Caught in the Middle

In the racial terrain of twenty-first-century United States, Afro-Cubans, like other Afro-Latinos, not only negotiate what it means to be black and African American in the United States but must simultaneously grapple with the many meanings that hide within the single term “Latino.” The respondents report being frequently questioned about their identities, and this questioning is related to the fact that, like others with perceptibly mixed identities, they do not fit nicely in census boxes. Yet, they are not allowed to be “more than black,” as Cuban patriot Jose Martí had envisioned, because their blackness constructs them as the “ultimate other” (Gosin 2010; Noguera 2003, 193). Their identities are called into question also, because black and Latino identities are often viewed as discrete. The questioning of their identities by people who are simply curious, as well as the “micro-level rejections” they receive from others who feel they are “too black” or “not black enough,” occur within a white elite dominance system that continues to operate from a politics of division.³ This system emphasizes strict divisions between whiteness and blackness, and it attempts also to create other discrete racial categories.

Mariela’s and Caridad’s cases provide illustration. Mariela is a well-traveled dancer who moved from Cuba to Miami in 1991. Every day, she encounters fellow Cubans who assume she is African American and address her in their accented English:

When I go to the market, people ask me if I am American. Other Cubans do in English.… It’s the way I look or something.… It’s funny—they come with a funny accent, “May I help you?” You know? I know it’s an English-speaking country, but most of the time they speak Spanish in the stores, so you know, why me? But they were singling out the fact that I was black.⁴

Caridad, who was thirty-six at the time I interviewed her and who came to the United States in 1980 as a child, similarly recalls being misunderstood, even rejected by other Cubans in Miami. In grade school, her schoolmates did not accept her as either African American or Cuban. Caridad was caught in the middle—among white Cubans she stood out because of her color and among African Americans she stood out because of her language:

I couldn’t talk to them, to the black American kids. Because I had no ways of communicating [because of limited English proficiency].… For the born Cubans I was the black, you know, the black student or the black girl. For the black students, I was not a true black. I was not a true “sister” so to speak. And they always, they never understood why it is that I hung around people who didn’t look like me.

Like many of the other Afro-Cubans interviewed in this book, these women found, in navigating the racial climate of the United States, that they do not fully fit into groups that they might perceive themselves as belonging to, such as Cuban, black, or Latino groups, because of how rigidly other U.S. Americans interpret these categories. Mariela offsets her annoyance at the predicament of being singled out because of her blackness in her activist work by educating people about the importance of black culture and religion in Cuba. Caridad defaulted to hanging out with other Cubans because of the language barrier, but as her English proficiency improved, she was offered more choices. Today, she is married to a man from Spain and has a very diverse group of friends. Mariela’s and Caridad’s cases illustrate that finding community in this U.S. context can be difficult. However, Afro-Cubans locate ways to insert themselves into U.S. society—such as directly challenging anti-blackness as Mariela did, or, like Caridad, they use their status of being “in between” to traverse various communities.

When discussing scenarios where they have found a welcome and created spaces to belong, the Afro-Cubans in the study help break down boundaries as they illuminate the overlaps where coalitions between groups such as African Americans and Latinos are possible (Gosin 2010). At the same time, they put forth direct challenges to rigid racial notions and anti-black attitudes as they embrace their blackness—but with a Cuban emphasis. Previous research on black immigrants has underscored a tendency among those of the first generation to dissociate from African Americans and black identities in order to avoid being stigmatized, yet here we see a different outcome. We might expect Afro-Cubans to work especially hard to distance themselves from blackness because of their status as phenotypically black but ethnically Latino and because they come from a country with a color-blind racial ideology into a context where they perceive their co-nationals to be more anti-black than in their home country. Instead, what we see is a sense of pride in both their blackness and in the Cuban national idealization of racial fraternity.⁵ But in their deployment of Cuban racial democracy idealism, they capture the original philosophical intent, to challenge, rather than excuse, anti-black racism.⁶ Drawing upon their Cuban identities, they also insert themselves into a larger African diasporic community to challenge moves made by some African Americans to limit what it means to be black. In their challenge to the idea that because they are black they cannot also be “Latino,” they allow for a larger critique of anti-black racism in Latin America and the ways white supremacist notions from Latin America and the United States intersect and intervene in the lives of Afro-Latino immigrants. Thus, as they move between and challenge the boundaries set up between the various communities they inhabit, they enact shifting identity processes not unlike those of phenotypically ambiguous mestizos and multiracials. Yet their manipulations of their multiplicity suggest not a simplistic exaltation of multiplicity or the call to get rid of or expand categories. When thinking about the way race functions in the United States today, we can gain from looking at Afro-Cuban negotiations of their placement “in between,” because they allow an intervention that provides a conscious challenge to the anti-black notions foundational to binaries of worthy citizenship.

Why Racial Multiplicity, Alone, Is Not Enough

Despite a long history of racial mixture in the United States, many everyday U.S. Americans continue to believe that black and white represent an “essential and unbridgeable difference” (Bailey 2007, 158). Indeed, the United States has worked hard to maintain distinct racial categories in the service of preserving the power of whites (Davis 2001; Omi and Winant 1994). From the “one-drop rule” to the enforcement of miscegenation laws until 1967, the United States has enforced these divisions and constructed race as a simple dichotomy: full (white) citizens, and black/“Others” (Bailey 2007; Davis 2001; C. E. Rodríguez 2000).⁷ Because of the importance of preserving white racial purity, people with known African ancestry have historically been considered black regardless of phenotype. As such, being “in between” was made problematic. Black/white biracial individuals would be subject to great scrutiny as whites looked to racial cues such as skin color, hair texture, and facial features to ascertain racial difference. This scrutiny belies both a fascination with racial mixture as well as the repulsion of it (Joseph 2013).

Significantly, Americans today are more frequently identifying with multiple racial categories; the total multiple-race population grew nationwide from 6.8 million in 2000 to 9 million in 2010 (Jones and Bullock 2012). This illustrates a major shift among the population in that interracial marriage and relations have become more acceptable. Yet, despite these trends, a common denominator of the multiracial experience is that people are constantly questioned about their identities because other U.S. Americans exhibit a strong desire to place them in distinct racial categories according to “normative” phenotypic distinctions (Brunsma 2006; Deters 1997; Harris and Sims 2002; Jones 2011, 147–148; Khanna and Johnson 2010). U.S. Census categorizations have changed over time, illustrating that, in actuality, racial hierarchies and identifications have never been truly fixed in the United States. Still, the white/black paradigm has been resilient, and there is no category for an intermediary racial categorization, such as “multiracial” or “mulatto,” as there is in other countries such as Cuba and Brazil.⁸

Although multiracial individuals now have more of a voice or, at least, presence in the United States, the color line has been more resistant to shifting for people who are phenotypically black (J. Lee and Bean 2004). If one looks like the surrounding community’s idea of “black,” an alternative identity (such as Latino or biracial) is often not accepted in U.S. society (Khanna and Johnson 2010; Waters 1996). Post-1965 black immigrants soon learn that there is often an expectation that they choose between their multiple identities and to privilege an identity as “black” over their national identities (Bailey 2000, 2001; Gosin 2017; Waters 1999, 2001; Landale and Oropesa 2002; Torres-Saillant 2010). Today, the population of U.S. Afro-Latinos of various national origins—Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, among others—has grown, making them more visible in some regions of the country. Yet, in many other regions, an African American speaking unaccented English continues to be the prevailing social norm of what is “black.” Thus, when a person who is visibly black manifests an accent or other markers of foreignness, their blackness is often “othered” (Jiménez Román and Flores 2010; Torres-Saillant 2010).⁹ In part due to this othering, black immigrants engage with race, ethnicity, and identity in ways similar to multiracials in that, in many contexts, they are constantly asked to explain their identities. But they differ from multiracials because while phenotypically they are assumed to be “black,” the combination of their blackness and “foreignness” prompts questions about their identities (Bailey 2000, 2001; Gosin 2017; Jiménez Román and Flores 2010; Landale and Oropesa 2002; Waters 1999, 2001). As blacks and foreigners, black immigrant positioning provides potential for disrupting (black) native/foreigner divides. Further, when they affirm their multiplicity, black immigrants create a space for troubling U.S. discomfort with racial/cultural ambiguities.

Disrupting the racial boundaries put in place in U.S. society is important because these boundaries exist to empower whites, in part by giving them control to dictate who is most worthy to belong and “who goes where.” Yet an uncritical celebration of multiplicity or of racial/cultural hybridity as the solution for racial essentialisms in multicultural societies would be problematic (Gosin 2016; Puri 2004; Jiménez Román 2005). Such celebratory language comes through in U.S.-based assertions that, due to mid-twentieth-century demographic change and its greater diversity, the nation is becoming “postrace” (Bonilla-Silva 2010; D. Rodríguez 2014). This would mean that compared to the pre–civil rights era, racial discrimination and other forms of racism have greatly diminished and racial distinctions between groups of people are no longer consequential. Racially charged events in the first decades of the twenty-first century make it clear that overt forms of racism continue to plague the nation. But in the blinded eyes of proponents of the idea that we are postrace, people who fall between black and white, such as multiracial individuals, get made into exceptional symbols of progress, “a bridge between estranged communities, a healing facilitator of an imagined racial utopia, even the embodiment of that utopia” (Joseph 2013, 2). As Ralina Joseph (2013) argues, in the supposed “postracial” moment, the “exceptional multiracial” is able to help us achieve a postracial ideal because she or he transcends blackness—if she or he is not quite white, she or he at least avoids the heavy sanctions of blackness, thereby allowing a space to deny the reality of such sanctions. Such an assumption clearly leaves whiteness atop the national racial hierarchy while continuing to position blackness as undesirable and subject to denigration.

The desire to “transcend” blackness also appears in Latin American racial democracy discourses. In Latin American societies that define themselves as racial democracies, it is argued that class, rather than race, is the basis for social stratification.¹⁰ Because of the prevalence of racial mixing in the population, racial categories are also viewed as no longer existing.¹¹ Racial categorization paradigms in Latin America are generally more fluid than U.S. paradigms because there are many intermediary categories between “black” and “white,” but a “pigmentocracy” exists. As in the “not quite white” cases considered in the U.S. context, the whiter one is, the greater is one’s claim to honor and privilege, leaving whiteness atop the hierarchy. Darker-skinned people identified with African or Indian groups continue to be stigmatized (Duany 2005; C. E. Rodríguez 2000; Sawyer and Paschal 2009). Scholarship on blackness in Latin America has duly criticized racial democracy claims, pointing out that while they supposedly celebrate racial difference, these discourses have ironically worked to obscure the racism that exists, even enabling the appropriation of indigenous land and the exploitation of indigenous and black labor (Puri 2004; Rama 1996; Telles 2006). The celebration of racial mixing simply idealizes another form of biological race (“mixed race”) and thus does not truly get rid of racial essentialism. What comes from celebrating any biological race (or even mixtures acknowledged as “cultural”) as an ideal or sign of progress “is not the recognition and proclamation of ethnic difference or of a heterogeneous identity but the Eurocentric glorification of a cultural sameness, or similarity in identity” (Martínez-Echazábal 1998, 23).¹² In Latin American countries where celebrated mulattos/mestizos are considered a symbol of progress, the white element is often viewed as redeeming or “neutralizing” the black, improving societies by whitening them. All the while a structure of white domination is perpetuated as blackness is treated as something to be transcended or escaped from (Aja 2016; Duany 2005; Joseph 2013; Martínez-Echazábal 1998).

In accordance with current moves within Afro-Latino scholarship to underscore the need to understand Afro-Latinidad as a product of the movements of culture, people, and politics across national boundaries (Rivera-Rideau et al. 2016), I place the scholarly critique of racial democracy in Latin America in conversation with critiques of current manifestations of U.S.-based color blindness and racial progress narratives. The United States has derived specious political comfort from the presence of those who are “between” white and black, such as multiracials but also Latinos and Asians. Moreover, some scholars have interpreted the growing reluctance of individuals to choose traditional racial categories as evidence of racial progress in U.S. society, arguing that racial/ethnic boundaries have become more permeable (Alba and Nee 2005; Fernandez 2008; Hollinger 1995; J. Lee and Bean 2004). Other scholars interpret the high percentage of Latinos specifically identifying as white or “other” on the census as evidence that they are adopting a progressive color-blind racial ideology, deliberately downplaying the significance of race (Yancey 2003). Yet this interpretation does not take into account, as Julie A. Dowling argues in her research on how Mexicans in Texas self-identify, that the “the situational use of labels for both Mexican Americans and immigrants often reflects strategies for dealing with discrimination” (2014, 121).¹³ Thus, rather than race “not mattering” as is the case for white European immigrants, for whom race and ethnic identity can be purely symbolic (Waters 1990), racial identification for people of color, such as the people of Mexican origin in her study, she argues, is neither optional nor costless (Dowling 2014, 4). In a similar fashion, I contend that the choices Afro-Cubans (and other people deemed in between) make in regards to race and ethnic identification, wherein they take on multiple identities, is not necessarily evidence of racial “progress.” Rather, because these choices are often in response to questioning that tells them they are not viewed as normative, their manipulations of their identities often work as evidence of just how pertinent race and racism continues to be in their lives.

Thinking about how Afro-Cubans negotiate their social environment as they confront rejections from people of various backgrounds is useful for gaining a better understanding of the U.S. racial climate today and the power dynamics that preserve the U.S. white/black binary (and the other binaries of worthy citizenship) despite the nation’s increased ethnic/racial diversity. Such power dynamics persist even in areas where the population of white individuals has decreased. When Afro-Cubans experience micro-level rejections from white Cubans, African Americans, and other Latinos, these acts, though not communicated by dominant actors, grow from a culture of white supremacy (Gosin 2017, 11). Anti-black prejudices that developed in the United States (and in Latin America) are the legacies of white colonization. Moreover, “In societies that privilege whiteness and denigrate blackness, identities are scrutinized by people of color in order to distance themselves from stigmatized identities or conversely, to hold fast to those identities in the interest of political solidarity” (Gosin 2017, 23; see also Dowling 2014, 115). When Afro-Latinos embrace their multiplicity, it challenges a politics of division that requires the separating out of identities, while also resisting the hierarchization of white over black. I explore the complex Afro-Cuban negotiations of their “in-between” status next, focusing on Afro-Cuban relations with white Cubans in Miami first, wherein they draw on Cuban idealizations of racial democracy in ways dramatically different from their white peers, to contest white Cuban racism and reclaim a Cuban identity. I then examine their interactions with African Americans and ways they negotiate what it means to be “black” in both cities. I conclude with a discussion about Afro-Cuban interactions with people of Mexican descent in the Los Angeles context as they negotiate a pan-ethnic “Latino” identification.¹⁴

Challenging White Cuban Hegemony in Miami and Reclaiming a Cuban Identity

Lucy came to the United States in the early 1990s and currently lives in Los Angeles. She idealizes Miami, a city she has spent time in, because even major retailers like Target sell “Croquetas Cubanas” and “Vaca Frita.”¹⁵ Josué, who came to the United States on a homemade raft in 1994, similarly has fond memories about the comfort he felt upon arrival in Miami, where he now lives, because of its resemblance to Cuba. “I will tell you that I feel that Miami is like Cuba but with everything [such as basic material needs and luxuries] that is missing from the island,” he says. Like Lucy and Josué, some interviewees idealized Miami because the strong Cuban presence allows a cultural familiarity they cannot find in other U.S. cities. The ethnic composition of the Latino population has been changing, but at more than 50 percent of the Latino population, Cubans still hold power and cultural influence.¹⁶ As a result, Miami continues to be a mecca for Cuban refugees. However, while Cubans of all colors often pass through Miami at some point (as they did during the 1980 Mariel exodus and 1994 Balsero crisis), the population of Afro-Cubans there has remained quite small. Given the current small numbers of Afro-Cubans and the fact that only a small percentage of the Cubans who arrived before 1980 were black, the Miami exile community continues to be recognized primarily as white (Ackerman and Clark 1995; Aja 2016). Among the interviewees for this study, more than half had met some forms of rejection from white Cubans in the area. Thus, despite the idealization of Miami by some of the interviewees because of its Cuban flavor, many Afro-Cubans find themselves grappling to feel completely at home in Miami, and some decide not to stay.

The experiences of Afro-Cubans in the United States are distinct from those of other Afro-Latinos because of the differential racialization of Cuban immigration waves (Aja 2016; Gosin 2010). Because Cuban exiles in Miami fleeing the Castro regime before 1980 have been “whitened,” Afro-Cubans coming to the United States after 1959 must negotiate their identities in reference to U.S. Cuban whiteness, as well as in reference to Miami Cuban definitions of proper exile politics (Aja 2016; López 2012; Portes and Stepick 1994). Moreover, as Mariela alluded to earlier, even at the basic level of identification, Afro-Cubans must work to be regarded as Cuban. Given Miami’s demographics and the presence of African Americans and other black immigrants, it is perhaps not surprising that upon seeing a black person in Miami, one would not immediately think he or she was from Cuba. However, despite demographic realities, many of the respondents viewed being questioned about their identities or being viewed as not Cuban by white Cubans in Miami not as an innocent mistake but rather as a statement about the worthlessness and noncharacter of blackness (Gosin 2017). In Chapter 2, we heard from some of the interviewees that arrived during Mariel, who expressed their dismay about meeting rejection when they first arrived from los antiguos—Cubans who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s. In this expanded discussion, we hear from some of the same respondents, as well as others, whose stories illustrate that the tense relations between Afro-Cubans and white Cubans in Miami are not a thing of the past.

Carlos, a very dark-skinned man living in Miami who arrived in the 1990s, captures a dynamic by which, as Alan Aja (2016) explains, white Cubans exercise cultural hegemony over the Spanish language. It is perceived that black Miamians are supposed to speak English, and thus other Latinos (whites and mestizos) are viewed as having “ownership” of Spanish. Carlos laments that he is addressed in English by other Cubans who assume because of his dark color that he is North American or from Guyana or Haiti. He said, “Cubans approach me speaking in English.… So, I respond in English. Of course, they notice that I have an accent and so they ask why I speak to them in English. I reply that, well, ‘since you spoke to me in English I responded in English.’ ” For Carlos as well as others, responding in English is a way of denouncing those making an assumption that that they do not speak Spanish and cannot possibly be Cuban (Gosin 2010, 2017). Although the Spanish language remains stigmatized in the United States more widely, due to the Cuban American and Latino transformation of the city, in Miami the Spanish language predominates, and has gained a sort of prestige, even as the language of business. Thus, with Spanish being so widely spoken, Afro-Cubans take it to be even more of an affront when they are assumed to be a non-Spanish speaker. By denying the possibility that they speak Spanish, white Cubans revoke from Afro-Cubans a (shared) Cuban identity.

Cuba is a multiethnic and multiracial country, so Carlos is outraged that Cubans in Miami seem not to know there are blacks in Cuba. “In Cuba, there are towns that are 90 percent black. These are whole towns … and so, for the love of God!,” he says, continuing his critique. He theorizes that the white Cubans he encounters actually do know that there are blacks in Cuba but want to deny them: “It’s a matter of denial or lack of will to acknowledge these things. In Catholicism there is a type of precondition for sinfulness called ‘Culpable Ignorance’—and this is when someone makes up their minds and believes, ‘I don’t want to know.’ ” In Cuba, a black person would (of course) be assumed to be Cuban, and given the large proportion of blacks in Cuba, the Miami Cuban denials are hard to explain. Antonio López’s analysis of white middle-class Cuban American accounts of their return to the island gives some insight. As he argues, their surprise at finding their previously owned homes now occupied by Afro-Cubans (even their former servants) elucidates a belief that the proper place of blacks in prerevolutionary Cuba was in the background of the lives of the “rightful” white owners. Further, the white middle-class Cuban American narratives expose a deeply held belief that the postrevolutionary Cuban national house is “in shambles,” in part due to it now being occupied by blacks who could not properly care for it (López 2012, 189). As such, Afro-Cubans, who were invisible before in that all manner of Cuban life was dismissed, remain regarded as not Cuba’s “true” inhabitants (Aja 2016).¹⁷

The idea of Afro-Cuban nonbelonging in the minds of some white Cuban Americans could also be seen in their deployment of stereotypes about blacks in their interactions with some of the respondents. One way these attitudes were expressed was when white Cubans offered “backhanded” compliments about how Afro-Cuban respondents did not fit stereotypes. Digna, who lives in Miami and came to the United States during Mariel, resented being treated as an exception by white Cubans:

They say that I am a “very decent black person.” You know? So, as you can see, they cannot let go of the stereotype. They cannot let go of the basic image of the black person as vulgar or uneducated. Generally, I cause some sort of “trauma” to white Cubans because of their misguided image of how blacks are—or, how they should be. You know? So, when they meet me their image changes and they think, “What is this?” [They think] that what they see is some type of “exception” or “rare phenomenon.”

Stereotypes about blacks being “uneducated” or “uncouth” reflect attitudes that are common among whites in Cuba as well as among white Anglos in the United States, who project these same stereotypes onto African Americans.

The respondents were fully aware of the transnational circuits of race making that intervene in their experiences, and when asked to discuss why they believed some white Cubans in Miami display racist sentiments, respondents presented thoughtful analyses about how racial notions from Cuba intersect with the dominant racial ideologies of the United States. Their explanations pointed to individual attitudes but also to systematic and historical causes. For instance, Luis, a 1990s Balsero, contended that white Cuban racism in Miami can in part be attributed to the lingering racism among white Cubans that exists in Cuba. He says,

Even today, there are traces of this division [between white and black Cubans]. There are still mothers that want their white daughters to bring home white boys and not men such as myself. Such things have happened to me. The wife I left in Cuba was white but from an impoverished and very humble family. They think, “A fly fell into the milk.” I lived through that.

Luis’s description of his in-laws’ idea that blackness has the polluting effect of “a fly falling into the milk” is an example of sentiments perhaps not openly acknowledged or commonly voiced in a Cuba that purports to be a racial democracy. Such sentiments are indicative that whiteness still reigns as the ideal in the minds of some living in Cuba.

Although there were some interviewees who, when contrasting their racial experiences in the United States and Cuba, seemed to embrace the idea that Cuba truly is a racial democracy, most felt racism exists in Cuba but operates differently than in the U.S. national context. In Cuba, as in many other Latin American countries, the idea of being both white and black is not a foreign concept; indeed, it is not uncommon for families to have many black, white, and “mixed” members. It is also exceedingly common for blacks and whites to socialize together, and they generally live in the same neighborhoods (Sawyer 2006). Moreover, whereas anti-racist discourses did not become prominently affiliated with the identity of the U.S. nation until the 1960s, discourses emphasizing the idea that national identity supersedes racial identity, attributed to patriarch Jose Martí, have been prominent in Cuba since the nineteenth century. In this, Cuba shares Latin American perspectives that endorse ideals of racial democracy. However, Cuba also differs from other Latin American countries in an important way. In postrevolutionary Cuba, blackness has been officially celebrated as the Castro government took on the project of celebrating Cuba’s African heritage.¹⁸ This official recognition, albeit problematic in the ways it folklorized blackness (De la Fuente 2001), could allow some blacks to not view their blackness as a liability. The Castro government also underscored the ideals of racial fraternity as it criticized the U.S. capitalist imperialist system by contrasting the gains in the welfare of Cuban blacks and the continued racism of the United States. Castro’s usage of racial democracy discourses was strategic and has served to keep disenfranchised blacks in line because any level of race consciousness, even for organizing against racism, has been deemed “racist” (Benson 2012, 2013; Clealand 2013; De la Fuente 2001). Thus, there are many scholars who would push back from any notion that Castro has actually been successful in diminishing overt racism.¹⁹ Yet the political consciousness that postrevolutionary Afro-Cubans imbibed with the culture itself may have inspired them to ask critical questions about race and politics in the context of the United States (Gosin 2010).

In their efforts to explain differences in how they perceive that race operates in the United States and in Cuba, some respondents made reference to Castro’s influence. Pedro, who arrived in 1994 as a Balsero, says:

Even though there was racism in Cuba, it was very, very, very discrete. Because you just cannot do it in public like that because you’re going to jail—Castro don’t play that. So it’s not like here, you cannot call no one a name, white cracker or nigger, no, no. You go to jail for that.

Mariela offers a similar argument as Pedro that Cuban racism is heightened in the United States and provides an analysis of how white Cuban racism shifts in this national context:

I think that … many of them [white Cubans in Miami] have old prejudice and patterns that people [from the exile community] have in their mind. And yeah, and then what happens is that, you know—do what the Romans do. And it reinforces what they had a long time ago in their minds, that Castro kind of put on hold.

As Afro-Cubans have varied opinions about the nature of race in Cuba (Clealand 2013, 2017), the idea that Castro was actually successful in diminishing overt racism is a sentiment not shared by all interviewees.²⁰ Still, Mariela’s assertion that white Cubans in the United States take their cue from white Americans and “do what the Romans do” was a view also held by several other interviewees. Interviewees expressed the view that Miami Cubans have adopted U.S. American values and have become more similar to white Anglos than to Cubans on the island, who they described as holding more traditional Cuban values of family and culture. In this way, they situate Cuban American whiteness within a specific context related to the United States’ history of anti-black racism and its anti-communism and imperialist goals. The distinctions they make between Cubans on the island and in the United States arguably require more nuance to capture how white racism prevails in present-day Cuba and how Cuban anti-black attitudes intersect with what white Cubans learn from white Anglos in the United States. Nevertheless, in their arguments, the Afro-Cubans in this study drew on their own perceptions about how the United States and Cuba differ in order to reclaim their Cuban identities, which are often revoked by white Miami Cubans. Many of the respondents draw on Cuba’s racial ideologies to contest the racism they meet in the U.S. context and to grapple with the differences in the ways race is lived in the two countries.²¹ As official discourses such as “all men are created equal” have been used by African Americans and others in the United States to fight injustice (despite the fact that the nation itself does not actually treat all people equally), Afro-Cuban immigrants, who may be well aware that Cuba does not uphold its official anti-racist discourses, may still invoke these discourses to critique the racism they experience in the United States.

While several respondents expressed disappointment, even anger, over their treatment by white Cubans, other respondents were pragmatic about being assumed they were not Cuban because they were black, even drawing upon their positionality as being in between to have a bit of fun at their questioner’s expense (Gosin 2017). When asked whether he gets upset when white Cubans do not recognize that he is Cuban, Charlie, a thirty-eight-year-old who lives in Miami and arrived in the United States from Cuba as a child during Mariel, responds:

No. I just feel like, good, ’cause I’m more a chameleon; it’s good that you don’t know what’s going on in here. You know what I mean? I’d rather know … like put it that way, [it’s] smarter for me to know what’s going on and make them think—make other people think, oh, yeah, they know it—they think that they know what’s going on, but I really do.

Charlie expresses the pleasure of possessing a multiple or Afro-Latino “triple consciousness” that Flores and Jiménez Román (2009) argue allows for the embracing and celebrating of all the dimensions of oneself. He knows what it is to be black, to be Cuban, American, and foreign, breaking down boundaries between native and foreigner, black and white, and good and bad immigrants. He emphasizes that by playing the chameleon, he can blend into various identities, which allows him to be one step ahead of the people that he encounters on a daily basis. By playing along with people’s assumptions, he inverts a hierarchy in which white Cubans seek to make determinations about who qualifies as good/bad immigrants. By establishing the idea that he is the one who is actually more knowledgeable about who he is and about who others are, he can challenge other Cubans who make themselves into the arbiters of proper Cuban identity. Being in between, Charlie and others like him can traverse various communities, allowing for small victories in everyday life (Gosin 2017). But this is not to say that simply being in between means one is automatically better at overtly resisting dominance than others. Rather, the identity negotiations of people who inhabit the spaces “in between” make even more clear the “increased complexities of the ‘color line’ in light of the transnational nature of present day social experience” (Jiménez Román and Flores 2010, 15).

The respondents’ positioning not only in between the United States and Cuba but in between identities that in the United States are viewed as being discrete allows them to make spaces for themselves to belong despite meeting rejections. As Caridad indicated, she chooses to associate with other “othered” people, while Charlie situates himself among Cubans and among African Americans, moving seamlessly between communities. Mariela challenges anti-blackness in her work but also speaks passionately about the connections between Cubans of all colors, as did the other respondents who expressed a love for Cuba and for Cubans. As she says, “we Cubans have our problems at home, but you don’t mess with us, you know? We have problems in our family, but you don’t mess with them.” Racism among Cubans is a very complicated issue, but much like African Americans with a “double consciousness”—those who cling to an American identity while still being able to see how they are positioned outside—the people I interviewed also held strongly to their national identity.

The interviewees differentiated what it is to be white in Cuba from what it is to adopt (or reclaim) whiteness in the United States. Given the irony of the fact Cuba continues to have many of its own problems around race, such distinctions, and the ways in which some respondents reclaimed and affirmed their Cuban identity, could be viewed by some as simplistic affirmations of racial democracy discourses or Castro’s rhetoric. Yet I argue that making claim to such a space, wherein blackness has been officially celebrated, offers something different to people who embody blackness than it does for people who do not—it empowers them to draw on official discourses to contest white hegemony. I underscore that we should not interpret this to mean that blacks have it somehow better in Cuba than in the United States. Rather, the distinctions the respondents make offer a clearer view on how national contexts intervene in racialized experiences and intersect to determine the racialized experiences of Afro-Cuban immigrants in the United States. As they link the U.S.-based contentions between white and black Cubans to a white Cuban embrace of capitalist ideals and a U.S. brand of racism, the interviewees connect the source of division between black and white Cuban exiles to the embrace of U.S.-based ideals of worthy citizenship, making Cuban racism into something much bigger than simply “negative attitudes” on the part of white Cubans.

As we have seen, the Afro-Cuban interviewees affirmed, rather than rejected, their blackness in several ways in their negotiations of white Cuban racism: deliberately challenging Cuban exile anti-blackness in personal interactions; reminding us of Cuba’s large black population; and critiquing the white Cuban impulse to separate from not only Cuban blackness but also from African Americans. As they draw on their abilities to navigate between the space of Cuba and the United States, they offer a challenge that could translate into better black–white Cuban and African American–Cuban relations because it promotes the questioning of all anti-blackness, regardless of the source.

On Being “Black” and Relations with African Americans

The Afro-Cuban critique of race in the United States challenges divisions between blacks and Latinos not only by indicting white Cubans but by also challenging African Americans who place limits on who qualifies as black (Greer 2013; Hintzen and Rahier 2003; Torres-Saillant 2010, 2002, 2003). Afro-Cubans present these critiques as they negotiate for themselves what it means to be black in the United States. One of the first people I spoke with for this project, Pedro, talks about the first time that he learned that his multiple identities would be a cause of confusion. He learned he would need to privilege his blackness as he distinguished among these identities. Because he was a Balsero who fled the scarcity of Cuba’s “special period,” the extreme abundance Pedro saw in the United States came as a shock and required a period of adjustment. When he first began searching for a job, he learned another aspect of U.S. culture he would need to adjust to besides the language—the question of “race” and what it would mean in his everyday life. The “race” question on his job application caused him much confusion. He explained, “I put on one application that I’m black when the guy, when I went to the interview, he looked at me and said, ‘You ain’t black, you’re Cuban.’ I said, ‘Well’—now when I went across the room where he worked, I asked a lady, ‘What color I am? And she said, ‘You’re black.’ So after then, you see?”²² It was not clear to Pedro how he should be defined—should he be defined by his place of birth, as the man who called him “Cuban” explained? Does “race” refer only to the color of his skin? Should the language he speaks define him? Because according to a politics of division he had to choose between identities on some forms, Pedro felt he could not represent his full self. He soon learned from others’ reactions to him that being black stood out among his other identities.

Because of the ways their black identities stood out to others, the majority of the interviewees brought up the topic of race and blackness when answering questions about how others placed them within the U.S. racial structure. They pointed out that race is conceived of differently in Cuba, with intermediary terms such as Jabao and mulato.²³ Adapting to the U.S. context, the majority of interviewees reported that when filling out forms, they pick some combination of identities such as “Hispanic or Latino” or “black” or “other,” depending on the choices offered. Those who said they pick “Hispanic” or “other” or “Cuban”—but generally did not choose “black” on forms—acknowledged that “black” was still a salient identity.

Ernesto, who arrived in the United States during Mariel and now lives in Los Angeles, indicated that he preferred to pick “black” alone. In response to a question about whether he believes black Cubans face more discrimination than white Cubans in the United States, he replied, “Oh, yeah, hey. When you’re black they don’t care if you’re Cuban, they just look at your color. And I’m proud to be black. When I fill out an application, you know, I just put ‘black’!” Because Ernesto realized he experienced more discrimination because he was black rather than because he was Latino, he sought to venerate and protect his black identity. He added that sometimes he chooses “black” and “Hispanic” to account for the fact he is a Spanish speaker, but being black was more of a salient identity than being Hispanic or Latino.

Being often mistaken for people from the greater African diaspora, Afro-Cubans learn to conceive of themselves as part of a wider African diaspora. In the U.S. context, as they search for community, relationships with other African-descended peoples such as African Americans become a prime option. In Chapter 3, I discussed the long history of Afro-Cuban and African American solidary building (Brock and Castañeda Fuertes 1998; Gómez-Garcia 1998; Greenbaum 2002; Guridy 2010; Hellwig 1998; Mirabal 2003, 1998). Although most of the people I interviewed lived in Cuban, Mexican, or mixed neighborhoods and did not always associate with African Americans on a daily basis, we could see that this tendency continues today. As discussed in Chapter 3, some respondents countered rejection by white Cuban exiles and other Latinos by bonding with African Americans. Carlos, who lives in an African American neighborhood in Miami, provides a further example. He expressed feeling more comfortable with or preferring to associate with African Americans than other Latinos. According to Carlos, when African Americans first notice he is not North American they seem to withdraw, but he said if he continues to reach out, they are usually accepting. He explained, “Personally, it is easier for me to deal with African Americans than Cubans, and I prefer them. They will accept me as an individual. We share similar values and many things. We have mutual respect and balanced relations, while with Cubans it is much more difficult.” Previous research on black immigrants has suggested they face an identity choice in which their national identity and racial identity are in conflict—they may privilege a national rather than a racial identity in attempt to escape the stigma of a racialized black or African American identity (Bailey 2000, 2001; Bryce-Laporte 1972; Foner 2001; Landale and Oropesa 2002; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Portes and Stepick 1994; Waters 1999). However, by the second generation, black immigrants may choose to associate and identify with African Americans because of their comparable social and financial capital, and experiences with discrimination and racism may promote them taking on an adversarial stance to white America (Bailey 2000, 2001; Cordero-Guzman, Smith, and Grosfoguel 2001; Greer 2013; Portes and Zhou 1993; Waters 1999). The respondents in this study, primarily first- or 1.5-generation immigrants, demonstrate how black immigrants’ engagement with race can be even more complex.²⁴ As Carlos and others illustrate, rather than asserting national identities simply to distance themselves from blackness or from African Americans, they may assert their multiple identities (national, ethnic, racial) to account for the multiplicity of their experiences and identities, including their black identities. Moreover, in general, while negotiating what it means to be black in the United States, the Afro-Cuban interviewees in this study challenged anti-black impulses by demonstrating pride in their black identities.

Nevertheless, the issue of language can present a barrier between African Americans and Cubans. In the previous chapters, we saw how some African Americans in Miami lamented the fact that the Spanish language was gaining currency in Miami’s labor sphere. In this chapter, Afro-Cubans discuss how being unable to speak each other’s language makes it sometimes difficult for Afro-Cubans to make connections with African Americans, as Caridad spoke of at the beginning of the chapter. Similarly, when Juan first arrived in the United States in 1993, he noticed few African Americans could speak Spanish and communicate with him. Because he was perceived to be “black,” sometimes African Americans disbelieved that he could not speak English well:

[African Americans] see me black and I … with my broken English, sometimes, people thought that I was [crazy] or something, you know? It’s funny, sometimes, you know. When I speak with the black dudes, they look at me like, “Come on, Bro.” They think I am making an accent. You know, and they look at me like, “Come on. Cut it out, you know. Can you speak correctly, you know?” And they look at me like I am making fun or something.

For the African Americans Juan encountered, a black person who spoke with an accent or another language was so unusual that they believed he had to be faking it. This inability to communicate with African Americans, as well as being made fun of by some of them for his lack of English proficiency, created distance between Juan and the African Americans he desired to connect with. Like Juan, despite expressing either neutrality toward African Americans or a preference for them over Latinos, some respondents realized that they were also not fully accepted by African Americans. Juan’s experience attests to this in that his inability to speak English well seemed to be looked down upon. With the assertion that he needs to “speak correctly,” they position him as less authentically black because even though he “looks” black, he does not speak English.

In cases when African Americans seem to position Afro-Cubans outside the ideal of a “true” black, some respondents spoke of avoiding confrontations by simply blending in and not revealing one’s identity. Using such a strategy, they play on the limited knowledge of those around them to position themselves in a greater space of knowing (Gosin 2017). Luis illustrates this idea. He said, “For example, in African American circles, they think I am one of them and, eventually, say ‘I thought you were African American.’ [But] I stay quiet on purpose to see what they think and say.” Charlie provides another example of this strategy. Because Charlie does not have a perceptible accent in English, he is able to blend in with African Americans until he speaks Spanish or hangs out with other Latinos. Then, African Americans at his job or elsewhere realize he is not “one of them”:

[The African American person says,] “Yeah, man, you a Chico?”²⁵ I tell them, “Yeah, I’m a Chico, man.” … Some of them, you know, if they know me for a long time, they’re like, man, it ain’t no thing, man. You’re still down with me but others would be like, “You’re a Chico, yeah.” They’re like, dang, you know, they like watch the way they be around me like, if, you know, so they got something against it. Whatever, you know, I say it’s all good. It’s all gravy, baby.

Rather than being put off by the fact that some of his African American coworkers feel “tricked” and become suspicious when his “true” identity is revealed, Charlie relishes letting others struggle with the discomfort of not knowing all of who he is. Charlie feels at home with both Latinos and blacks, speaks in African American slang, and has had experiences much like those experienced by urban black and Latino youths, including surveillance by the police. He views these challenges to his identity, wherein African Americans and others question him, as just part of the territory; they do not upset him. Using the strategy of pretense or simply blending in, Charlie, like other Afro-Cuban respondents, takes on what multiracial studies scholars call “protean identities,” wherein people move between multiple identities simultaneously, feeling like insiders to each (Rockquemore and Brunsma 2002). In this way, they create spaces for themselves to belong in several communities while also firmly making claim to a black identity.

Respondents noted that while African Americans are a group particularly curious about their identities, often the questioning they receive from African Americans is less adversarial, seeming to emerge from the limited view among some African Americans about who is a “true black.” However, other respondents felt angrier about being dismissed by African Americans. In these cases, some took it upon themselves to “educate” African Americans who “stripped” their black identities away from them. For instance, Digna, who lives in Miami, criticized the African American view that she was not a “real” black in a narrative about an encounter with a black security guard in a department store:

I don’t exactly recall what happened at a department store when I went to exchange a purchased item and the attending employee was a bit stressed. The store security guard said something like, “These black Latins are not real blacks.” … I replied, “What are you saying?” Does that person think that I was born in an incubator, that [I] got this color from being in an “incubator”? … I told him, “My hen is from Africa, too.” … So, the man was embarrassed and did not know how to respond.

Digna used the analogy of a hen (mother Africa) and her chicks (people of African descent) to argue that she too has a real black mother. In doing so, she reminds the African American person that Cubans can also make claim to the African diaspora and criticizes him for his belief that African Americans can make exclusive claims to blackness. Digna affirmed a strong black, or African, identity, and perhaps because of this, in her view, African Americans have learned racism from Anglo Americans. Making a critique similar to that argued in this book and by other anti-racist scholars, she contends that because there is so much racism in the United States, both Anglos and black Americans judge new immigrants as outsiders according to a native/foreigner frame (see also Hintzen and Rahier 2003). In confronting the U.S. racial structure and assumed notions of blackness, she and other black immigrants affirm the idea of a connected black diaspora while simultaneously challenging the idea that, on the ground, shared black skin is all that is needed to build solidarity.

Some respondents even argued that Cuban blacks have stronger connections to their African roots than many African Americans. For instance, Junior, a practitioner of Santería, argues, “black Americans, black people here don’t feel any connection to their ‘Africanness.’ They’re constantly espousing that they’re ‘African-African’ and yet when you deal with them they don’t deal in an African way.” Although it is not entirely clear what he means by “an African way,” in our discussion, Junior seemed to suggest that African Americans are generally unfamiliar with African languages, such as those used by practitioners of Santería, as well as other cultural manifestations of African culture that are prominent in Cuba. Moves to essentialize what it is to be African are problematic whether these moves are made by African Americans or Cubans. Nevertheless, several respondents demonstrated clear pride in their blackness or Africanness by embracing cultural traditions that, though widely practiced in Cuba, have African origins (and by taking pride in the fact that these practices and traditions have African origin). In this way, they further disrupt an African American hold on what it means to be black and illustrate the diversity of black cultures and experiences. They also affirm their own blackness by decisively making claim to a Cuban black identity.

Just as they negotiate their relationship to blackness, Afro-Cubans must also, in cities with so many Spanish speakers, negotiate their black identities in relation to the larger category “Latino.” They are able to see that native-born, non-Latino Americans often call for the exclusion of Latino immigrants by asserting that Spanish speakers have an unfair advantage or that Latinos (viewed as immigrants) are taking American jobs. Both arguments have been prominent in African American–Latino conflict. Being both black and Cuban, how do Afro-Cubans fit within such debates? The interviewees provide many examples, as we have noted, of being discriminated against because of their language and their color, but in at least one instance, being a Spanish speaker was more of an advantage than being African American. Pedro recounted a story about applying for the same job as an African American, with whom he became friendly in the process. According to Pedro, although the African American was highly qualified, he was rejected because he could not speak Spanish, and Pedro got the job instead. As he told the story, it was clear that the incident still saddens him:

So when it came down to—to the position—you know, they chose me because I was speaking Spanish. And they did not choose him. Boy, I wish you could have seen that boy’s face.… That was one of the things that I feel bad about that I was chosen over an American because I speak Spanish. It really hurt me.… And I said, “Brother, you know what, listen, my man, we can still hang together and you just have to speak Spanish, you have to learn how to speak Spanish.”

Pedro’s sadness about disenfranchising a “brother” reveals a consciousness that can be drawn upon by other Spanish speakers to try and bridge differences based on language. Pedro has very dark skin and his own blackness cannot be denied. He has adopted African American slang, so it is clear he does not seek to avoid being associated with African Americans. Pedro’s positioning between black and Latino categories may thus enable increased awareness among African Americans that “Latinos” are not a faceless horde of people taking their jobs but include people who look like them who are also trying to navigate a system that pits brother against brother and sets one disenfranchised minority group against another.

Between Blackness and Latinidad in Los Angeles

If you don’t look like a Mexican, then you ain’t no Hispanic.

(FERMÍN, LOS ANGELES)

Afro-Cuban experiences negotiating race and place in Los Angeles offer a comparison piece to Miami, particularly when thinking about the promises and failures of the diversity of the United States in terms of breaking down ethnic barriers. They also offer a wider view into the question of how Afro-Cubans negotiate their subjectivity in relation to the panethnic configuration of Latinidad. People of Mexican descent are by far the largest Latino population in the United States and in Los Angeles. As Fermín observes, most people do not perceive Afro-Cubans as fitting the image of “Latino” because the predominant image of a “Latino” in Los Angeles is a person of Mexican descent. This idea that there is one way to look “Mexican” or “black” is related to the United States’ racial/ethnic categorization paradigm and the historical desire to differentiate people of color from whites.

Los Angeles is highly diverse, but like Miami, it has its share of ethnic divisions, indicated by geographic separations. According to the 2010 Census, the population of Los Angeles County is 48 percent Latino, 28 percent white non-Latino, 14 percent Asian, and 9 percent black non-Latino.²⁶ Although people of Mexican descent in Los Angeles have not attained the power and influence that Cubans have in Miami, the Latino, and Mexican in particular, influence is quite dramatic. Though California has the fourth largest Cuban population in the United States, Los Angeles’s Cuban population is quite small (Logan 2003). There is no one Cuban neighborhood, but an annual festival at Echo Park serves as a place to bring L.A. Cubans together. Echo Park, historically a Mexican enclave, hosts a Cuban festival on May 20 each year, in commemoration of Cuban Independence Day. The festival takes place at the lake, which includes a statue of Cuban patriot Jose Martí among its monuments. I met several of the people I interviewed for the first time at this festival, which many attend on a yearly basis. They indicated that the festival is a space where newly arrived Cubans can find other Cubans to help them get settled in the United States.

Los Angeles is known for its diversity and the idea that people generally get along and are not afraid to cross boundaries, but Juan’s experiences contradict this view. When Juan came to the United States from Cuba, what he found most difficult about adjusting to life in Los Angeles was navigating the racial and ethnic social divisions of its geography:

What really amazes me … is how people from the West LA … they don’t go to the South Central … and, vice versa, no? People from the east, like my ex-wife, you know, she was Chicana, you know, 100 percent—“viva la Raza.” Proud to be a Chicana. She and her friends, they never come to the west side.… Then, you have the white Americans … they don’t go south—they don’t pass from Pico and La Brea. So every time I talk to somebody, they’re from a different, you know, group, I mean, etnia, or ethnicity, and I tell them that I went to this part of town and they look at me [and say], “You crazy! Don’t go there!” And, people sometimes in that community when I go there … sometimes, they look at you like, “What are you doing here?”

Juan had come to the United States when he was thirty years old, during Cuba’s “special period,” to make a life with his wife at the time, an American citizen of Mexican descent. However, he would find that his daily life interactions meant learning how to cross various borders between communities, identities, and languages. With his multiple identities—a black person with a notable Spanish accent, from Cuba, a country many people he encountered did not know much about—it was not always clear to him where people thought he did belong. As a result, he says, “In general, I feel that I don’t fit in any community. I mean, for me it was hard to understand why the Chinese live here and the blacks have to live here.” He also found that despite having married a woman of Mexican descent, he would have trouble fitting in with other Mexicans, who rejected him because he is black.

Magaly similarly met rejections from people of Mexican descent and recounted what it was like to grow up in Los Angeles, to which she immigrated as a child. There were several incidences, she says, when people thought she did not know Spanish and, while speaking Spanish, said negative things are about her:

You know especially when I was in high school and middle school, kids would think I would not understand what they saying, which I was like, I think I know more Spanish than them, you know, I know more, probably more about the culture than them, than they probably know themselves.… For example, I would … in school, girls would be behind my back, they’d say, “Oh look at her, she …” I don’t know, maybe ’cause I’m chubby, I don’t know, they would just bring something up, you know, just bothering people, and I would turn around and say “Oh my God, what are you saying,” you know, in Spanish, in their language, and they’ll just get stuck, like, “Oh, she knows it!”

Similar to the experiences of Cubans living in Miami, Magaly and most of the other respondents living in Los Angeles encountered other Latinos who assumed they were “black” and that they did not know Spanish. Often, respondents directly confronted these persons to challenge their assumptions.

Ernesto, like Fermín and other respondents, lamented the fact that he was not viewed as Latino because of his skin color and was angered by snubs from Mexicans. Ernesto critiqued his Mexican friends’ disrespect of black history and culture:

You know, I have a lot of Mexican friends, but they have issues with blacks, you know? They have issues with blacks. They’re ignorant. Those that don’t got an education, they’re ignorant regarding blacks. That’s what I hate, because those that live in a black neighborhood listen to the black music.… And they [Mexican men] love black sisters!

Ernesto also pointed to cultural appropriation among Mexicans (and whites), the tendency to like black culture but not black people.²⁷ However he defines the term “black,” Ernesto finds value in blackness. Although his defense of that value also risks perpetuating stereotypes about Mexicans in such expressions of anger, Afro-Cubans, like Ernesto, belied a strong affective desire to assert their identities as Latinos and contest people who felt they could decide where they did and did not belong (Gosin 2017).

While some interviewees were quite angry about being underestimated by some of the people of Mexican origin that they encountered, given that Los Angeles generally does not have a large presence of Afro-Latinos, the confusion about racial identity could be seen as an honest mistake. Yet until recently, Mexico had officially downplayed the presence of Africans in Mexico, and such moves to dissociate from blackness could play a role in the rejections Afro-Cubans receive from recently arrived Mexican immigrants. Derogatory assessments of black identity are often actually directed at African Americans, since the Mexicans are mistaking Afro-Cubans for African Americans. Hence, anti-black attitudes among people of Mexican origin in Los Angeles speak to prejudices that also exist in their countries of origin, developed because of the legacy of colonization by whites, as well as the anti-black attitudes that are prevalent in the United States with which attitudes from the home country intersect (Roth and Kim 2013). Thus, paying attention to how Afro-Cubans challenged the assumptions of some of the people of Mexican origin they encountered reminds us of the need to combat the anti-black racism that some Latin American immigrants bring with them from their countries of origin, the anti-black racism of white Anglos, as well as the anti-black racism that results from a Latino buy-in to U.S.-based white dominant racial frames (Gosin 2017).

Though blackness remains under siege in Los Angeles, as can be seen in the economic disenfranchisement of African Americans and criminalization of black males, some black Cubans in Los Angeles found that not being immediately read as Latino could be an advantage. Such complexities illustrate the various forms the binary divides that compose worthy citizenship take and how they intersect. As Fermín observed:

When supposedly the police or the immigration, when they attack people, they only attack a certain group. You know, if you look like this, you’re Hispanic. And I could, like me, I’m Hispanic too, and I could be walking down the street they won’t mess with me, because I don’t look like them. Which is what, a stereotype, right?

Fermín’s comments remind us that because the Mexican stereotype leaves blacks out of the Latino category, Afro-Latinos can avoid the intense surveillance of, and stigma attached to, people identified as Mexican. Appearing African American may allow a certain privilege based on the perception that African American equals “American” and that Latino equals “foreign” or non-American according to a native/foreigner frame. There is a tremendous stigma attached to Mexican identity, not only in California but across the country, wherein they are viewed as “illegals.” Mexican immigrants have been portrayed as a poor, law-breaking “problem” (Chavez 2001, 2013; Hayes-Bautista 2004; Santa Ana 2002). In California, public concerns over increased Mexican immigration inspired Proposition 187 (1994), which sought to refuse undocumented immigrants medical and educational services, and Proposition 227 (1998), which banned bilingual education. Such policy moves in California as well as similar moves in other parts of the country remind us of the strength of the native/foreigner frame that positions Latinos, along with (but quite differently from) blacks, into the role of “noncitizens.”

Fermín’s comments also remind us of the difference immigrant or refugee status makes for Cubans versus Mexicans (Dowling and Newby 2010; Newby and Dowling 2007). U.S. immigration policy has not welcomed Mexicans as it has Cubans, who were constructed as political rather than economic immigrants. In Florida, Anglos have viewed Cubans as threatening to take over, similar to the ways some Anglos in California view Mexicans. However, immigration policy has historically protected Cubans from the same types of instabilities experienced by people of Mexican descent who, regardless of citizenship status, are viewed as always already illegal. Thus, as Cubans, their experience of Latinidad has differed from that of many other Latinos because of the unique political concerns of Cuban refugees and the idea of Cuban exceptionalism. Thinking about all these complexities illuminates the fact that people of color are all demonized within a white elite–dominated system, albeit in different ways. Latinos and African Americans taking note of this reality can turn their angst away from one another and onto the problematic system that pits them against one another.

Such complexities and commonalities were not lost among the respondents. Along with negative interactions with people of Mexican origin, some respondents discovered the sense of community that can come from embracing their multiplicity—their identities as Spanish speakers and as immigrants. Though there are fewer Cubans in Los Angeles, as in Miami, Spanish television and radio thrive, and Spanish-language billboards pepper the city. One can speak Spanish daily. Thus, some interviewees spoke very specifically about having good relations with Mexicans and other Latinos based on a common language and the condition of being an immigrant. For example, Nancy stated,

It does not matter if my friends are Mexican or from elsewhere, “unity” is the key. The truth is I don’t care, nor do I ask, if they are Cuban or not. I just feel happy when I hear someone speaking Spanish. Instantly, people turn into friends and brothers—that’s what happens.… The language unites us all.… And, necessity unites us, too. We can see that they came with the same intentions—in different ways—but to make a better life for themselves, to better educate their children, to take advantage of the opportunities afforded to us, and, so, they come for the same. So, aside from the differences, the same basic necessities unite us.

For Nancy, a common immigrant experience encouraged empathy with Mexicans and other immigrants in Southern California. If someone new to the country needs furniture, food, or other resources, Nancy feels compelled to help, as others helped her when she first arrived. Thus, as expressed by others, Nancy is able to feel at home with the other Latinos with whom she associates and enjoy Los Angeles’s diversity and the blending of cultures.

Encouragingly, living among other Latinos in a city with no sizable Cuban community, Afro-Cubans in Los Angeles can draw on their multiple identities to find ways to connect with other Latinos and build on their commonalities. As Afro-Cubans negotiated the Latino identity in Los Angeles, several found ways to bond with other Latinos such as Mexicans in spite of also experiencing rejection from some of them. Scenarios wherein Mexicans spoke about them in a derogatory fashion, assuming they were African Americans, or challenged them for being among other Latinos, showed them that their blackness calls their identity as Latinos into question. Such experiences illustrate what is left out in the pan-ethnic category. Afro-Cubans took on various strategies to contest their exclusion, including direct confrontations, in order to challenge the shortsightedness of Latino anti-blackness as well as exclusive claims to a Latino identity. In doing so, they challenged anti-black impulses among some Latinos that may lead to conflict not only between black and nonblack Latinos but also between Latinos and African Americans. In these ways, they point to gaps and overlaps between blackness and Latinidad and also illustrate ways that other differences based on national origin, race, immigration status, and so on can be overcome.

Conclusion

The strength of the boundaries placed around blackness in particular is powerfully illustrated in the experiences of black Cuban immigrants recounted here, for whom it is necessary to think about blackness and racial identity not only when filling out forms but also when finding community. Though living in cities with rich racial/ethnic diversity such as Miami and Los Angeles, they report they are often questioned about their identities not only by people with innocuous curiosity but also from people who rejected them, deeming them too different to belong. In their stories, we see how they are viewed as not fully fitting in any group to which they would supposedly belong—Cuban, African American, Latino, immigrant, refugee, and so on. Yet their day-to-day lived experiences negotiating their multiple identities challenge such rigidity and illustrate the overlaps that exist between identities such as “Latino” and “black.”

The testimonials of the Afro-Cuban respondents provide insight into the specific ways post-1980 Afro-Cuban immigrants experience and combat racism and micro-level rejections in the U.S. context, a subject that has been understudied. Embracing all their identities, they found ways to fit in as Cubans, blacks, and Latinos while also acknowledging their mestizaje—the fact that within the same immediate Cuban family one can find members of various colors. Moreover, in spite of the rejections Afro-Cubans sometimes face, they were able to emphasize commonalities, often drawing on perspectives on race and identity cultivated in Cuba. Discourses of racial democracy in Cuba are just as problematic as the idealism of color-blindness in the United States. Yet, respondents often “reclaimed” the ideals of Cuban racial fraternity to fight the racism they experienced in the United States. In their dealings with white Cubans, they took back their often-revoked Cuban identities, pointing back to Cuba, where being black and Cuban was normative. In doing so, they illuminate the role of ideology in creating separation between black and white Cuban identities in specific national contexts. Their strong attachment to being Cuban allowed them also to unite with some other white Cubans on the basis of shared culture and national identity. At the same time, they held a strong sense of the political and racial histories that determine the ways they as blacks are negatively positioned in Cuba and in U.S. society. When interacting with African Americans, they were able to create bridges and associations built on shared black or African pride. Similar experiences of discrimination on the basis of blackness also allowed them to connect with African Americans. With people of Mexican descent in Los Angeles, common immigrant and refugee experiences bonded some Afro-Cubans with recent immigrants, with the Spanish language connecting them to all Latinos. Afro-Cubans, like other Afro-Latinos, differ from English-speaking black immigrants because of their compounded identification with a stigmatized Latino identity. Thus, along with helping us challenge the persistence of anti-blackness in the hemisphere, their positionality evokes the conclusion that efforts intended to fight anti-black racism should be linked to the fight against anti-immigrant nativism. All in all, their multiplicity presents a challenge to bipolar and other rigid racial notions because, as their lived experiences illustrate, identities often viewed as discrete truly overlap in meaningful ways.

Their intervention goes deeper than simply breaking apart racial categories. As they directly challenged the rejections they faced, their experiences move beyond a suggestion that racial or cultural multiplicity is in and of itself the answer to racial binarisms. Indeed, an uncritical exaltation of racial hybridity or of racial diversity leaves little room for the critique of the injustices suffered by blacks, Latinos, and other racialized groups because such exaltations lend themselves to denials of racism (Gosin 2016; Jiménez Román 2005; Puri 2004). Afro-Cuban experiences and direct challenges to the rejections they face make clear the fallacy of racial democracy discourses and the idealism of color blindness, because the racism they are subjected to illuminates how deeply the legacies of white racism and imperialism are rooted in U.S. society and accepted to varying degrees by Americans of many different ethnic backgrounds. Moreover, they help remind us that in a racial system set up to maintain the place of whiteness atop a racial hierarchy, people of color are forced to preoccupy themselves with standard racial labels and identities as they undergo scrutiny from whites. They may dissociate from some identities to protect themselves from racial stigma or embrace identities for the purposes of political solidarity (Gosin 2017, 23; see also Bobo and Hutchings 1996; Dowling 2014, 115). Thus, what we see in Afro-Cuban interactions with white Cubans in Miami, Mexicans in Los Angeles, and African Americans in both places are the complicated ways people of color get caught up in the politics of race as they seek their place within the nation (Gosin 2017, 23).

Afro-Cuban experiences of race are similar to those of other Afro-Latinos when it comes to managing the stigma attached to blackness in the United States, but their case is also distinct. Cuban immigration waves have been racialized differently in part due to the politics of the historical political enmity between their homeland’s government and that of the United States. Unlike other immigrant groups for whom previous migration cohorts are viewed as consistent in race or ethnicity, white and black Cuban Americans experience an artificial divide created by U.S.–Cuba relations and immigration cohort effects. Thus, Afro-Cubans must contend with the particular ways that Cuban exiles in the United States “reclaim” whiteness (López 2012) as they seek to affirm their status as worthy citizens. Among the “old guard” Cuban exiles in Miami are individuals who set themselves up as people that can determine who qualifies as “good immigrants” and who discriminate against newer arrivals—blacks in particular. In their critiques of such white Cuban racism, the Afro-Cuban respondents help remind us that Cuban exiles are rewarded for achieving parity to Anglo whites through their upward mobility. They are also rewarded for adopting ideologies of worthy citizenship, which function to create separations not only between Cubans based on race but also between other marginalized groups.

When thinking about the Latino category more broadly, Afro-Cubans enable a critical challenge to Latino whiteness because, by pointing out and directly challenging anti-blackness among Latinos, they underscore that although racial systems in the United States and Latin American countries differ, they are equally guilty of preserving the predominance of white over black (Aja 2016; López 2012; Oboler and Dzidzienyo, 2005; Rivera-Rideau et al. 2016). In the United States, the pan-Latino identification functions much like the hybrid identities that have been central to how national identity has been formulated in several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (Gosin 2016). There is resistive potential in creating bonds among Latinos and in embracing the ambiguities inherent in the category “Latino.” Moreover, as Latinos are similarly stigmatized as “foreigners” or “illegals,” it is crucial for us to continue to bring focus to the specificity of how the Latino stigma is deployed by the dominant order and negotiated by Latinos of various national origins. However, in an uncritical celebration of Latinidad, there is much that is obscured. As scholars of Afro-Latino studies have argued, it is essential for scholarship to engage with how racist notions from Latin America and the United States intersect and differentially affect the immigration incorporation of Afro-Latino immigrants into the specific national context of the United States (Flores-Gonzalez 1999; Gosin 2017; Jiménez Román and Flores 2010; Torres-Salliant 2002, 2003). Examining how Afro-Cuban immigrants negotiate the intersections of blackness and Latinidad and rejections they sometimes face from other Latinos allows an important critique of the ways white supremacist notions have been embraced or perpetuated by nonblack Latinos. Moreover, we also gain insights into how peoples’ ideas about the politics of blackness shift or are clarified as they confront new domains of power in specific national contexts.

Rejection from white Cubans and other Latinos may push some Afro-Cubans to associate more with African Americans. Indeed, a sense of pride in blackness cultivated in Cuba may be a reason both to hold onto their Cuban identity and to align with other blacks. Still, in the United States, some Afro-Cuban respondents found that the borders around blackness were also policed by African Americans. As discussed in previous chapters, the idea of black unity was vital in African American civil rights struggles, and the desire among some African Americans to build solidarity with others of African descent according to a Pan-African ideal remains an important aim today toward the contestation of white supremacy. Perhaps as a result, in cases when black immigrants seem unwilling to join in ongoing struggles, or when they avoid affiliating themselves from African Americans, some African Americans see this as not only a rejection of an important political identification but as also a move by black immigrants to align themselves with whites and the dominant social order (Greer 2013; Torres-Salliant 2010). Yet, as some African Americans set themselves up as “ethnoracial border patrols” who can judge whether individuals have taken on the “proper” political alignment, they also set themselves up as “natives” who can decide who is and is not a “true black” (Torres-Salliant 2010, 2002, 2003). Like other black immigrants, Afro-Cuban immigrants illustrate in their negotiations of what it means to be black in the United States both the limits and the promises of Pan-African idealism. Furthermore, they challenge the idea that black identities should be defined by U.S. African Americans. By emphasizing their multiple positionality as blacks and Cubans and conceiving of race and identity as hybrid, Afro-Cubans like other Afro-Latinos teach African Americans that there are many different ways to be black and that this diversity does not preclude a consciousness that can be built upon by various (Afro) Latino groups to challenge anti-blackness.

The rejections Afro-Cubans experience in the United States happen within a specific racial context—one in which multiple identities are viewed as distinct and blackness is denigrated. During the Barack Obama presidency, the U.S. government seemed to signal a growing tolerance for ethnic, racial, and sexual difference in policies that were enacted. Moreover, that someone like Obama could be elected to the U.S. presidency was touted as evidence that the United States was moving toward a postracial promise (Da Silva 2014). Yet, that Obama himself, the son of a white American woman and a black African man, was almost always categorized in the media and by the public as “black” (rather than “white” or “mixed”) is indicative of the persistence of the conception of “race” as fixed or essential and of the rigidity of the black/white binary. This point, as well as a racist anti-Obama backlash, made it clear that despite the emphasis on multiculturalism and color blindness that we saw during the period, very rigid ideas of what it means to be black remain popular among various groups.

As double minorities (Denton and Massey 1989), immigrants of African descent such as the Afro-Cubans in this chapter are profoundly affected by the U.S. historical and continued denigration of blackness. At the same time, they are affected by its reluctance to accept “unassimilable” immigrants. The implications of all this are that “although boundary crossing may be rising, and the color line fading, a shift has yet to occur toward a pattern of unconditional boundary crossing or a declining significance of race for all groups” (J. Lee and Bean 2004, 237). Thus, when thinking about race in multicultural America today, we must continue to understand the complexity that blackness brings to this question of the shifting color line, further examining how it intersects with anti-Latino and anti-immigrant sentiments. In doing so, we can continue to interrogate the role of anti-blackness in maintaining notions of worthy citizenship and assess how such notions affect relations between African Americans, Latinos, and other non-Anglo racial/ethnic groups.