[Marxism] Vanilla and chocolate. so what?

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There is often an unusually high level of interest when anything
is posted to Marxmail about the Catholic Church or about gays in
Cuba and their vicissitudes over the years. Of similar interest,
to my way of thinking, some discussion here in the Cuban media
of relationships between people of mixed racial backgrounds and
so this was sent out earlier today to the CubaNews list and I'm
hopeful Marxmail readers will also find it of interest.

Relationships between individuals of different colors is a topic
of such interest here in Cuba that it was the subject of a full-
page feature in last Sunday's edition of JUVENTUD REBELDE, where
social trends are often presented and discussed in considerable
detail. CubaNews is extremely pleased to present this analysis
which I'm sure readers will find of considerable interest. You
can see the photos as well as the original at the web-page where
this essay is posted.


Walter Lippmann
=================================================================

Juventud Rebelde
Sunday, October 23, 2005

Vanilla and chocolate? so what?

Alina Perera Robbio, Julieta García Ríos and Luis López Viera
Photographs: Roberto Suárez

-------------------------------------------
A CubaNews translation
Edited by Walter Lippmann
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs265.html
-------------------------------------------

She's a blue-eyed 33-year-old blonde. Her name is Amarilys Ceballo,
and she intercepted us during our tour around the streets of Havana.
We made our intentions clear to her: we're after the controversial,
passion-unleashing topic of couples whose members have different skin
color. Our curiosity stemmed from the perception that the number of
'mixed' couples has increased in the last few years.

After we shared with the young woman our impression that today's
generations are breaking ranks with certain prejudices of times gone
by, her confession, just like that of many others with a marked
interest in the subject, was swift:

?When I came from Las Villas, in 1989, to live in Havana, some people
used to say unpleasant things to me because my partner was black. On
one occasion, when I was getting off a bus, someone insinuated that I
was a stained whitey. On another occasion, an old lady gave me a
disdainful look. But, fortunately, I believe things have changed
pretty much ever since. Now you get to see more couples like mine; it
has become an every-day thing?.

On another corner of the city, Andrés Estrada, a dark-skinned
28-year-old, comments: "Nowadays prejudice has no such influence
anymore. I think that love, and whatever each person feels, is what
matters. I've had white partners, and I can't deny there are some
people around who have taboos, some that even believe that only
fair-skinned foreign women like black men. At any rate, I guess the
issue is different today, without so many constraints, and the most
prejudiced are the old ones, people from another period, since it is
very difficult to change their views. The average Cuban has evolved a
little, although not as much as they're expected. Some bad traces are
yet to be removed?.

Nereida Borrero, a 35-year-old woman of mixed race, says: ?I no
longer see the kind of racism that was so common years ago, nor so
much ignorance about this issue. I see people are happier now; only a
few still dwell on the color thing. It seems people are focusing
their attention on more important things. I know some mixed couples
and they have never told me they had problems in the streets or with
their families?.

Ismaray González, 20, is white, whereas her boyfriend Nerse Peñalver,
27, is a green-eyed ?jabao?, and they have not had any trouble. They
see themselves as a loving couple and say they are praised for it by
many. They have never been frowned upon nor rejected by their
families. They think that when it comes to love there's no accounting
for taste, and that it's only normal for blacks and whites to mix. In
any event, they acknowledge many people are still biased, regardless
of their age and race.

And in this last regard they are right. In our urban journey we met
Mileidi García, a 19-year-old white woman, who states she is against
mixed couples. She doesn't like it; she thinks it's an ugly thing.
And she believes "a white woman with a black man is uglier than a
black woman with a white man?.

At another time during our tour, Alain Gutiérrez, 30, white, told us
that racially mixed couples are totally fine with him: ?What's wrong
about some people liking chocolate while others like vanilla? Despite
the fact race-related prejudice has decreased a great deal, there's
still some work to be done in order to do away with it for good?.

With these and many other opinions in our bag, we seek the experts
who might give us the insights we can use in support of or against
our perception that young people no longer heed the long-standing
notion that "it's best to stick with one's own kind?.

BREAKING MOLDS

We first visited the Demographic Study Center of the University of
Havana, where we found Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos Espiñeira, who holds
Doctorates in both Economic Sciences and Demography. After
contributing several interesting ideas about the topic at hand,
Espiñeira went on to goad us by playing "Devil's advocate": ?The
first question to be asked, so that we can have an hypothesis, is
whether the appearance of mixed couples is important or not; whether
the issue is worth tackling just because there are many such couples
around??.

We think it is, if only because of something he had said moments
before: ?What has happened (what we see) is the rupture of people's
conservative cultural views as a consequence of their very social
progress and achievements. This rupture is much more unequivocal
among the youth, who are less biased by previous models?.

Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos has always been attracted to the skin-color
subject on account of its being "unheard-of" in Cuban demography,
since, until very recently, there were no charted figures to describe
it.

According to this expert, the issue is so complex that scholars
worldwide refer to the existence of over 180 types of skin color.
Four well-defined categories are said to be present in Cuba: white,
black, mixed or brown, and yellow.

?Can we talk about a noticeable mixture of those types of skin color
among the younger couples?

?I would not say it's noticeable. I'd say instead that at a conscious
level we can see many more mixed couples than before.

?I became a teenager around the year 1978, and indeed, in the late
1970s and early 1980s it was much less common to see mixed couples
than it is now. It is a sign that young people today have stopped
carrying those age-old cultural burdens. I don't think my maternal
grandmother, who was from Spain, would admit to that. She used to
say, 'It's best to stick with one's own kind?, a phrase on which she
pinned all her culture and knowledge.?

?In our conversations with mixed couples we have sometimes found some
history of rejection in their social milieu, some traumatic
experience?

?It's not simple. Civil or common-law marriage is a space where you
negotiate your way of living (including which side of the bed each
will take), your way of thinking, and when it comes to a mixed
couple, it involves human groups of different skin color, who have
been through a number of quite diverse life situations.

?We all start from what we were taught since childhood, and something
you get to learn soon is a tendency to discriminate against anything
different. First of all, you discriminate against for fear of the
difference, of what is not like you. When the Spaniards arrived in
America, the first thing they wondered was whether the natives had
souls, and there was some debate as well about whether black Africans
had them too. They (the Spaniards) were simply reacting to their fear
of what's different, and imposed themselves by force.

?The human being usually reacts to the unknown by feeling scared,
which every now and then complicates the interrelation of a couple
one of whose members. In the case of our country, one must generally
move to the other member's family house to live with them. That's
where a number of unavoidable exogenous elements start to play a role
and put some 'noise' into the relationship. And it is good to point
out that such human conflicts happen not only to mixed couples?.

COME HELL OR HIGH WATER Niurka Núnez afirma que desde el punto de
vista de las investigaciones antropológicas, el tema de las
relaciones interraciales de pareja resulta clave para conocer hasta
qué punto puede haber estereotipos y prejuicios raciales.

It is true that the number of couples of people with different skin
color has increased, says Niurka Núñez, assistant researcher at the
Center of Anthropology of the Ministry of Science, Technology and the
Environment. ?It is reflected in our research work, in addition to
being a fact we can see with the naked eye?.

In her opinion, the causes are related to the evolution of relations
between parents and children that has taken place in recent years.
She says, ?It's a worldwide phenomenon we see in today's societies.
Nowadays our children, once they turn into teenagers, start taking
very different paths from those of their parents. Now there is no
pressure like there was in my mother's generation, a time when a
given couple had no chance at all if their parents were opposed to
the relationship.?

It can be denied ?asserts the anthropologist? that among Cubans,
outside the field of intimate relations, we are all alike, but in the
case of a couple's space for a relationship all prejudices come to
the surface, so much so that from the viewpoint of anthropological
research the topic of racially-mixed couples is key to understanding
the extent of racial stereotypes and bias.

?Why the rather widespread idea that, if you choose a white person to
be your couple you "move forward"; however, when you choose a brown
or black person you "fall behind??

?That dates back to a few centuries. A slave system was implemented
in Cuba, based on which blacks were objects and for which the
thinkers of those times came up with a whole ideology to justify such
an inhuman regime. When the French Revolution's ideas of liberty,
equality and fraternity began arriving on the island, the Cuban
intelligentsia from that moment on were faced with a process of acute
contradictions. They accepted the ideas of the Enlightenment but were
unable to include black people as human beings since the whole
economic system built up on the foundations of slavery would have
otherwise collapsed.

?In the middle of the great contradiction, their idea was to justify
everything on the grounds that black people were despicable?.
Unfortunately, according to the researcher, such philosophy was
passed on from one generation to the next and has remained until the
present in multiple forms, with dissimilar shades, at times explicit,
at other times disguised. That was one of the major challenges
undertaken by the Revolution on January 1st., 1959.

?All the problems notwithstanding ?says Niurka Núñez?, Cuba has made
enormous progress in the real integration of people of all colors.
Since the first moments of the year 1959, Fidel in his public
speeches launched an attack on racial discrimination, and in practice
eliminated every old interdiction to the collective enjoyment of all
things by people of different skin color: recreational centers,
beaches, schools.

?Another factor used to dismantle the system of segregation was the
creation of boarding schools and plans of every kind whereby people
would stay lodged together in the same place for months and even
years. As part of that process, the black and mixed population became
more aware of the fact that their status was not different from
others, and they also had equal rights. It is something that
distinctly marked people's ways of thinking.

?Hence, for those of us who were born after the Revolution, for the
vast majority ?with the exception of those under very negative
familial influence?, being white, or black, or mixed means the same
as being fat, short, tall, ugly or handsome. Skin color is simply a
not-important physical trait. In the same manner that you when in
primary school would refer to the fat girl in fourth grade, you would
to the black boy in third grade, with neither a shade of meaning nor
racial undertone. That's how it used to be during your first years as
a child, until you became aware of other things. I knew, for
instance, when I had my first mulatto boyfriend, that making a choice
was not as simple as it seemed, since such decisions were faced with
a lot of prejudice and stereotyping?.

The anthropologist does not overlook the fact that the most difficult
years of the Special Period witnessed certain racial-like
considerations which were brought forth by a material crisis that led
to the splitting of spiritual values. This highlighted some
discrepancies between the traditionally well-off sectors and the most
vulnerable ones which, for well-known historical reasons, account for
a high percentage of non-white individuals. Foto: Angelito Baldrich

Nevertheless, the current rise in the number of young mixed couples
is proof that such youth, rebellious by nature, have not fallen into
the trap of false differences. ?Prohibitions no longer work ?says the
anthropologist?; you can try and keep your children from making a
given selection for a partner and you can give them many words of
advice, but in the long run they will do as they like because the
young both in our country and around the world have attained a great
deal of independence?.

THE VIEWS OF A HUNDRED YOUTHS

Encouraged by our interest, the research team from Juventud Rebelde
conducted a journalistic probe in the capital city between September
27 and October 4, 2005. A hundred young people, ages 15 to 30, were
approached at random and gave their opinions about the topic of our
work.

They were all students of pre-university schools, technical schools,
and the university, as well as workers from various spheres of Cuban
society. They reside in the municipalities La Habana del Este, La
Habana Vieja, Plaza de la Revolución, Diez de Octubre, San Miguel del
Padrón, La Lisa, Arroyo Naranjo and Cerro.

Muchos jóvenes sustentan el criterio de que las fronteras entre lo
deseado en cuestiones del amor y lo que la sociedad acepta se van
diluyendo cada vez más.Generally speaking, the interviewees stated
that, at the present time any relationship between people of
different skin color is deemed normal. They accept such relationships
and emphasize that a physical trait is not what defines the essence,
success or failure of an intimate liaison. They state that the line
between one's will in matters of love and what society condones is
increasingly thin. Sixty-eight (68) % of the sample ascribe the
number of mixed couples we frequently see around to the overcoming of
taboos and prejudices that for so long prevailed in society. Others
in this group affirm that concepts against racial discrimination have
been imposing themselves all along the revolutionary process.

Forty-five (45) % ascribe what we see today to the progress achieved
by mankind, whereas 40 % believes there are no totally 'pure'
families anymore, since a mixture always takes place in any one of a
generation, and that such phenomenon tends to increase.

On the other hand, thirty-six (36) % state that the patterns that
work in a couple's relationship have changed in our country, and go
on to say that there has been a breakup in traditional schemes, in
such a way that many youths impose their preference despite
prejudice.

Another cornerstone of the survey shows that fifty-eight (58) % of
the interviewees have said the relationship of a mixed couple fails
when family criteria come into play, since very often parents and
specially grandparents try to stop the relationship from occurring.
They say girls suffer more from such opposition.

However, thirty-four (34) % of those who participated in the dialogue
with Juventud Rebelde think that families today put up less
resistance to "combined" couples. They say that they give priority to
whoever their children bring home not on the basis of that person's
skin color but on how "hardworking", "studious", "decent", and
"respectful" he or she might be.

WHAT IF ALL ROADS LEAD TO THE MIXTURE?

When asked such a question, most young people in the capital city
said they were not concerned about it. What does worry them is that
the current biases should be maintained, let alone increased.

More than a few regarded such possibility as illogical since the
human race has been steadily waiving many prejudices along the
centuries, a sign that other restraining walls are bound to fall down
in the future.

Anthropologist Niurka Núñez points out that the "mixing" will
continue paving the way for a mixed-race future, in her opinion a
foretoken of full-fledged racial interrelations in the island.

Demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos, in turn, reminds us that
mixture is necessary because the Cuban nation cannot be understood
without any of its underlying roots: white, black, Asian?: ?There's a
very interesting scene in Humberto Solás's film Cecilia Valdés, where
a Catholic procession is coming down a street while an African
procession is coming from the opposite direction. The time comes when
both become intermingled with one another, and the Catholic chant
melts into an embrace with the black one, and vice versa. It's
people, on both sides, identifying themselves as a nation.

Our appreciation to Sara Cotarelo, from Juventud Rebelde's research
team, for her valuable contribution to this work.



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