Black Cubans: Restoring US Ties Is Cool, but America, Keep Your Hang-Ups About Race at Bay

[flamingdem]

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/01/black_cubans_discuss_the_restoration_of_us_ties_and_how_their_experiences.html

* file under cultural differences that US Citizens can learn about by visiting Cuba

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In Cuba, the races live side by side much more than they do in the U.S. There is far less de facto segregation in Cuba. Families are so much more mixed, and so racial hatred in Cuba doesn’t run as deep as in America, because everyone has a black grandma cooking in the kitchen unseen. So I would definitely say that there is more racial equality in Cuba than in the USA in many ways.

TR: There’s poverty in Cuba. Black Cubans—who were always marginalized—have felt that the hardest. Will their financial well-being improve if the embargo is lifted and American dollars start to trickle into Cuba with more ease and less restrictions?

Omar Diaz: Definitely—I’m looking forward to the economic benefits. Most black Cubans aren’t receiving financial help from relatives abroad—like white Cubans do—because, remember, blacks didn’t leave Cuba at the time of the revolution. Castro’s policies appealed mostly to the poor, so they stayed. Now that the channels are opening up, someone like me, a black Cuban, can go back to my island, open up a business there, or open up a business here in the U.S. and help my black Cuban relatives.