuba.
The unanimous answer was European -- even in a country that is roughly 60 percent black and mulatto.
And yet, Cuban social programs aimed at lifting self-esteem and a sense of self-worth are premised on a belief that all problems stem from a heritage of poverty -- not a legacy of slavery, which distorts the way black people see themselves to this day.
There is no doubt that many black people know they are somehow stuck at the bottom of Cuba's social and economic ladder. Still, they find the concept of cooperation over competition appealing. For many, Castro's quest for a nonracial, egalitarian society is nothing if not noble.
Nevertheless, race problems cannot be solved until they are acknowledged.
History is replete with examples of what happens when a nation -- in the strong embrace of an iconic, charismatic or even tyrannical leader -- attempts to gloss over ethnic and racial differences among its citizens: When the leader dies, so does the unity.
If only Fidel knew.
E-mail: milloyc@washpost.com.
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