Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Wed 11 Feb 2009 15:36 Post subject: Race-based clubs see revival in Cuba
Quote:
Clubs based on racial exclusivity, for Afro-Cubans as well as other groups, are making a comeback in Cuba.
BY LIZA GROSS
More than 50 years have passed, but Afro-Cuban author Pedro Pérez Sarduy still remembers the dances.
He and his friends would dress smartly in white linen guayaberas and black bow ties to attend balls at La Bella Unión (Beautiful Union), a social club in his hometown of Santa Clara, Cuba. At these matinés, they danced cha-cha-cha and flirted with girls.
''The matiné went from 1 until 5 with a local orchestra for the kids,'' Pérez Sarduy said. ``After that, the dance for adults had a good orchestra because this was important for the prestige of the club.''
Known in Spanish as sociedades de color, these and similar clubs fell victim to Fidel Castro's drive, shortly after he seized power, to eliminate any aspect of Cuban society that emphasized racial exclusivity. But their spirit and mission have been enjoying a renaissance over the past decade. And the same revolutionary government that once opposed them now seems to welcome their comeback.
In prerevolutionary Cuba, where blacks and poor, uneducated whites were denied access to good jobs and ritzy outings, the clubs served as centers to socialize and promote black racial progress. Many had libraries and offered night classes and sports instruction.
Above all, the sociedades sought to dispel any negative stereotypes of blacks.
Author and activist Carlos Moore says that members of Amantes del Progreso (Lovers of Progress), the club in his hometown of Lugareño, went as far as forbidding dances that they felt demeaned blacks.
''Dancing huahuancó was not allowed because whites considered it a savage dance,'' Moore said.
The clubs patterned themselves after similar organizations catering to other communities, such as Spaniards and Chinese. They also existed alongside institutions reserved for affluent white Cubans, like the Havana Yacht Club.
Cuba boasted more than 200 Afro-Cuban sociedades in 1949. Most had inspirational names, like Fraternal Union, Progress or New Era.
Castro's revolution moved quickly to force integration, opening up private clubs and other facilities to all races and socioeconomic classes. It also dismantled the sociedades, both black and white, decreeing them obsolete in the new class-color-blind Cuba. Some survived into the first years of the revolution but were eventually disbanded.
LOSS OF AUTONOMY
While Afro-Cubans enjoyed unprecedented opportunities in education and social advancement after 1959, with the disappearance of the sociedades they lost ''an autonomous position in Cuban society and politics, given that the revolutionary government took control of everything,'' said Frank Guridy, who teaches history at the University of Texas.
The regime's actions not only deprived Afro-Cubans of a unique platform to air grievances but also erased a significant part of their heritage.
''The cultural history of Afro-Cubans was lost, too,'' Guridy added. ``The folkloric representations are well-known. But the younger generations have no idea of the existence of these clubs.''
In the euphoria that followed dictator Fulgencio Batista's ouster, many blacks supported doing away with the sociedades in exchange for the promise of a better future, said Alejandro de la Fuente, author of Race, Inequality and Politics in 20th Century Cuba and a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
According to de la Fuente, the reputation of many sociedades had become tarnished because of their association with pre-Castro governments. The Club Atenas of Havana, for example, had built its headquarters on land given by President Ramón Machado, and some clubs had been close to the Batista regime.
Still, in 1959 and 1960, a group of black leaders defended sociedades ''as the best form to advance their interests. But others said they had outlived their usefulness,'' de la Fuente said.
Their abolition was a blow to Afro-Cubans because the sociedades ''played an important role in keeping race in the middle of Cuban life,'' he said.
For Moore, his local sociedad was crucial to his childhood. ''I grew up in that club,'' Moore said. ``I went there after school, and black instructors helped us with our homework. They also taught us the history of blacks, something we did not get at school.''
''It was a place of pride for black people,'' he added.``Destroying them was a monstrosity.''
The best-known and most elite sociedad was Club Atenas in Havana, founded in 1917.
Among its 68 founding members were lawyers, engineers, civil servants and teachers. In addition to dances and cultural activities, it organized trips around the island and abroad, including one in 1954 to the Roosevelt estate to present former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt with a bust of Cuban patriot Antonio Maceo. The club also honored writer Langston Hughes and other black Americans.
In 1961, Club Atenas was taken over by the government and the building became a children's center.
With the sociedades closed, their records destroyed by the state or lost and many of their buildings repurposed, Afro-Cubans lacked an organized voice to dissent from the official position that the revolution had solved the country's racial problems.
The government's policy was to deny the existence of racism, arguing that communism's egalitarianism made discrimination based on race an impossibility. Any contrary opinion was considered counterrevolutionary and slanderous.
``The issue was not part of the discourse because they were not hearing this, and they were not hearing this because they had closed the sociedades,'' de la Fuente said.
In reality, more than 1.2 million Afro-Cubans remained underrepresented in the circles of power and overrepresented among prisoners. They were also clustered in the more dilapidated sections of urban areas and continued to face discrimination in the workplace.
The economic meltdown after the fall of the Soviet Union and a growing interest by Cubans in getting back in touch with their roots led to a resurgence of the sociedades. And not just for blacks. Groups for whites and Chinese are back, too.
''After 40-plus years of trying to homogenize the society, we see groups trying to assert their uniqueness and the state allowing it,'' Guridy said.
The government also needed the revenue from tourism.
''Groups want to see a santería ceremony or a cultural experience, and the government needs the money and it is more tolerant,'' Guridy said, pointing to the success of the musicians of the Buena Vista Social Club.
OPPOSITION TO RACISM
In 1998, a group of Afro-Cuban activists founded the Cofradía de la Negritud (Fraternity of Blackness).
''We pick up the purpose of the sociedades, but we are going further,'' said Norberto Mesa Carbonell, one of the founders. ``We meet not only to carry out activities specific to the society of color, but to actively fight against racism.''
The fraternity's goal is to focus on the condition of Afro-Cubans because ''the government has not managed to solve the race problem,'' said Mesa Carbonell, an engineer.
The fraternity's manifesto includes calls to narrow the income gap between whites and blacks, to give more visibility to Afro-Cuban achievements, and to respect the rights of Afro-Cubans. It also tells black Cubans that advocating for progress should start with them.
Mesa Carbonell said the government first pressured him to give up his efforts.
But the fraternity persisted, and it now participates openly in government-sponsored events. Recently, Mesa Carbonell spoke at the ceremony to observe the 100th anniversary of the first black political party in Cuba.
The organization has 50 members in Havana and recently opened a branch in Pinar del Río, which now has 16 members.
Mesa Carbonell said the sociedades were instrumental in fighting discrimination against Afro-Cubans and should not have been abolished.
''If the revolution had allowed them to continue operating,'' he said, ``we would have made more progress on the issue of race.''
Also it's my understanding that fraternal societies based on African place of origin called Cabildos still exist in Cuba. There's even a West Indian Welfare Center in Guantanamo (fraternal society for English-speaking immigrants) and I believe a society for the descendants of Haitians there as well.
Carlos Moore the man quoted in the article is an interesting person. A friend once attended a talk about race and nationality in Cuba where, according to her, he advocated dividing Cuba into black and white sections post Castro. Good luck with that.
FWIW. In a scholarly sense, I am not an expert on either Cuba or the DR. But all of the Cuban and Dominican families that Mary Lee and I have befriended seem to have the same "racial" attitudes as Puerto Ricans: no endogamous barrier, everybody is mixed to some extent, lots of phenotype-descriptive terminology, some colorism, intense class-consciousness.
Given this similarity, I wonder what causes the enthusiastic DR-bashing (as opposed to Cuba-bashing or PR-bashing) among U.S. racialists.
Because they are seen as more black than other places in Latin America and Trujillo's massacre of the Haitians in the 1930s. Hence, issues of color in the DR are seen as worse than Cuba's or PR's because Dominicans are for the most part really black people.
FWIW. In a scholarly sense, I am not an expert on either Cuba or the DR. But all of the Cuban and Dominican families that Mary Lee and I have befriended seem to have the same "racial" attitudes as Puerto Ricans: no endogamous barrier, everybody is mixed to some extent, lots of phenotype-descriptive terminology, some colorism, intense class-consciousness.
Given this similarity, I wonder what causes the enthusiastic DR-bashing (as opposed to Cuba-bashing or PR-bashing) among U.S. racialists.
That is the question I've asked myself and others many times. I've essentially stated the same thing, the three Spanish Caribbean islands have alot of similarity, yet US racialist seem obsessed with DR. I've seen all sorts of trivial pursuits like the whole 'hair straightening' thing.
Lets do a compare/contrast between Cuba and DR:
-In Cuba, there was racial segregation but not in DR.
-In Cuba, there was a racially motivated massacre against Cuban blacks but not in DR.
-Besides Batista, i know of no Afro-Cuban holding the presidency, but DR has had some.
-In real life (not the internet), one common Cuban stereotype held by other Hispanics is that of Cubans being racist. In real life, other Hispanics have stereotypes of Dominicans but being racist is not one of them.
Now I am not stating who is better or worse, but what calls my attention is that many have a very romantic view of Cuba and a very cartoonish one of DR.
Because they are seen as more black than other places in Latin America and Trujillo's massacre of the Haitians in the 1930s. Hence, issues of color in the DR are seen as worse than Cuba's or PR's because Dominicans are for the most part really black people.
Also, seen as 'black people who pretent to be native americans (indio) to avoid the blackness'
Because they are seen as more black than other places in Latin America and Trujillo's massacre of the Haitians in the 1930s. Hence, issues of color in the DR are seen as worse than Cuba's or PR's because Dominicans are for the most part really black people.
Also, seen as 'black people who pretent to be native americans (indio) to avoid the blackness'
I will take a stab at this..
1. Cuba developed a late stage highly plantation oriented culture with a large slave population, therefore some degree of social segregation between "blacks" and "whites". So an ethnopolitical group identity devloped around being "black", "mulato" and "white". This doesnt mean that all kinds of other labeling based on phenotype doesnt also occur, but ethnopolitical identities (similar to but not as fully evolved as the nonHispanic Caribbean) based on the top group (white), the bottom group (black) and a buffer group (mulatto).
So Cubans who are seen as black, have to some degree an ethnopolitical identity as black. It isnt just about segregation (because I have been told that this occurred mainly among the elites) as this was abolished after 1959 yet ethnopoilitical labels exist. Cuban rappers who identify as "black" rap about racism, police brutality etc. THey more clearly link their position in society to their race or ethnopolitical label. Even some mulatto rappers feel comfortable expressing the same feelings and toying with an idnetity based on "blackness".
2. Puerto Rico has a very small population that would be labelled as "black" so it doesnt attract attention.
3. Most Dominicans show visible evidence of varying degrees of African ancestry (the highest in Latin America and even higher than countries like Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad and Belize), yet there is scant evidnece of any ethnopolitical group identity based on this (though this might be changing for some). There is the whole Haitian issue and the perception repeated by many, even by people Saillant-Torres and other Dominican commentators (see the other Dominican thread), that this might contribute to an "avoidance of blackness", and a euphemistic replacement by the term Indio, which does not neccessarily suggest Amerindian ancestry.
The issue becomes quite complex and not understood by nonHispanics as compared to Cuba where black, white and mixed categories are accepted and to a large degree even determine culture, style, values and social connections. Its probably not without coincidence that Cuba is more accepted by nonHispanic Caribbeans (both Anglo and French) as being a fellow Caribbean country than either the Dominican REpublic or Puerto Rico are. Notwithstanding the visible contributions of the Cocolos to the Dominican identity.
Despite a common Spanish colonial heritage the DR has a history that is very different from the other two Spanish islands due to its proximity to Haiti and the significant migrations which occurred, even during slavery. An interesting analysis will be to determine how many Dominicans have some ancient Haitian ancestry, and to what degree that has led to some differences in comparison to Puero Rico and Cuba..
UNlike Cuba it did not go through a late plantation stage with massive importation of African slaves. Cuba also had massive late European migration, This is why there developed two differing cultural poles one, more Eurocentric and another heavily influenced by African culture which is widely, proudly and openly celebrated in Cuba. Cuba is also not shy in projecting a "part black" identity as it interfaces with the nonHispanic Caribbean and with subSaharan Africa. Castro has often boasted of it being a AfroHispanic island therefore having a connection to other societies with large Afro descended populations.
CIMMERIAN it seems clear that Cuba is different from the Dominican Republic in terms of the complex range oif identities whe the two societies ae compared with each other. As one can see above at various times in Cuban history there were strong ties and feelings of identity between at least some Cuban blacks and some African Americans. So that even now that segregation hasnt been an issue in Cuba for at least 50 years it still appears as if an ethnopolitical idnetity based being black/mulatto/white is quite core in Cuba.
In fact Soledad O'Brien, who has ben mentioned on this site, talks about having a part "black" identity, based not on her AngoAmerican father coming from a one drop society, but from her Cuban mother who she says identified as black.
Also I have experienced differing reactions from Dominicans and Cubans.
To the Cuban their first image of me is that I am "black".
White Cubans distance in the same way as white Americans initially do (trying to see whether they can feel comfortable with me or not and being quite formal until they have figured out who I am and what my attitude to them will be). I will admit that these are Cubans who have lived in the USA for a long time, or born here, so would have a higher sense of "racial" difference than would people who never left Cuba.
To some black identified Cubans this becomes a basis for affinity based upon a shared experience of being foreign blacks (possible common experiences of racism from the larger society and misunderstandings in dealings with African Americans).
I have been to some exile Cuban events and one sees very little social interaction between the darker Cubans (black looking or darker mulatto) and the whites, and lighter mulattos. This might be due to years of life in the USA (NY area) and the fact that the two groups live separately and have fitted into US society differently. This is not to say anthing about Cuba itself, or even Miami.
Dominicans focus more on the fcat that I look Dominican (of the Sammy Sosa type) so relate to me as "I thought you were Dominican but you are not but you look Dominican so I can feel confortable with you". Doesnt hurt that I used to dance merengue decently. As well as a Puerto Rican that is.
Puerto Ricans either think I am Dominican or come from Carolina, PR, if they see me within a Hispanic context and havent heard me speak.
So an ethnopolitical group identity devloped [in Cuba] around being "black", "mulato" and "white". This doesnt mean that all kinds of other labeling based on phenotype doesnt also occur, but ethnopolitical identities (similar to but not as fully evolved as the nonHispanic Caribbean) based on the top group (white), the bottom group (black) and a buffer group (mulatto).
Please provide a source for the claim of a three-caste society in Cuba. I have never seen any objective evidence of such a thing, neither in restrictive laws nor in genetic discontinuity. See, for example, the "Discontinuity" section of Features of Today’s Endogamous Color Line. You may be conflating Cuba with the former B.W.I.
FrankWSweet wrote:
Europeans in the British West Indies often marry locals who physically appear to be European but have known partial African ancestry. Similarly, White clubs were closed to members of the Coloured group in the early colonial period, and members of this middle group were not allowed to vote, hold public office, hold military commissions, marry members of the White group, or inherit significant property from a member of the White group. But by the year 1733, these restrictions had been lifted for the intermediate group in Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad. They were retained for their respective Black groups until the twentieth century.(14)
Legislation, court decisions, and social custom in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados treated members of the Coloured group as distinct from members of the Black group.(15) According to one scholar, “The English… encountered the problem of race mixture in very different contexts in their several colonies; they answered it in one fashion in their West Indian islands, and in quite another in their colonies on the continent,” and, “The contrast offered by the West Indies is striking.”(16) In post-emancipation Jamaica, the beleaguered White population allied with the Coloured elite (the descendants of the famous Maroons) to keep down the free Blacks.(17) A Barbadian historian wrote, “In August 1838, some 83,000 blacks, 12,000 coloureds, and 15,000 whites, embarked on a social course which the ruling elite hoped to charter.”(18) A historian of Trinidad wrote, “The people of colour were marginal to Caribbean society: neither black nor white, neither African nor European….”(19) Today, West Indian immigrants to England assimilate into mainstream society within a generation or two. There is no endogamous color line in Great Britain today.(20)
Finally, Latin American societies, including those of the Spanish Caribbean, have always lacked endogamous color lines. Every Hispanic resides on an Afro-Amerind-European continuum where status depends on wealth, breeding, education, and political power as well as phenotype. Latin American countries typically have three economic classes: A lower class of agricultural peasants and urban poor; a middle class of landowning farmers and urban craftsmen; and an upper class of wealthy professionals, educators, or the politically powerful. The structure has a strong hereditary component. It is rigid, offers little social mobility, and is often harsh or unjust. Nevertheless, despite significant class/skin-tone correlation, it has no color line in the sense of endogamy.(21) Enforced endogamy is impossible in Latin America because nearly every Hispanic has immediate blood relatives who are more African-looking and others who are more European-looking than himself. Puerto Rico’s dialect of Spanish contains about a dozen words to denote various blends of Afro-European appearance: prieto, criollo, blanquito, mulato, moreno, trigueño, mestizo, jabao, marrano, etc. Yet, neither private sector documents (social club applications, job applications) nor government documents (public school registration, birth certificates, census forms) on the island have any category for “race.”(22)
But by the year 1733, these restrictions had been lifted for the intermediate group in Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad. They were retained for their respective Black groups until the twentieth century.14
Trinidad was Taken by the British in the year 1797.
The British did not exercise the same anti-colour laws that existed in the rest of the BWI .
Quote:
The Cedula of Population of 1783 offered important incentives to free blacks and coloureds. They received free grants of land: 16 acres for each man, woman and child and half of that for each slave brought. This was about half the land that a white settler would be granted, but still an attractive offer. Article 5 of the Cedula also promised that all settlers the rights of citizenship after five years of residence, including the rights to hold public office if qualified. It made no distinction between whites and coloureds, a remarkable situation that was peculiar to Trinidad.
Leading families such as Philippe, Cazabon, Saturnin, Beaubrun, Patience, Boudin, de la Grenade, Vincent, Louison, Latraille and Martel, to name a few, came to Trinidad from Martinique, Guadeloupe, Ste. Domingue, Grenada and St. Lucia. These free coloureds spoke excellent French, were often cultivated and educated people, established estates of cocoa, cotton and sugar, owned slaves, practised professions in a few cases, and held officers’ commissions in the island militia. They contributed in no small way to the development of Trinidad with the establishment of an educated black middle class unique in the western world.
The British conquest of Trinidad in 1797 did not lead to an immediate deterioration in the position of the free coloureds and blacks. The first British military governors Picton, Hislop and Munro neglected to enforce the humiliating anti-coloured rules that existed elsewhere in the Caribbean. But under the first civil British administration, that of sir Ralph Woodford, serious racial prejudice was institutionalised.
Fortunately for the free blacks and people of colour, a leader emerged: Jean-Baptiste Philippe, whose family was one of the leading coloured planters of Trinidad. Educated as a lawyer, Philippe petitioned to the Colonial Office and the Secretary of State for their rights. To back up the petition, Jean-Baptiste wrote the famous book ‘Free Mulatto’. Philippe succeeded, and in March 1829, an Order in Council was issued from London giving full legal equality and civil rights to Trinidad’s people of colour and free blacks.
Trinidad's society was a different matter. It was not like Barbados, for instance, where 99% of the population were of African descent and 1% were white, these divided into the upper class British and the servant class British.
In the case of Trinidad, almost everybody was a foreigner in Woodford's eyes. Most of the whites were French, several were Irish, many were German and ask for the Spanish grandees, well, you could not even tell if they were white! Many of these people were well off, and a few even very rich. But the most difficult to deal with were the Free Black people. To Woodford, they seemed to be in everything.
The issue becomes quite complex and not understood by nonHispanics as compared to Cuba where black, white and mixed categories are accepted and to a large degree even determine culture, style, values and social connections.
Assuming this is true, is this the case since 1959 when Castro took over? From what I've read, there was less cultural separation between blacks and mulattos than there was between those two and whites.
Quote:
Its probably not without coincidence that Cuba is more accepted by nonHispanic Caribbeans (both Anglo and French) as being a fellow Caribbean country than either the Dominican REpublic or Puerto Rico are. Notwithstanding the visible contributions of the Cocolos to the Dominican identity.
Are you talking about Anglo and French Caribbean people on their respective islands or those who reside in the U.S.? Based on my experience, most Anglo-Caribbean people who reside in the U.S. are no more likely to see Cubans as fellow Caribbeans than the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans they come across more frequently.
Anglo-Caribbean people's pan-Caribbean sentiment is usually limited to the English-speaking islands and maybe Haiti. Most I know don't know much about the culture of the Spanish Caribbean or care to know. Most people in my family, for example, do not see themselves as having anything in common with people from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, regardless of the Spanish-Caribbean person's racial background.
People who live on English and French-speaking Caribbean islands are probably more open to seeing Cubans as fellow Caribbeans because Cuba's government has actively fostered ties with these countries, including, at least with many English-speaking countries, affording people from those countries the opportunity to attend medical school in Cuba.
For other Caribbeans who live in the U.S., Cuba’s image as a defiant society standing up to the U.S. may be a contributing factor in accepting Cubans as fellow Caribbeans, perhaps much more than actual social contact with Cubans of any racial background.
It's my opinion that Dutch and French-speaking Caribbeans (Haiti included) are more pan-Caribbean in their cultural orientation than either Spanish or English-speaking Caribbeans.
So an ethnopolitical group identity devloped [in Cuba] around being "black", "mulato" and "white". This doesnt mean that all kinds of other labeling based on phenotype doesnt also occur, but ethnopolitical identities (similar to but not as fully evolved as the nonHispanic Caribbean) based on the top group (white), the bottom group (black) and a buffer group (mulatto).
Please provide a source for the claim of a three-caste society in Cuba. I have never seen any objective evidence of such a thing, neither in restrictive laws nor in genetic discontinuity. See, for example, the "Discontinuity" section of Features of Today’s Endogamous Color Line. You may be conflating Cuba with the former B.W.I.
FrankWSweet wrote:
Europeans in the British West Indies often marry locals who physically appear to be European but have known partial African ancestry. Similarly, White clubs were closed to members of the Coloured group in the early colonial period, and members of this middle group were not allowed to vote, hold public office, hold military commissions, marry members of the White group, or inherit significant property from a member of the White group. But by the year 1733, these restrictions had been lifted for the intermediate group in Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad. They were retained for their respective Black groups until the twentieth century.(14)
Legislation, court decisions, and social custom in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados treated members of the Coloured group as distinct from members of the Black group.(15) According to one scholar, “The English… encountered the problem of race mixture in very different contexts in their several colonies; they answered it in one fashion in their West Indian islands, and in quite another in their colonies on the continent,” and, “The contrast offered by the West Indies is striking.”(16) In post-emancipation Jamaica, the beleaguered White population allied with the Coloured elite (the descendants of the famous Maroons) to keep down the free Blacks.(17) A Barbadian historian wrote, “In August 1838, some 83,000 blacks, 12,000 coloureds, and 15,000 whites, embarked on a social course which the ruling elite hoped to charter.”(1 A historian of Trinidad wrote, “The people of colour were marginal to Caribbean society: neither black nor white, neither African nor European….”(19) Today, West Indian immigrants to England assimilate into mainstream society within a generation or two. There is no endogamous color line in Great Britain today.(20)
Finally, Latin American societies, including those of the Spanish Caribbean, have always lacked endogamous color lines. Every Hispanic resides on an Afro-Amerind-European continuum where status depends on wealth, breeding, education, and political power as well as phenotype. Latin American countries typically have three economic classes: A lower class of agricultural peasants and urban poor; a middle class of landowning farmers and urban craftsmen; and an upper class of wealthy professionals, educators, or the politically powerful. The structure has a strong hereditary component. It is rigid, offers little social mobility, and is often harsh or unjust. Nevertheless, despite significant class/skin-tone correlation, it has no color line in the sense of endogamy.(21) Enforced endogamy is impossible in Latin America because nearly every Hispanic has immediate blood relatives who are more African-looking and others who are more European-looking than himself. Puerto Rico’s dialect of Spanish contains about a dozen words to denote various blends of Afro-European appearance: prieto, criollo, blanquito, mulato, moreno, trigueño, mestizo, jabao, marrano, etc. Yet, neither private sector documents (social club applications, job applications) nor government documents (public school registration, birth certificates, census forms) on the island have any category for “race.”(22)
See footnotes 14 through 22 for the sources.
Batista was considered a mulato and we see from the above that there was and is a defined ethnopolitical identity based on being black in Cuba. I did say that the three caste system is not as well defined as in the nonHispanic Caribbean, though it exists to a point not apparently the case in the DR or PR where group identities based on phenotype are weak. I will look around for some sources.
You will note that the 1953 Cuban census does indicate definitive categories of "white, "mulato", "black" and Chinese. These categories continue today though there is not necessary agreement as to who fits into which category, also "problematic" in the nonHispanic Caribbean where a census where the identification is done by the census taker might produce a different result from where there is self identification.
In fact Soledad O'Brien, who has ben mentioned on this site, talks about having a part "black" identity, based not on her AngoAmerican father coming from a one drop society, but from her Cuban mother who she says identified as black.
O'Brien's father is Australian of Irish descent.
O'Brien was born in the U.S. to a black Cuban mother who spent considerable time in Baltimore, Maryland in the 50s and 60s. I suspect that experience may have had something to do with the identity she imparted to her daughter.
Christina Milian, who was raised in Maryland, also embraces a black ethno-political identity (or something close to it), despite having a white (?) Cuban parent. If she was raised in New Jersey or New York, there's a likelihood she wouldn't have identified as she does.
Christina Milian, who was raised in Maryland, also embraces a black ethno-political identity (or something close to it), despite having a white (?) Cuban parent. If she was raised in New Jersey or New York, there's a likelihood she wouldn't have identified as she does.
I've noticed that trend with Latinos of Afrodescendancy. Actually also with those of pred. European ancestry to. If they're raised in areas in which there isn't a significant Latino population, or they've been somehow disconnected from their own, they take on a 'white' or black ethno policital identity. In other words their self identification is much more along the US lines (black or white).
I've noticed that trend with Latinos of Afrodescendancy. Actually also with those of pred. European ancestry to. If they're raised in areas in which there isn't a significant Latino population, or they've been somehow disconnected from their own, they take on a 'white' or black ethno policital identity. In other words their self identification is much more along the US lines (black or white).
Indeed...I used Milian because she's from Prince George's County, Maryland, and I live in the Wash. DC metro area. In my social circles I've come across more than a few Caribbean Latinos, even those with not-so-visible African ancestry, who feel disconnected from the local Central American Latino population here. Not all, but some. They often feel closer to African Americans. Granted many of these people are transplants from New York and New Jersey, but many are born and raised here.
Indeed...I used Milian because she's from Prince George's County, Maryland, and I live in the Wash. DC metro area. In my social circles I've come across more than a few Caribbean Latinos, even those with not-so-visible African ancestry, who feel disconnected from the local Central American Latino population here. Not all, but some. They often feel closer to African Americans. Granted many of these people are transplants from New York and New Jersey, but many are born and raised here.
I've personally see it all the time. My family that moved to North Carolina will probably not feel too close to the Salvadorans there, not because of any racial/color or nationalistic feelings but because of a difference of culture. They being very NY/NJ African Americanized (in terms of music, taste, etc.) and said Central Americans being relatively recent arrivals 'too country' if you will.
But by the year 1733, these restrictions had been lifted for the intermediate group in Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad. They were retained for their respective Black groups until the twentieth century.14
Trinidad was Taken by the British in the year 1797.
The British did not exercise the same anti-colour laws that existed in the rest of the BWI .
Quote:
The Cedula of Population of 1783 offered important incentives to free blacks and coloureds. They received free grants of land: 16 acres for each man, woman and child and half of that for each slave brought. This was about half the land that a white settler would be granted, but still an attractive offer. Article 5 of the Cedula also promised that all settlers the rights of citizenship after five years of residence, including the rights to hold public office if qualified. It made no distinction between whites and coloureds, a remarkable situation that was peculiar to Trinidad.
Leading families such as Philippe, Cazabon, Saturnin, Beaubrun, Patience, Boudin, de la Grenade, Vincent, Louison, Latraille and Martel, to name a few, came to Trinidad from Martinique, Guadeloupe, Ste. Domingue, Grenada and St. Lucia. These free coloureds spoke excellent French, were often cultivated and educated people, established estates of cocoa, cotton and sugar, owned slaves, practised professions in a few cases, and held officers’ commissions in the island militia. They contributed in no small way to the development of Trinidad with the establishment of an educated black middle class unique in the western world.
The British conquest of Trinidad in 1797 did not lead to an immediate deterioration in the position of the free coloureds and blacks. The first British military governors Picton, Hislop and Munro neglected to enforce the humiliating anti-coloured rules that existed elsewhere in the Caribbean. But under the first civil British administration, that of sir Ralph Woodford, serious racial prejudice was institutionalised.
Fortunately for the free blacks and people of colour, a leader emerged: Jean-Baptiste Philippe, whose family was one of the leading coloured planters of Trinidad. Educated as a lawyer, Philippe petitioned to the Colonial Office and the Secretary of State for their rights. To back up the petition, Jean-Baptiste wrote the famous book ‘Free Mulatto’. Philippe succeeded, and in March 1829, an Order in Council was issued from London giving full legal equality and civil rights to Trinidad’s people of colour and free blacks.
Trinidad's society was a different matter. It was not like Barbados, for instance, where 99% of the population were of African descent and 1% were white, these divided into the upper class British and the servant class British.
In the case of Trinidad, almost everybody was a foreigner in Woodford's eyes. Most of the whites were French, several were Irish, many were German and ask for the Spanish grandees, well, you could not even tell if they were white! Many of these people were well off, and a few even very rich. But the most difficult to deal with were the Free Black people. To Woodford, they seemed to be in everything.
Spiral is corect. The "rules" or custom differed in different British colonies.
In the Leeward Islands and Jamaica the barriers between the light skinned mulattos (light skin, caucasoid features and non kinky, preferably straight or waivy hair) tumbled in the late 19th C when difficulties in the sugar industry led to the virtual bankruptcy of the old British stock group. Further the heavy absentee landlord plantation systems meant that most of the whites in Jamaica were managers not owners, mainly single men, not able or willing to marry or consort with the daughters of prominent white families and usually had mulatto, or maybe even black mistresses. So when they say "Jamaica white" or "St Kitts white" they mean white LOOKING, some one who Barbadian whites would have been afraid to touch out of fear that the tar brush might suddenly appear in a child, letting the secret out. In Barbados one cannot have African ancesters and be "white". The mulatos of Jamaica and the Leeward Islands (AKA as "brown" or "red") used to be quite powerful, almsot always more educated and at times even wealthier than the white population. I say used to as that population has all but disappeared from places like Antigua, St Kitts, Nevis, St Maarten, etc.
Those barriers remained very strong in Barbados where plantations were run by their owners not managers and the "mistress" of the house was almost always the wife not the concubine. Even to this day the one drop rule of a modified sort keeps mulatos (defined as people with mixed ancestry having known black ancestrors, visible or not) away from whites and they did, and maybe still do go to great lengths to keep the "tar brush" outside the house. If one can rent Island in the SUN you will see hat this meant. I recently saw in the Barbadian papers that 97% of the population is black. If so that means that the "brown" population is now classified as "black". Not surprising as there is now little social distinction between the two and its the black vs. white dynamic that matters in Barbados.
Trinidad, having a more French Caribbean plantation system despite beinga Spanish then a British colony, had very relaxed rules on who was "white" evn including people of known mulatto ancestry. Trinidad is the closest to Latin American norms where a continuum exists on the white=>mulatto=>black though like other nonHispanic countries a strong ethnopolitical identity exists where black (and sometimes mixed) normally support the PNM, the AfroTrinidadian party.
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A historian of Trinidad wrote, “The people of colour were marginal to Caribbean society: neither black nor white, neither African nor European….”(19) Today, West Indian immigrants to England assimilate into mainstream society within a generation or two. There is no endogamous color line in Great Britain today.(20)