The Study of Racialism

Dragon Horse

I found a little known book online called “Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union”, by Robert Robinson. I needed new reading material for my commute in the morning and there was nothing else I was more interested in at the time.

This book is about a…well I’m not sure what to call him. His mother was Dominican (not from the Dominican Republic, but the little island in the Caribbean) and his father is Jamaican. He grew up in Cuba and moved to America at 19 years old.

His story is really interesting to me for 2 reasons. One, I like to read interesting little known stories. Two, I learned on my first trip overseas that tour books are typically written by white people for white people. I will give a good example. When I was in China most of the white people were assumed to be British or American. I was assumed to be an African student. While in Japan I was often assumed to be military, because most blacks there are military or West African (at least in Tokyo). Most of the whites were assumed to be English teachers or businessmen (although there are far more white military people in Japan than black). You can imagine how we were treated at first contact with locals based on differing stereotypes made my experience somewhat different from a white persons. So the tour books that talk about common stereotypes and treatment of foreigners really have nothing to do with me.

I found this guys story interesting because he had double culture shock. He grew up in Cuba and learned the tool working trade, which was a great job in the 1930’s. Unfortunately that was considered a “white man’s job” at the time in the United States. Coming from Cuba that was more colorist than racist, it was a major shock of him having to deal with the racism (even in Detroit) that faced black men at the time. In Cuba there was and is racism, however compared to America in the 1930’s…it was very “lite”. I have often heard that many blacks in Cuba before the communist revolution supported Castro because he promised equality. As a result most of the wealthy white upper-class fled to Florida. That is looking at racial matters through an American perspective. It was not that simple. The President (dictator) of Cuba at the time was Battista, who was openly half black, as black as Barak Obama, but in Cuba he was considered a Mulatto, and therefore “step up”. He had heavy white Cuban support. In America in 2007, we are debating if another Mulatto can be president (Obama) Cuba got over that in the early 1900’s.

Basically, this man, Robinson, was quite light skinned. In Cuba he was not considered black. When he came to America he learned anyone with visible African ancestry was black, and he experienced something he never knew…racism. I’m sure that was quite a shocking experience for him to be told constantly he was a “negro” or “colored”. He found the “one drop” (hypo-decent rule) that only applies to people of with African ancestry in America.

As you can imagine he did not like it. Despite his education he had to work his way up as a floor sweeper at Ford to a Tool Maker, where he excelled. He was the only black Tool Maker in Ford Motor Company at the time (in the entire company) He caught the eye of some Soviet delegation sent to learn the latest manufacturing. They were looking for teachers to come back to the USSR and teach these techniques. He was selected and he took the offer because he figured it was an opportunity that he would never get in the U.S. as he was commonly called a “black monkey” at work and ignored by his colleagues in the machine shop. I’m at the point where he arrived in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). I know he spent 40 years in the Soviet Union and the book is about things from his perspective as a black man. How he survived, etc. He eventually snuck back to America through Uganda in the 1970’s, added by Idi Amin of all people. He regained his citizenship in the 1980’s. To make a long story short what he found was that the Soviet Union was full of racism (as we can see now by the rise in Neo-Nazis and racial attacks in Russia in the last 10 years) but the Soviet government did a lot to keep is suppressed, but did nothing to deal with the root cause of it. In the end he returned to an America that was far more racially liberal than the USSR he left. That must have also been bizarre for him. After having to eat at the back of restraints in America (which he describes) and being called a “black monkey” to his face in the 1930’s he returns to a transformed country. The country he fled to (the USSR) he was now fleeing from disillusioned.

I expect the book should be quite interesting.

G-Man · Moderator Joined: 27 Nov 2004 {Posts: 2652 }

I referenced the book here: Blacks in the Black Sea Area??

Robert Robinson's mother was from Dominica and his father was Jamaican. He grew up in Guantanamo or Camaguey, Cuba among English-speaking Caribbean and Haitian immigrants. From what I could remember, he spoke three languages: English, Spanish and French.

I don't remember Robinson being light-skinned or thinking of himself as anything but black (racially). Indeed, Robsinson is quite African-looking. What he had trouble with was the intense racism of the U.S., which-according to him-paled in comparison to what he experienced in Cuba. And that's saying alot given the fact that Cuba was arguably the most segregationist country in Latin America; they even had a branch of the Klu Klux Klan there. Robinbson recounts some of these racist experiences in the U.S. in his book. Obviously, whatever racism existed in Cuba of the 30s did not prepare him for what he encountered in the U.S., including the north.

He immigrated to the U.S. in the 30s to persue engineering studies. He ended up working in an automobile factory (I think) in Detroit where he encountered fierce opposition to his presence on the factory floor.

I can't remember what prompted him to travel to the Soviet Union, but I do remember he put his natural skills as a tinkerer to use out there developing machine tools and such for use in their factories. Sadly, he wasn't allowed to patent these things or make money off them.

He finally left the Soviet Union in his 60s I believe with the help of an Ugandan diplomat. He eventually settled in the U.S. , married and became a Baha'i if I'm not mistaken.

His experiences in the Soviet Union presented in the book depressed me.

Dragon Horse · Posted: Mon 02 Apr 2007 15:13 Post subject:

I was basing the "light skin" based on his picture on the back of the book which is black and white but dude does not look remotely dark and his hair texture is "wavy". You are right his other features are very West African.

I don't think he would have been called "black" in Cuba though. You are right in the book he calls himself a "black" man or a "Cuban" that is about it.

I am at the part of the book where he just arrived in the USSR. He left America because Russians offered him more money and more opprotunity. He felt he could use the extra money to bring his mother here from Cuba and the opprotunity to increase his skill, which would lead him to opprotunities down the road. A chance he felt he could not get in the U.S.