What Juneteenth Means to Me, a Cuban American
There’s a lot to be said about anti-Blackness in the Cuban American community, but we’re not all like that
It almost goes without saying that anti-Blackness in the United States is more pervasive than some realize. We see it come from various non-white communities who’ve bought into white supremacist propaganda. Despite the wave of Latinophobia using racist rhetoric born of the most bigoted ideas in the US, anti-Blackness continues to be a problem. Undoubtedly, those in power who are extracting our wealth enjoy divisions among marginalized groups.
But here’s the thing. That bigotry is why I, a dude who came up in New Jersey, had no idea what Juneteenth was when moving to Texas more than 30 years ago. At the time, I was in my late teens and I looked at it as something Black people in Texas did and kind of left it at that. But it wasn’t until years later that I asked about the holiday and a friend explained it.
I was speechless.
To learn that the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t get to Texas until two years after slavery was abolished is astounding. That it was done intentionally, even more so. Suddenly, Juneteenth had a meaning that was deeply ingrained in this country’s ugliest history. I find it disturbing to this day because that mentality lives on in many places across the United States. Especially in a place like Texas which is the size of five states with broad cultural ideas based on where you are.
What’s even harder to ignore is how much of that mentality has infected the Latino community in various parts of the state. Particularly in South Texas where the likelihood of interactions with Black people is less likely. Think racist rural America but bilingual. Similarly, South Florida is largely the same way despite cultural differences between Latin American immigrants and Latinos who may have generations' worth of history in the country.
White power structures in America think of Latinos as being mixed-race, and therefore, never “white” despite how pale some of us may be. But that doesn’t stop people with a cultural history that will forever be demonized in the United States from carrying water for white supremacist ideas. In some places, it starts in law enforcement culture, as is common. In others, it’s just plain old racism that comes from countries of origin and generational ignorance.
Yes, Latinos can be white supremacists. No, it’s not new.
But I want to send a message to Latinos who have beef with Juneteenth: educate yourselves about this country’s history. Stop promoting the same colonialist and imperialist agenda that is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people throughout history, the genocide of our respective ancestors, and the torture of even more people in our countries of origin.
Whiteness represents cultural erasure and if you deny your history, white society will forever remind you of it because you will never be one of them. Take the little time you have on this planet and learn about the people you live amongst. Even if you don’t have access to other cultures or ethnicities, it’s not hard to learn these days. Fighting against things that happened doesn’t make you edgy and won’t win you any favors from white society. It makes you weak.
Saludos y Feliz Juneteenth.
Arturo is a writer, journalist, and publisher of The Antagonist Magazine and a regular contributor at Latino Rebels and Unicorn Riot. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Well said…
Perhaps being from Jersey and of Cuban heritage, you know something of the history of Wash Heights in NYC.
I moved to NYC from Vegas in the late 1970’s because… punk guitarist and all. Seemed like a good idea at the time. 😑
Ended up in Wash Heights because one could get a fairly large rehearsal space for super cheap.
The whole NYC economic thing was cratering at the time. WH was undergoing substantial demographic shifts while simultaneously dealing with NYC expiring in an economic sense. I mean, it was really bad. The type and degree of “badness” evolved in the 1980s, though I had moved on by that point.
In relation to your post, tribal divisions between various elements all got worse as the economic situation collapsed. For whatever reason, a lot of the local economic hierarchy was dominated by Cubans (obviously, they weren’t an absolutely dominant force in business and property development, but so far as a “minority” population went… they were a power block in WH).
If one was part of the Black spillover from Harlem at the time… the word was that attempting to deal with Cuban owners was a waste of time, and the “paler” the Cuban, the more so.
The Dominican community was well established in WH, though also in ascendance. From what I, white boy that I be, understood… their DR system was more complicated due to the residual aftershocks following DR conflicts in the 1960s (Right vs Left, with more Lefties heading to NYC). In most every aspect, though, the DR community still held true to stratification and economic sorting by how Spanish one appeared. The more Taino characteristics were exhibited, the lower one was assumed to be in social standing, education, capacity for advancement, etc.
As the employment situation got worse in WH, the racial issues became more apparent. The “In” groups could maintain employment and housing for their tribe. The “Out” groups (Harlem spillover Blacks, Black Dominicans, etc.) got sent to Jersey for employment and eventually housing.
The world provided me with a more brutal example of this concept when, in the 1990’s I went down to Haiti a few times. First for music research and as a “back door” route into Cuba, then for aid logistics management.
Turns out WH was just a vastly watered down model of Hispaniola. I knew there were racial and colonial holdover divisions down there, but to be… again… the white boy that could bounce over borders and be exposed to the unadulterated views of many Dominicans (not all, but I interpreted it as a vast majority). Their views regarding Haitians were pretty jaw dropping, bordering upon genocidal wishes. Once again, the higher on the economic ladder the Dominican, the more “Conservative” they were and the greater the loathing of all things Haitian.
I continue to believe that Marx’s concept of “Primitive Accumulation of Capital” is the best causal explanation for our situations in the western world, and the exacerbation of macro and micro “racial” divisions and subdivisions based on whether you look like the historic accumulators or those who were forced to be subordinate to those accumulators.
I have yet to experience an environment that disabuses e of that belief. Maybe one exists out there, but I haven’t lived in it.
Thanks again for your efforts.
All the best and congrats on your increased following and professional acknowledgment.
Honestly, we need to stop using colonizer words too. Culture and race are bullshit divisions. We're all one species. Rabbits in China don't have a different "culture" than rabbits in Spain. Nationalism is another colonizer idea.