Footnote: sources used are Cannon, de la Fuente, Dominguez, Laing, Shecaira,
Skidmore, Steur and Telles.
Comparative Racism Between the United States, Cuba and Brazil
Racism in the Americas is the societal result of colonization that took place from the end of the fifteenth century to the neo-colonialism of the last century. Then, as these eras ended, different countries adapted to the plurality of races that now existed in their own ways, some better than others. In most cases, but not all, there was European-American sentiment of superiority over other races that they now lived with. They now had freed slaves that they mistreated and subverted for hundreds of years, as well as large Native populations and small pockets of Asians and European nationals that were seen as being less worthy of entitlement, such as Italians and Irish peoples. Between the three countries being examined, the United States has had the hardest time adjusting to many different ethnicities, followed by Brazil, and then finally Cuba.
Make no mistake about it, racism, being a societal problem, is only something a society can change. A government, with even the best of intentions, can only do so much to impede what are considered to be cultural norms. The United States is a prime example of this. The U.S. can even be looked at in terms of being different countries contained within, in terms of how a variety of races are viewed. The Northeast and West, along with a pocket of states in the upper Midwest tend to be the most accepting of other ethnicities. What’s interesting about this is that the most diversity exists in the South, a part of the country that is more racially divided than any part of the all the Americas.
The United States South is a great place to establish the baseline for the rest of the paper, as it will produce a lot of contrast. It would be great if the entire country celebrated diversity as much as the West Coast, often referred to as the Left Coast, but it just does not. This election cycle really proves as much, with rises in membership to the KKK, the Black Panthers, and candidates wanting to build walls and install patrols in neighborhoods that are represented by mostly non-majority religions. There are as many as 80 percent of Donald Trump supporters want total deportation of undocumented residents, as well as all Muslims. Most of these opinions are coming out of Southern states and the Bible belt. In much of the area, the Bible is still used to justify hatred and retaliation against African Americans or anybody of a darker complexion with an accent. It is hard to believe that it was ever worse than it was today, but most of US history is embroiled with these issues.
Brazil is just as diverse as the United States South, if not even more diverse. It boasts very large populations of people with Portuguese, Spanish, and African ancestry. More than that, there are very large populations of Indigenous peoples throughout the country. It really is a great model by which to compare with the United States, because the populations are comparable, and each province of Brazil has as much variety as each US state. Both countries feature extremely rural areas, as well as some of the world’s largest cities. Sao Paulo, for instance, is one of the world’s top five largest cities, and has the world’s largest Asian population outside of the actual continent of Asia.
Brazil has societal issues with racism, just as the United States does, but nowhere near the extent to which the United States (South) does. Generally, people are on equal footing in the country regardless of race, so long as it is not indigenous. The government has not really done much to enforce racial equality, with the exceptions of explicit racist activity, and of the people who inhabited the land first. Even then, in a lot of cases, the actions taken by Brazilian and US prospectors were not necessarily racist intentionally. The Native population just happened to be the people that were “in the way” of capitalist ventures, unfortunately. So when sacred land was deforested and used for haciendas, it was usually with little regard to the fact that Native people considered the land to be sacred.
Looking past that, from the 1930’s on, Brazil and its people have considered themselves to be a racial democracy. It was really an interesting change for Brazil, as it was the country that kept slavery alive for three hundred years, was the last country in the Americas to end slavery and had seven times as many slaves as the United States (Telles, 2007). Interbreeding and interracial marriages took place soon after the end of slavery, in contrast to the United States, which didn’t legalize interracial marriage until over a hundred years after the Civil War.
In Brazil, people are often mixed to varying degrees, so “race” is often distinguished by skin color alone. For much of the population, it is a completely innocuous subject. A report by Brian Laing (2000) confirms this notion. He found that people who were racially mixed in Brazil felt no pressure to sit with one race or the other, whereas in the United States, regardless of where one is, a racially mixed person often feels compelled to choose to identify as one race or the other. This seems to be the case no matter how light or dark a person’s skin tone is.
Thomas Skidmore (1992) is quick to point out, however, that the government and general way of thinking in Brazil has led to a lack of studies on racial discrimination. He points to a theory that many Brazilians have, that the country is gradually “whitening.” The evidence to support this theory is overwhelming, as illustrated by a chart in his study showing that the racial makeup of Brazil in 1835 was 24.4 percent white and 51.4 percent black, while in 1980, it was 54.8% white, 38.4 percent brown, and only 5.9 percent black.
Sergio Shecaira suggested in 2002, that “mild” racism and discrimination does exist because of this theory, and the fact that it is seemingly supported by data. Though 99 percent of Brazilians will say they have never been discriminated against themselves, almost all of these people will say they know of someone who has been. This may be because racism and discrimination are hardly ever explicit, and are often limited to subtle remarks or actions, and usually not perceived as being racist. At the same time, everybody is different and will be more or less sensitive to what they view as being racist.
This leads to a much larger issue in Brazil. Institutional racism does seem to be a big problem, especially within the criminal justice system; It is very comparable to the United States. Brown and Black people, as they are referred to in Brazil, tend to be treated far more brutally by the police, and tend to be arrested a lot more frequently. Incarceration rates in Brazil, though much lower than in the United States, are relatively comparable in terms of the racial ratio that makes up prison populations (Shecaira, 2002). Apples to apples, when all things are considered, it is really hard to say that Brazil has anywhere near the racism that the United States does.
Finally, there is the “odd” choice in the group of three countries, in that Cuba is fundamentally different from the other two countries on multiple levels. Cuba does not have anywhere near the same population as the other two countries, more than 200 million for both the United States and Brazil, contrasted with about 12 million in Cuba. Cuba is a single party and communist, the other two are based on democracy. There is nowhere near the racial pluralism in Cuba as in the other two nations, and Cuba is far more impoverished. With all of that being said, there is still a black, mixed, and white population in the country. As can be studied in history, the entire Native population was wiped out once it was fully colonized, both through ugly genocide and the spread of European diseases.
Yet, as Luisa Steur suggests in her interview of Norberto Carbonell (2016), there are still common threads between the three countries regarding racial inequality. They have a theory similar to Brazil’s, called Adelantar, or “moving forward,” though it is a little more explicit. The suggestion of Adelantar is specifically for Afro-Cubans to marry lighter skinned or white Cubans, to begin to erase blackness, the general perception being that black Cubans are less attractive, especially to the tourists they wish to attract. This has been effective. Even just twenty years ago, the population of Cuba was about equally white and black, with a moderate mestizo population. Today, it is about 60 percent white and less than 10 percent black.
This interview is somewhat contentious, as it was taken at an international meeting of activist groups in Latin America proclaiming that there were racial injustices. The interview goes further to suggest that black Cubans are less able to afford college, and therefore do not have the opportunities that white Cubans have. This is easily justified when one looks at the racial makeup of Cubans who arrive in Miami - almost all white. These people then send money back to their families back home. If one looks at the Castro family’s record, they have done quite a bit to eradicate any racist ideologies, and as was seen in many interviews over the past weekend, groups of adults and children tended to be very racially blended.
Still though, multiple accounts suggest that progress with regards to racism used to be on a better kiln than today. In the late 1980’s and 1990’s, Cuba experienced a devastating economic blow when Russia pulled its resources from the country. This period, referred to as “The Special Period,” really brought race relations to a forefront. Until recently, black Cubans were not getting tourism jobs. In the United States, this may not seem like a big deal; in Cuba, tourism is one of the highest paying jobs a person can get, largely because the tips are in foreign currency (Dominguez, 2013).
Comparing Cuba to Brazil is relatively easy, as it also has the historically long period of slavery, a similar public opinion on interracial marriages and parenting, and many people will not admit to being discriminated against (de la Fuente, 2014). This all contrasts again with the United States. There are not many comparisons to be made between the US and Cuba, other than the usual white privilege that is associated from not being ever enslaved as a European race. If anything, the United States has been a net negative factor in terms of race relations in the country.
Terrence Cannon (1981) states that racial segregation was first brought to Cuba, after slavery ended there, in 1898, when the United States occupied the island. Even after Cuba’s original independence, four years later, the United States made sure to support presidential candidates on the island who were of pure Spanish blood, and would threaten embargos, even a century ago, when an Afro-Cuban came to prominence in a way that positioned them to run for president. The United States eventually got the man they wanted in Batista, and the rest is revolutionary history. In 1975, 16 years after Fidel’s revolution, the leader made stinging remarks about the United States’ efforts to segregate. It is likely that this has influenced how Cubans see the tourism market. Because the US favored the white Cuban over the black, they probably inherited that in their national collective self-consciousness. Efforts today are being made to restore race relations throughout Cuba, and the promise of new economic opportunity with an arguably more progressive foreign policy on the part of the United States could help the cause.
Three countries, each in different parts of the Americas, each with different race experiences have a few things in common, but what is more surprising is their differences. The United States, easily the most advanced of the three, is also easily the most racist. At the turn of the century, we probably did see our lowest point of racism, or at least the greatest amount of suppression of that racism. It is now out and proud, almost to the extent it was 60 years ago. The least advanced of the three, Cuba, has made efforts at most turns to try to embrace diversity. The missteps have usually been due to economic hardship or influence from the United States. Brazil has relatively little racism at the social level, but institutional racism is probably something that will need to be addressed very soon as the country seeks to make its case for modernity.
References
Cannon, Terrence. 1982. “Revolutionary Cuba.” historyofcuba web portal. Pg 113.
Retrieved March 22, 2016 (www.historyofcuba.com/history/racism.htm)
de la Fuente, Alejandro. 2014. “The Resurgence of Racism in Cuba.” The North
American Congress on Latin America. Retrieved March 21, 2016
(www.nacla.org/article/resurgence-racism-cuba)
Dominguez, Esteban. 2013. “Race in Cuba: Essays on the revolution and racial
Inequality.” LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal. Excerpt
Retrieved March 22, 2016. (http://links.org.au/node/3219)
Laing, Brian. 2000. “Rethinking Brazil’s Racial Democracy.” School for
International Training — CSA Brazil — Northeast. (retrieved from
Academia.edu on March 20, 2016)
Shecaira, Sergio. 2002. “Racism in Brazil: a Historical Perspective.” Revue
Internationale De Droit Penal. Retrieved March 21, 2016.
(www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-droit-penal-2002-1-page-141.htm)
Skidmore, Thomas. 1992. “Fact and Myth: Discovering a Racial Problem in Brazil.”
Kellogg Institute. April (Retrieved From Lexus-Nexus on March 21, 2016)
Steur, Luisa. 2016. “On Racism and Revolution: AN interview with Cuban Activist
Norberto Mesa Carbonell.” New Politics. December 19. Retrieved March 22,
2016. (www.newpol.org/content/racism-and-revolution-interview-cuban-
activist-norberto-mesa-carbonell)
Telles, Edward. 2007. “Racial Discrimination and Miscegenation: The Experience in
Brazil. UN Chronicle. September. Retrieved March 21,2016. (unchronicle.
un.org/article/racial-discrimination-and-misegenation-experience-brazil/)
