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Abstract
This paper details four encounters we experienced while traveling in Cuba as part of a multiethnic delegation of US social justice advocates. The encounters were linked by a common thread of race, which made them noteworthy and uncomfortably familiar to us as Black women. Since our return to the US, we have reflected on the four encounters and concluded that, as a collective, they reinforce a lesson and highlight a fundamental challenge that is at the core of the work of all critical multicultural and social justice educators.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The organization has chapters throughout the US and in some foreign countries including Cuba. This was the fourth exchange visit to Cuba sponsored by the organization. To protect the confidentiality of our travel companions, the organization will remain anonymous.
2 Except in direct quotations, we capitalize proper nouns (e.g., Blacks, Whites) and use lower case for adjectives (e.g., black and white Cubans) in reference to these ethnoracial groups.
3 Once the visit was underway, our organizer assigned a collection of short articles about Cuba. One had been written by the journalist in our delegation.
4 Credit/debit cards issued by non-US financial institutions (e.g. Canadian, European, etc.) are accepted in Cuba. There were two Cuban currencies: the peso used by Cuban citizens; and the ‘cuc’ or convertible peso used by foreign nationals. The exchange rate for the latter was one US dollar to 87 cucs.
5 Fidel Castro served first as Prime Minister and later as President of Cuba from 1959 until 2008. Upon Fidel’s retirement, his brother, Raúl Castro, served as head of state/President from 2008 until 2018. On 18 April 2018, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez became President of Cuba.
6 Categories include: family visits; official business of the US government, foreign governments, and certain intergovernmental organizations; journalistic activity; professional research and professional meetings; educational activities including people-to-people activities; religious activities; public performances, clinics, workshops, athletic and other competitions, and exhibitions; support for the Cuban people; humanitarian projects; activities of private foundations or research or educational institutes; exportation, importation, or transmission of information or information materials; and certain authorized export transactions. US Department of State restrictions for travel to Cuba have tightened since our visit.
7 Our primary tour guide frequently referred to the ‘head’ (Holquín; Santiago de Cuba) versus the ‘tail’ (Havana; Pinar del Rio) of the island. The terms are a well-known analogy used by Cubans in reference to the ‘crocodile’ shape of the island.
8 It was later clarified for us that the Cuban government does keep such statistics.
9 All names are pseudonyms except where we reference ourselves or public figures in Cuban or US society.
10 A paladar is a privately-owned eating establishment. Typically, the delegation, along with tour guides and bus driver, were the sole patrons in the paladares we visited.
11 This admonition had been made famous nearly 50 years prior. See: Baldwin (Citation1963).
12 The US economic embargo was referred to as an economic blockade by Cuban people with whom we interacted. Indeed, this latter terminology was adopted by some members of our delegation.
13 Here we use black in lower case and synonymously with the term “dark/darker-skinned” in acknowledgment of and respect for the reality that some Cubans (as was explained to us by our ICAP hosts) do not identify with or accept the notion of racial blackness. For interested readers, discussions of the concept of “negritude” may be helpful in understanding distinctions and nuances made by afro-descendientes throughout Latin America and the Caribbean vis-à-vis notions of racial blackness as a salient descriptor in one's personal identity. This contrasts with how the term “Black” is understood and embraced (e.g., Black Lives Matter) as a salient personal and group identity by the collective of persons of African lineage in the United States.
14 It is beyond the scope of our discussion to review this massive literature base, though we hasten to note the CRT corpus now includes an edited handbook (Lynn & Dixson, Citation2013) along with at least two retrospective reviews (Dixson & Rousseau Anderson, Citation2018; Ledesma & Calderón, Citation2015) offering evaluations of CRT as an analytic framework.
15 Ivan's questions carried a racist subtext of Blacks as a singularly-focused monolith. We found this assaultive and offensive particularly in the context of this delegation of social justice advocates. A “remedy” for us, as targets of Ivan's “inquisitiveness”, may have manifested in his acknowledging his error in assuming we would necessarily want to supply him with “diversity” readings. Also, by initiating conversations and posing questions around topics other than race and ‘diversity’, Ivan would have demonstrated his awareness (if not respect) for the fact that although our scholarship focuses on critical multicultural education, our interests and knowledge do extend beyond that realm.
16 The actual harm done to targets of racism has consistently been taken by the courts to be less onerous than the possibility that the perpetrator may not have set out to cause said harm (See: Lawrence, Citation1995). ‘Harm’ typically connotes physical violence, but here it references instances of psychic discomfort we experienced in constantly having Ivan’s race-based queries directed specifically at us as Black women.
17 The issue of maintaining peace within the delegation presented one of us with an experience that is uncomfortably familiar to all three of us as Black women. It is marked by tensions that emerge from the intersections of race and gender oppression. One day during the trip second author, Katherine, sat with a group of delegation members over lunch and was invited to share her opinion in the discussion. Katherine's remarks were directed at the US electorate and the problematic state of race broadly, yet at the conclusion of the conversation Tammy, a White female delegation member, began sobbing. Subsequently, leaders of the delegation (neither of whom were privy to the incident) requested to meet with Katherine and asked that she extend an apology to Tammy. Their reasoning was that Tammy had been upset by Katherine's words and that in order to maintain peace within the delegation, an apology to Tammy from Katherine was warranted. Explaining that she said nothing to Tammy directly, and that she was unclear as to why Tammy had become tearful, Katherine declined unequivocally to apologize. For Katherine, the incident represented a feature of white fragility (DiAngelo, 2018) and it troubled her that delegation leaders had automatically assumed she was at fault based solely on Tammy's presentation of tears.
18 Of course, we would be remiss not to acknowledge that our tour guides may have been reluctant and disinclined to broach this topic because of the economic relationship between them and US tourist groups like ours. To broach a topic of this heft may have been perceived by them as unnecessarily placing in jeopardy our presentation of a substantial gratuity to them at the conclusion of our tour.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Patricia L. Marshall
Patricia L. Marshall, EdD; Professor, Department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences, College of Education, North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC, USA
Katherine E. L. Norris
Katherine E. L. Norris, EdD; Professor; Early and Middle Grades Education; West Chester University; West Chester, PA.
Aaliyah Baker
Aaliyah Baker, PhD; Associate Professor; College of Education and Leadership; Cardinal Stritch University; Milwaukee, WI.