A conception of a comprehensive affirmative approach to overcoming disparities in equity based on skin color should contribute substantively to the formulation of public policies that will play a role in the National Program against Racism and Racial Discrimination.

This is a proposal sponsored by the Nicolás Guillén Foundation and the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (uneac) José Antonio Aponte Commission, organizations that are part of the program on which doctors Mayra Espina, María del Carmen Zabala and Geydis Fundora, and MSc Ileana Núñez worked, encouraged Party First Secretary and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez’ call to organize concrete actions and viable responses, scientifically and politically based, to end the persistence of discriminatory attitudes within our society.

The plan was presented to the government commission’s coordinating team, after being debated and enriched in a workshop held at uneac headquarters, conducted by Fernando Rojas, Deputy Minister of Culture, and Nicolás Hernández Guillén, president of the Foundation, with the participation of academics and professors from the University of Havana and intellectuals noted for their anti-racist activism.

“Broad analysis of policy proposals, lines of action to continue advancing in the implementation of the Program against Racism and Racial Discrimination approved by the Council of Ministers; inclusive, transparent dialogue, all united for the Socialist Revolution,” were the words Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman Waugh used to describe the meeting in a message on social networks.

The focus was on overcoming unfavorable conditions affecting Black and mixed race groups and citizens, early on, taking action in a coordinated, parallel manner to address the multiple dimensions of vulnerability, promoting civic participation in the development and implementation of policies, creating opportunities and channels of access to this process, and providing the necessary resources for implementation.

The comprehensive, inter-sector nature of actions is evident in proposals that range from work around employment, income, education, health, housing and living conditions, to the eradication of socioeconomic disadvantages and transformation of subjectivity.

As head of the coordinating team, Minister of Culture Alpidio Alonso addressed the urgency of reinforcing the program’s communications strategy to ensure that the program’s scope, commitments and goals are in the public domain. Luis Morlote, UNEAC president, called attention to the fact that communication cannot be limited to observations of anniversaries and commemorations without carefully considering their relevance, as has been the case to date, since they must serve to raise issues and generate regular, ongoing content.

The meeting also addressed tasks related to the international thematic agenda, the cadre policy and critical plans for the creation of provincial groups.

(Taken from Granma)

To build this wall,

Bring me all hands:

Blacks, their black hands,

Whites, their white hands

Nicolas Guillen

Racism – that barbaric myth of our time – lies in the subconscious and must be eliminated altogether. It is the child of prejudice, another scar on the human species that does as much psychological damage to the victim as the perpetrator. Anthropologist Ashley Montagu, in a dramatic statement, said, “The fallacy of race is the most damaging of human myths.”

And José Martí expressed it with metaphorical wit and ethical depth: “In this world there is only one inferior race, that of those who value above all their own interests, and is there only one superior race: that of those who value above all human interests.”

Martí stated: “There is no race hatred because there are no races.” Nonetheless, we regret that today in our country there are vestiges of an absurd racism that we know was born of the blind greed generated by the slave trade and the infamous ideological system that supported it in an attempt to consolidate a supremacist social hierarchy.

Fernando Ortiz understood early on that racism against black men and women was directly related to colonialism and slavery. He rejected the idea of Africa as a ‘dark’ continent and dedicated practically his entire life to reevaluating the country’s diverse African cultures with the goal of contributing to the integration of the Cuban nation and to the identity of our people. He was, no doubt, a pioneer of such efforts, as were José Martí and Nicolás Guillén.

Eradicating racist sentiments is not only the work of therapists. It is necessary to investigate in the cultures of the African peoples who bequeathed to Cuba an immense cosmic and artistic treasure. Erasing the perfidious murmur of the subconscious is key, since this is where racial prejudice is cradled. The flowers of the desert must be watered with sand. Only in this way can we see the flowering of a pure and transparent consciousness.

Racial discrimination expresses the most spurious feelings of the human species, and it is sanctioned by law, because it is a crime against culture. Every nightmare that leads to a violation must be uprooted. To leave dark areas in the subconscious means never overcoming them, maintaining their presence. The triumph of reason and the birth of a humanistic civilization must be celebrated. This is the path we wish to travel to reach the clear horizon.

Proclaiming the existence of races is as absurd as the efforts of theologians in the Middle Ages to count the number of angels that could dance on a pinhead. The eradication of racism is today a priority in Cuban educational programs, and the emphasis on a more inclusive and non-prejudicial culture must also be consolidated as a central objective of our country’s social project. “Cubanness is not in the blood, it lies principally in the peculiarity of a culture, that of Cuba,” Fernando Ortiz insisted.

“Everything that divides men, everything that specifies, sets apart or corners them, is a sin against humanity,” wrote José Martí. And of course, this statement applies to all types of discrimination.

Racism is a diabolical cultural construct that does not validate human nature, and is incompatible with socialism. Fidel Castro made this clear with his thinking, founded on that of Martí and Maceo, and his emancipatory action. Once again he anticipated the designs of history.

(Taken from Granma)

Noteworthy, in the first place, is the political will of the country’s leadership. The government commission that directs the program is headed by President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, with 18 state agencies and an equal number of civil society organizations contributing. The Ministries of Culture, Foreign Affairs, as well as Science, Technology and Environment, are involved in the direct coordination of work, along with the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists.

Also significant are the scientific and conceptual foundations on which the program was designed, based on an initial diagnosis submitted to commission members for analysis.

The diagnosis included the contributions of the social sciences, abundant statistical information from various sources, numerous observations by agencies and organizations, as well as the experience and opinions of experts, intellectuals and activists.

Also incorporated were results of research on the Cuban population, carried out by the National Center of Medical Genetics, which scientifically demonstrates that, ethnically and culturally we are a Mestizo people, regardless of the color of our skin, the presence of European, African and Native American-Asian ancestral genes in our genome is irrefutable evidence that we are also biologically Mestizo.

A polyhedral, integral view of these problems, that affect Cuban society transversally, makes clear that required are public policies and specific measures for their definitive eradication.

Racism, as we well know, is a cultural construction of long standing in the evolution of humanity. It has been and remains a system of ideas that attempts to justify the exploitation and oppression of one human group over another.

In Cuba, as in the United States and in other lands on the continent, the brutal use of slave labor, taken by force from Africa for the economic development of European colonies, for the benefit of metropolises and nascent local oligarchies, was necessarily sustained by racism. The domination of one color of skin over another presupposed an irrevocable, irreversible dichotomy between superiority and inferiority, intelligence and inability, virtue and vice, beauty and ugliness.

But in Cuba, unlike the United States, the structural and institutional bases of racism were dealt a devastating blow by the process of revolutionary transformations begun in 1959, which inherited the anti-racist legacy of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, José Martí and Antonio Maceo (the founding fathers of the northern nation did not even consider abolishing slavery) of intellectuals and social rebels like Juan Gualberto Gómez, Gustavo Urrutia, Nicolás Guillén and Fernando Ortiz – who in the first six decades of the 20th century committed themselves to anti-racist action and thought, and the many Cuban men and women who, throughout various stages of the liberation struggle, made contributions to the effort, with the color of their skin presenting no impediment.

Unlike the United States, the Cuban nation was forged and recognizes itself on the basis of the diversity of our origins, of our country’s uniqueness as a cultural construct.

The anti-racist thinking of Comandante en jefe Fidel Castro, deeply rooted in Martí and Maceo’s ideas, the contributions of Army General Raúl Castro, and the combative tradition embodied by the revolutionary and intellectual vanguard, constitute strengths of the program, also supported by the Constitution and the current Penal Code.

Nevertheless, Fidel himself, when addressing an audience gathered on September 8, 2000 in a solidarity event at the Riverside Church, in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, admitted: “I do not intend to present our country as a perfect model of equality and justice. We believed at the beginning that by establishing the most absolute equality before the law and absolute intolerance of any manifestation of sexual discrimination, in the case of women, and racial, in the case of ethnic minorities, these would disappear from our society. It took us some time to discover – I say it this way – that marginality, and with it racial discrimination, is in fact something that cannot be eliminated by one law or ten laws, something that we have not been able to eliminate completely over 40 years.”

Two years earlier, during the Sixth Uneac Congress, in a dialogue with several writers and artists who raised the issue, Fidel addressed it this way: “It seemed that by giving opportunities to everyone and opening aristocratic clubs to the entire population and providing everyone access to beaches and schools, universities, all possibilities, we were managing to make discrimination disappear. But we came to understand that the problem is much more serious. We believed that, if classes and exploiters and the rich disappeared, true equality of opportunity would be created for all. But then we realized that discrimination was a social and cultural issue.”

The diagnosis highlights historically accumulated disadvantages associated with skin color: the starting point for the realization of the life projects of black and brown youth have been different and distant, in their vast majority, from those of white skinned Cubans. Derived from such disadvantages, economic and social asymmetries are measurable and perceptible vulnerabilities in Cuba’s current reality, although they require more exhaustive study, as commission members concluded in a session devoted to reviewing the current status of social research.

Among the subjective factors noted are an insufficient awareness of the negative impact of prejudices and distorted perceptions about the true profile of the Cuban ethnos; as well as deficiencies and gaps in the systematization and consistency of introducing anti-racism as an essential value in revolutionary political-ideological work, which leads to the understanding that racial prejudices are totally incompatible with Cuba’s socialist project. It is no accident that the issue is being analyzed at this time, by organizations responsible for the formation of current and future generations.

Before the end of 2020, the program will have a local presence in all the country’s provinces, and the intention is to advance in implementation of the approved communication strategy. Both efforts are directed toward achieving the widest possible socialization and public awareness of the program’s objectives and work underway in their implementation.

An essential reference for the work done thus far, and more so for the much that remains, are the words of President Diaz-Canel when the program was launched: “Everyone recognizes that our Revolution has possibly been the social and political process which has contributed most to eliminating racial discrimination, but vestiges remain, not as a result of policies in our society, but in the culture of a group of people. We have every right and the ability to do something coherent, something of impact, that will help us solve these problems in our society and show once again the degree of justice and humanism of the Revolution.”

SPECIFICATIONS

The National Anti-Racism and Racial Discrimination Program has been designed to combat and definitively eliminate remaining vestiges of racism, racial prejudice and racial discrimination in Cuba.

The program includes the fight against regionalism and discrimination based on ethnic and national origin, manifestations also associated with racism.

Conceived as a government program, its follow-up is integrated into the work system of President Díaz-Canel. A government commission, headed by the President, was created to coordinate the tasks.

Its objectives include identifying the causes that encourage discriminatory practices; diagnosing possible actions to be developed provincially, locally, and by different branches of the economy and society; disseminating the historical-cultural legacy of Africa, our native peoples and other non-white peoples as part of Cuba’s cultural diversity; and fostering organized public debate on racial issues within political, mass and social organizations, as well as their presence in the media.

(Taken from Granma)

Police in Louisville are again the target of protests. Photo: Reuters.

Two police officers have been wounded by bullets in Louisville during the demonstrations within hours of the exoneration of the three officers who led to the shooting death of Breonna Taylor , 26, a health worker , six months ago. In the early morning hours of March 13, the young black woman was at her home in this Kentucky city, sleeping with her 27-year-old boyfriend Kenner Walker when investigators broke in.

The court resolution caused the protests to spread to other cities in the United States, especially New York, Washington, Atlanta or Chicago. The name of Breonna Taylor has been one of the most chanted on the streets of the United States since in May, following the death in police custody of the African American George Floyd, the agitation against uniformed brutality and racism spread.

Robert Schroeder, interim chief of the Louisville metropolitan police, explained on Wednesday night that a person was arrested for opening fire on the uniformed men. The two wounded were part of the units sent to dissolve a group of concentrates in the central zone. Eyewitnesses indicated that the shooting occurred after the uniformed officers fired pepper spray and rubber bullets. Many protesters carried weapons, something totally allowed in Kentucky.

Protest in Chicago after learning the news of the Breonna Taylor case. Photo: EFE.

By the time of Schroeder’s appearance, a while after the curfew came into effect at 9:00 p.m., the vast majority of the protesters had withdrawn, while the police maintained a great show of force.

They were not caught off guard because Mayor Greg Fischer, aware of the imminence of the decision, already ordered on Tuesday that the deployment be made and federal buildings protected.

Indignation, anger, tears and the feeling that blacks cannot even sleep peacefully at home erupted as soon as the exoneration of the three white officers – Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly and Detectives Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankinson – was released. for Taylor’s death.

There were some fires, clashes between protesters and police throughout the afternoon and early evening, and at least 50 were arrested.

Breonna Taylor’s name has been remembered again in several US cities such as Oakland. Photo: EFE.

As a kind of mockery, the grand jury indicted Detective Hankinson three counts of reckless negligence. But because of the projectiles that ended up in the apartment next to that of the deceased, who received six hits.

“There is no evidence that Hankinson’s bullets hit Taylor,” noted Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron. Cameron indicated that, from the tests, “Matingly and Cosgrove responded justifiably to protect themselves” once Taylor opened fire.

Ben Crump, a lawyer for the Taylor family, called the decision “outrageous and scandalous.” “A national disgrace,” said Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, which fights for the rights of non-whites. “The justice system has failed Breonna and everyone,” he tweeted.

The attorney general argued that the death of this young woman, turned into an injection of vindictive energy for the Black Lives Matter movement, is a tragedy, although not a crime. “We want the truth or the truth that satisfies our narrative,” he said.

He explained that his office was limited to collecting evidence for the Grand Jury to decide. “The justice of the mob is not justice,” stressed Cameron, a Republican, in language that echoed President Trump’s rhetoric in stigmatizing those who protest against racism. At the press conference, Cameron despised “celebrities, activists or influencers who have never set foot in this state and who tell us what to do.”

In his appearance before the press on Wednesday, Donald Trump only read a passage of what Cameron had previously said. No personal consideration, not a word of comfort to the Taylor family.

(With information from La Vanguardia )

“It is an uncomfortable truth that our nation and city owes much of its wealth to its role in the slave trade,” said London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan, amidst debate over the anti-racist movement taking direct action to eliminate icons of colonial barbarism.

On June 7, in Bristol, a city in southwest England, the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down and thrown into the Avon River.

The likenesses of Robert Milligan and Cecil Rhodes, colonists and slave traders, were defaced. “Son of slavery” and “colonialist profiteer,” were the labels added by protesters to a statue in Edinburgh of Robert Dundas, second Viscount of Melville.

In London, near Parliament, the phrase “He was a racist” appeared on the statue of Winston Churchill, so idealized for his role in World War II. On another Churchill monument in Prague, the same uncomfortable truth was noted.

Boris Johnson accused “violent extremists” of lashing out at time-honored figures. “We cannot now try to edit or censor our past,” he said, “We cannot pretend to have a different history.”

British Interior Minister Priti Patel stated that these acts of “vandalism” were “a distraction from the issues that people are protesting. While Montserrat Alvarez rightly retorted: “The exact opposite is true: this reflects conscious awareness of the real historical reasons” for the events.

In Brussels, Leopold II, majestic on horseback, in Trône Place, greeted the dawn with anti-racist graffiti added: “BLM” (Black Lives Matter) and a denunciation: “This man killed 15 million people,” referring to genocide in the so-called Belgian Congo. In Antwerp and other cities, Leopold II was covered with paint and humiliated.

The U.S. is once again divided, as if a new Civil War had broken out, this time in the symbolic field.

Trump has rejected an initiative to rename military bases named after Southern officers who fought ruthlessly in defense of slavery.

But the statues of Generals Wickham (Richmond, Virginia) and Lee (Montgomery, Alabama), Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States during the Civil War (Durham, North Carolina), and racist journalist and politician Carmack (Nashville, Tennessee) were toppled. In Portland, Oregon, the bronze image of Thomas Jefferson, who signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence and was the country’s third President, fell to the ground, its base spray-painted with the epitaph: “Slave Owner.” Several local authorities in the South have proposed removing provocative racist monuments.

The genocide of indigenous peoples following the supposed “discovery” rests on the shoulders of Christopher Columbus. His effigies rolled to the ground in Richmond and St. Paul, Minnesota. One of his statues was decapitated in Boston, Massachusetts, while another in Houston, Texas, was covered in red paint. In Miami, Columbus and Ponce de Leon, the “discoverer” of Florida, were labeled with slogans denouncing racism.

HBO Max withdrew from its schedule the famous and racist 1939 film, Gone with the Wind. Paramount studios cancelled the television show Cops, featuring U.S. police.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, called for the removal from the Capitol of 11 statues honoring Confederate military leaders.

At the same time, white supremacist groups are mobilizing to defend the Confederate flag, their idols of this era, and the primitive machismo of their armed heroes.

The entire phenomenon is worth studying. Monuments and symbols have been destroyed before in different countries, associated with different historical periods, but never before has an assault on the past been seen on such a scale.

It has been said that statues become invisible with time; that people get used to their presence and stop wondering about their meaning. But anti-racist protesters have seen them and interpreted their message. One certainty stands out: the current capitalist system is built on centuries of colonialism, discrimination, abuse and millions of dead.

Those who attacked these symbols understood this, as Umair Haque says, “Just as white Americans today are rich because their ancestors enslaved blacks, so too today white nations are rich because their ancestors conquered and enslaved a world.”

(Source: Granma)

The death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American, after a member of the police force kneed his neck to the ground for several minutes, has once again aroused the people’s anger. Over the week, protests have spread to cities across the country and led to curfews in many, with more than 4,000 arrests and the deployment of the National Guard in dozens of states. Being demanded is not only justice in this outrageous case of police brutality, but full respect for rights that have been violated and denied for many U.S. citizens, reflecting the frustration of social groups that have been marginalized for decades.

Racism, xenophobia, inequality and social injustice within U.S. society -paradoxically the richest country on the planet – are the real roots of the problem, the undisputed cause of the demonstrations. At this point, can anyone believe the imperial rhetoric that the United States is a paradigm of human rights or civil liberties worldwide?

The irrefutable facts include video of George Floyd repeating “I can’t breathe,” photographs of the violent clashes between police and protesters, images of two police cars intentionally driving into a crowd on a New York City street.

While the most serious disturbances reported in the country since 1968 rage, Sunday media reports indicated that President Donald Trump was taken to an emergency bunker, given protesters’ proximity to the White House, which, in an unprecedented event, had its lights turned off in the middle of the protests. In a tweet, Trump called the protesters “thugs” and threatened, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a message that Twitter flagged for inciting violence.

In fact, this is the approach of the current U.S. administration: incitement to violence. Last April 30, the Cuban embassy in Washington D.C. suffered a terrorist attack with the complicit silence of the White House and the State Department.

The increasingly hostile rhetoric of U.S. authorities, their hateful policies and discourse that promote division, their encouragement of violence by supremacist groups and individuals, have plunged the country into a climate of insecurity and intolerance. In such an environment, only peace, brotherhood and the best human values can lead us along a more civilized path. Only in this way could Martin Luther King’s dream become a reality, as thousands of protesters aspire.

(Source: Granma)

Black men with higher education degrees earn on average 29% less than whites, while the difference is 27% in the case of women, according to a study by the Brazilian research institute Locomotiva.

Among the 12.8 million unemployed today in the nation, 64.3% are Black or mixed race, Prensa Latina reported citing PNAD data.

The figures also show inequality in the business world: Blacks occupy only 4.7% of executive positions and 6.5% of management positions, according to a study of the 500 largest companies in Brazil, conducted by the Ethos Institute.

The 2019 Violence Atlas, published by the Institute of Applied Economic Research, in association with the National Public Security Forum, in Brazil, 65,602 intentional violent deaths were recorded in 2017. Of these, as reported by the Forum’s journal, more than 75% of the victims were Black.

The latest statistics released by the UN show that some 23,000 young Blacks die violently every year in Brazil, equivalent to one every 23 minutes.

The study also found that young Black women are more than twice as likely to be victims of homicide as young white women.

These are figures that, according to the UN, reveal “the weight of racism in the current scenario of violence in the country.” In this sense, a Black person is much more likely to be killed compared to other citizens, regardless of age, sex, schooling, or neighborhood of residence

Black youth and adolescents in Brazil are more likely today to commit suicide than whites, PL quotes from a study by the Ministry of Health, published by the G1 news site.

From 2012 to 2016, the suicide mortality rate for the Black population increased by 12%. For every ten suicides within this age group, six were of African descent.

These figures on violence in Brazil may get worse, given the more flexible regulations governing possession of weapons decreed by President Jair Bolsonaro, since more than 70% of the homicides (47,500) were carried out with firearms.

Black youth and adolescents in Brazil are more likely today to commit suicide than whites, PL quotes from a study by the Ministry of Health, published by the G1 news portal.

The national average of homicides is 31.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, much higher than a rate of 10 that is considered an “epidemic of violence” by the World Health Organization (WHO), according to ABC International.

Racial discrimination and inequality faced by the Black population, and particularly young Blacks, represent a “situation of structural discrimination, in which the rights of access to higher education, health, work, decent housing, among others, have been severely affected,” the Atlas of Violence states.

The mere presence of young Blacks in certain places frightens some, who immediately seek “help” from the police, limiting access to public recreation sites, a situation that creates great pressure on these young people and adolescents, whose opportunities for socialization are restricted as a result of discrimination and prejudice.

Police interventions in many of cases are violent, as well as unnecessary. The data is especially significant in terms of the young Black population, when it comes to police action, especially in favelas and suburbs, where they are sometimes massacred with impunity, under the pretext of a drug war.

Of the 99.5% of victims recorded as “homicides resulting from police intervention”, 79% were black and 75% young, according to data released by Amnesty International Brazil, showing the seriousness of the matter.

The violence that bleeds Brazil once again sets a historical record, hopefully, as the PT governments attempted, concrete steps will be taken to resolve such a painful situation.

(Granma)

Speaking before the forum in Geneva, the island’s permanent representative, Anayansi Rodrí­guez, recalled that despite having adopted the Durban Action Plan relating to the issue, racist and xenophobic practices still exist, which affect people across the planet, reported Prensa Latina.

“We are witnessing with concern how political parties and associations with an anti-immigrant, xenophobic and racist character are growing in developed countries,” she noted.

Millions of migrants are abused, discriminated against and marginalized every day in developed societies, while minorities such as the Romany and Travelers continue to receive humiliating treatment, added Rodrí­guez.

The island’s permanent representative also described the multiple cases in which the police have used lethal force against minorities and people of African descent as alarming.

Given this situation, Cuba has offered, and continues to offer, its solidary support to help ensure that the basic human rights of excluded sectors in various countries are respected, she noted.

Likewise, the Cuban official highlighted the importance of international cooperation toward achieving such aims as “the majority of victims and persons exposed to these practices belong to historically marginalized groups, including people of African descent, indigenous communities, women, migrants and ethnic minorities.”

The 33rd regular session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva is taking place September 13-30.

(Prensa Latina)