Interethnic Conflict and Dominant Discourses about Belonging

Focusing on African Americans and a Spanish-speaking population in Miami, this book is in conversation with the growing field of research on African American and Latino relations. This scholarship emphasizes that conflict is not the primary mode in which African Americans and Latinos interact and argues that the media’s depiction of relations between these groups has been problematic. Indeed, news magazine reports have emphasized individual and group-level animosities and contentious battles over space, providing virtually no historical context for such battles (Cacho 2012; Shah and Thornton 2004). Blacks have been depicted as victims of the growing immigration. Yet, at the same time, rather than the empathy often linked with depictions of victimhood, African Americans are portrayed as “complainers,” simply finding someone else to blame for their failures to properly assimilate and “get a job.” The concerns of members of both Latino and African American communities are reduced in these reports to contemptible squabbling (Shah and Thornton 2004). More recently, as Lisa Marie Cacho explains, “the official narrative of black-Latina/o conflict and competition works to pathologize both groups, regardless of which side we take,” pitting them against each other and demonizing both: Latinos steal jobs; blacks steal because they have no jobs (2012, 18). Whether it is Latinos or African Americans who are painted as the victim in the individual stories, each narrative positions the groups as complicit in protecting the borders and boundaries of the United States, resulting in an official narrative that vacillates in its characterization of both groups, exchanging their oppositional roles as protectors and destroyers of the nation. This vacillation is indicative of the ways white elites strategically employ dominant gatekeeping narratives of worthiness to maintain their positioning atop a racial hierarchy, pitting groups of color against one another.

There is great reason to be optimistic about relations between African Americans and Latinos and the prospects of coalition, particularly in the political arena (Hero and Preuhs 2013; Márquez 2014; Sawyer 2006; Telles et al. 2011). My optimism is substantiated not only by research but also by personal life experience. Indeed, I come to this topic as someone who has experienced more cooperation than conflict between African Americans and Latinos in my personal life. As a young child, I was a military brat who lived in Spain for some years. When I moved back to the States and to Southern California, I lived in areas where there were few African Americans. Often the only one in my grade school classes, I found a welcoming social group among many friends of Mexican or Latin American origin. Perhaps my familiarity with the Spanish language and other aspects of Latin cultures allowed me to feel at home among these friends and their families. What started as a childhood social connections developed in college into a lifelong commitment to anti-racism—motivated not only by my own experience navigating U.S. society as an African American, with parents from the Deep South who lived through the end of the Jim Crow era, but also by my real-time observations of what was happening around me as my Latino friends fought against stereotypes and faced an expressly anti-Latino political climate. In my personal life, the overlaps between African American and Latino political concerns have been abundantly clear. My early experiences benefitting from the camaraderie that can exist between groups of color has heightened my commitment to challenging existing divisions and highlighting the links between African Americans, nonblack Latinos, and Afro-Latinos, and among other groups. I have also been witness to many other encouraging shows of solidarity today, such as those on my own campus as politically motivated student representatives of Black Lives Matter prominently supported rallies against the Trump administration’s immigration policies, specifically the ending of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an Obama-era program intended to defer punitive action for young adults and children who were brought to the United States as children and thus do not have citizenship status.

Still, I have also been privy to conversations among African Americans outside my scholarly circles lamenting the Latino “takeover,” and I have heard Latino friends, to my surprise, making derogatory statements or assumptions about black people in my presence. I realized that although conflict is not the primary mode of interaction between African Americans and Latinos, there is still pressing need to challenge the divisions that exist. Indeed, research has pointed to the current reality of contentious relations, such as those I discuss in this book, among African Americans and Latinos, especially in new Latino immigrant destination sites. For lower-class blacks and Latinos, the real inequalities and scarcity over jobs and battles over turf may be more impactful (Gay 2006; Marrow 2011). Moreover, studies on racial attitudes demonstrate that Latinos may have more negative views of African Americans when it comes to stereotypes (Gay 2006; Kaufmann 2003; McClain et al. 2007; Mindiola, Niemann, and Rodriguez, 2002; Oliver and Wong 2003; Vaca 2004). Although African Americans generally have less negative attitudes toward Latinos than the reverse, they still may harbor negative attitudes toward Latinos, viewing them as economic competition (Betancur 2005a; McClain et al. 2007; McClain and Karnig 1990). In times of perceived crisis (such as the Mariel exodus and the Balsero crisis the tragedy of September 11, 2001, or, more recently, economic recessions), politicians often play on fears about the perception of scarce jobs and resources and the need for “national security.” The realities of poverty and unemployment, as well as fear narratives perpetuated on a national stage, can promote increased competition among some minority groups when they are convinced the other is their main threat.

Because context matters in analyses of interethnic conflict, I have paid close attention to the complexities of the local context and local concerns in Miami, which are distinct from other areas of the country. For instance, it is essential to keep in mind the larger context of the nation’s imperialist project in the U.S.–Cuba conflict, as well as the complexities of how whiteness and blackness are regarded in Cuba, to fully understand the views expressed by members of the affected communities in El Nuevo Herald and the Miami Times. This context heightened African American and Cuban American concerns about the impact of these particular immigration waves. The more powerful and higher-class position of some members of the Cuban community adds an element in the Miami case of African American–Cuban relations that is different than black–Latino relations in other cities where Latinos are not as prominent in the economic and political arena. Moreover, Cubans differ significantly from other Latino groups in that they were invited to the United States as exiles rather than being viewed as needy and impoverished immigrants. Cubans gained tremendously from being favored in U.S. immigration policy. Today, the contradictions between the United States’ Cold War–era policies that rewarded Cubans for risking all to gain freedom and current immigration policy moves that penalize migrants from Mexico and Central America for seeking the same goal are abundant. Thus, Cubans often do not fit well within U.S. Latino political imaginaries.

Still, the cases this book explores offer the opportunity to develop a wider understanding of the dynamics at play for minority groups in competition with each other writ large. This is because on a day-to-day basis, Cubans are often lumped together with other Latinos when it comes to fights over who belongs in the nation. Regardless of ethnicity, Latinos have historically been reduced by native-born non–Latino Americans to “foreigners” or “unwanted immigrants.” Cubans too have suffered from the “Latino threat narrative” (Chavez 2013)—racialized discursively as immigrants threatening to “take over” (Grenier and Pérez 2003). Moreover, although there are key differences in how conflict between African Americans and Cubans manifests in Miami as compared with black–Latino conflict elsewhere, the simultaneous and contradictory idea that Cubans are threatening to take over but are also more favored by whites also plays a major role in negative relations between African Americans and Latinos in other areas of the country. Studies have shown that in spite of restrictive immigration policies toward various Latino groups, in places such as North Carolina, California, and Texas, whites’ preference for Latinos over blacks (in hiring, for instance) plays into black resentment against Latinos (Betancur 2005a; Fabienke 2007; Gay 2006; Marrow 2011; McClain et al. 2007; McClain and Karnig 1990; Mindiola et al. 2002). These conflicting notions wherein Latinos, including Cubans, are perceived to be too numerous, threatening to take over, but simultaneously favored over African Americans, reveal what Cubans have in common with other Latino groups and frame the dynamics of black–Latino conflict not only in Miami but across the nation. Furthermore, as I have discussed, many Latinos bring anti-black notions from their home countries or adopt anti-black perspectives as they learn to disparage African Americans. Thus, as research focusing on El Nuevo South and other areas of the country attests, strained relations between African Americans and Latinos today is a matter of great concern (Gay 2006; Marrow 2011; McClain et al. 2007).

In this context, Miami serves as a cautionary tale. By 1980, the racial dynamics that are now occurring across the country as whites become the numerical minority had already occurred in this highly diverse city. The intense interethnic conflict between the two largest minority groups, African Americans and Cuban Americans, which occurred in Miami, can be viewed as an example of the worst-case scenario that could occur across the country (Grenier and Stepick 2001). The divisions set up between African Americans and Cubans and between black and white Cubans in the Miami scenario illustrate how the same black versus white dynamics of the city’s past manifested themselves during a time when Miami was transitioning into one of the most diverse cities in the nation. In today’s multiethnic society, it is necessary to examine how the poles of “black” and white” continue to be entrenched in our society. Sticking to black/white and white/other racism functions as a type of nostalgia for some people who long for the “simpler” times when “others” knew their place and did not pose as much of a threat. These binary racial poles create divisions even between different minority groups.

Toward addressing these tensions, I have challenged existing scholarship, which primarily attributes interminority conflict to causes such as limited resources or demographic shifts, by focusing on discourse and ideology as primary factors in its emergence. Clearly, the material realities of structural inequities in relation to jobs and other economic concerns play a starring role. Yet the abundant examples of coalition building among people of color in order to attack mutually experienced economic and social problems remind us that conflict is not the only response to scarcity. To take on an oppositional stance toward the “Other” is a choice that is made. In regards to this choice, I accede that minority or racialized groups are agents in disparaging blackness when they do so (as did some of the white Cubans in this book) and in promoting anti-immigrant sentiments and policies (as did some African Americans in Miami). However, I seek to remind us that the decisions made by minority groups or individuals to compete with other minority groups are often shaped by dominant ideologies that dictate how groups can achieve social membership in the nation. For instance, white Cuban exiles indeed brought anti-black and pro-white attitudes with them to the United States, these attitudes also intersect with their particular configurations in the context of the United States, heightened by the role of state intervention as it historically designated Cuban exiles preferred or “good immigrants” in its foreign policy. Moreover, the precariousness of Cuban American whiteness due to their differentiation from white Anglos and their being lumped in with other immigrants as a “foreign threat” create compounding dynamics in which they might be compelled to “reclaim” whiteness (López 2012). In short, even when it is clear that members of these groups hold strongly to anti-black or anti-immigrant sentiments, we must still remember that the decisions made by minority groups to engage in conflict cannot be decontextualized from the already existing power dynamics of the country, as if these choices are not constrained in any way by the exclusionary framework of worthy citizenship perpetuated from above (Ong 2003).

Indeed, it is mainstream society that needs to change its exclusionary practices, as minority groups are reacting to existing parameters of racial oppression. As Kim (2000) suggests, our scholarship on interethnic conflict must avoid decontextualization, depoliticization, and the delegitimation of the concerns of minority groups (4). We must take seriously minority concerns about finding jobs, maintaining families, and obtaining a modicum of dignity. We must understand that by voicing their concerns, the communities discussed in this book seek to challenge the idea that they are not true Americans. Such concerns should be taken seriously, even when they are manifested in ways we as scholars and activists would not promote. Again, I want to be careful in my critique of the operationalization of notions of worthy citizenship by some people of color. We have seen, since the grand resurgence of white supremacy today, pundits blaming this resurgence on “identity politics.” They argue that by calling attention to racial or sexual difference (and the problems associated with the othering of those differences), activists, scholars, and other individuals have undermined American unity and have in fact caused the backlash against “political correctness.”¹⁰ These same folks might be quick to assert that people of color can be equally guilty of racism. My scholarship adamantly rejects such notions. I contend that we must remember that interminority conflict occurs within a context in which things are not and have never been equal. Minorities have been historically excluded from the nation and even when seemingly included or even preferred (in the case of Cuban exiles), their current standing is always placed into flux (their status as true Americans can at any time be revoked or called into question). Keeping prevailing power dynamics in mind, we must differentiate the uses of dominant racializing frames by people of color from the ways these frames are used by privileged whites. Taking all this into account is necessary in future research to avoid a simplistic blaming of the groups themselves in cases of interethnic conflict when they arise.

Immigration, Race, and the Reframing of the Nation

Future research needs to continue exposing white supremacy in the “new America” not only by challenging actions made by white actors but by also delving into how it is adapted by nonwhite or non-Anglo groups. But on a more fundamental level, research needs to continue to challenge the widely accepted notion of the United States as a white nation, which is at the root of the tendency to ignore concerns of minority groups. As Picca and Feagin (2007) point out, another manifestation of white racial framing is taking for granted the idea that various social institutions are normally white controlled, without questioning white dominance and privilege. The normative framing of the nation is everywhere: in the talk of police officials declaring whites the appropriate arbiters of morality onto “deviant” black populations and in the speeches of politicians who frame who “we” are as a nation by excluding Latino immigrants. As Entman and Rojecki have observed about another arena where this normative framing is quite evident, the news, “At the most general level the color pattern of the news conveys a sense that America is essentially a society of White people with minorities … as adjunct members who mainly cause trouble or need help” (2000, 63). We must reframe the nation, underscoring that the nation is not just a neutral geographical space that immigrant groups enter, or a white land with “adjunct members,” but a nation in which minority groups are integral. In doing this work, we must also take seriously the idea that even relatively recent immigrants sometimes see themselves as (and are) unequivocal Americans.

The taken-for-granted construction of the U.S. nation as “white” is reinscribed in immigration research. Though immigration researchers have explicitly questioned white privilege by noting how assimilation processes for immigrants of color have been hampered by racism, the insistence on continuing to define immigrant adaptation by the extent to which they approximate whites socially, economically, and residentially is problematic. Although such comparisons capture the realities of U.S. power dynamics, they do not often capture the types of adaptation immigrants of color must make because they enter into a U.S. racial and linguistic caste system. Paying closer attention to this aspect of how immigrants adapt to life in the United States, as I do in this book, allows us to further bridge the separation between studies on race (emphasizing the black/white or white/nonwhite divide) and scholarship on immigration (which focuses primarily on the assimilation processes of immigrants of color). As recent scholarship has pointed out, theoretical approaches to the study of migration continue to largely ignore the role race plays in immigrants’ lives (Sáenz and Manges Douglas 2015; Valdez 2017; Valdez and Golash-Boza 2017). Paying close attention to the role of race in immigrants’ lives, along with examining the traditional measures of assimilation—economic mobility, home ownership, acquisition of the English language, and so forth—we can further examine adaptation processes that are about staking a claim to an American identity. As new (and even old) immigrants meet racist and nativist challenges to their right to belong, there are multiple ways they work to challenge these assertions. Capturing this complexity helps clarify often unexplored tensions involved in how immigrants assimilate into the context of the United States.

For instance, in this book I examined the role race plays in (white) Cuban exile adaption processes by revealing some of the ways they made claims to an American identity as captured in the Spanish-language press in the specific context of a Cuban immigrant backlash. At the same time that I levied a critique against such claims when they reinforced the idea of white supremacy and black inferiority, I also treated Cubans of all colors as a minority group. I sought to unpack the complexity of Cuban American whiteness, the whitening of the exiles in the United States due to U.S. designation of them as anti-communist heroes, as well as the precariousness of this whiteness (Aja 2016; López 2012). The precariousness of Cuban whiteness is related, in part, to the fact that Cubans are subjected to anti-immigrant sentiments held by members of the public and to the fact that in the United States, Cuban mestizaje and blackness (or blackening) make them “not quite white” in the context of the United States.

Because Cuban exiles must negotiate intersecting and transnational racial ideologies, I engaged with how race is framed in Cuba and with how white Cuban deployment of anti-blackness is related, in part, to those frames. However, I do not take a transnational approach. Transnational immigration studies scholars emphasize the idea that immigrants are not bounded by the nation-state (Aparicio 2006; Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton 1992). Such a perspective is important because it focuses on how immigrants can reconfigure their position of marginalization in the United States by creating a new sense of community through their involvement in the home country (Levitt 2001). However, “scholars focusing on transmigrant activity do not sufficiently analyze the extent to which immigrants organize in ways that are not transnational” (Aparicio 2006, 7). Seeking to better capture the struggles of immigrant groups that are related to their worries about access to local resources, I followed Nancy Raquel Mirabal’s (2003) call for more studies (focused on Cuban exiles) that place emphasis on what it means to “ser de aqui”—to be from “here,” putting roots in the United States and building identities around an American identity.

Another way in which this book has worked to integrate the study of race and immigration is in its focus on how immigrant incorporation is related not only to how immigrants are accepted by whites but also to how they are accepted by other traditional minority groups. I address this by exposing varying and sometimes contradictory degrees of willingness among African Americans and Cuban exiles in Miami, and also people of Mexican descent in Los Angeles, to accept other groups. Given demographic shifts, some immigrants are more likely to interact with other minorities rather than whites on a daily basis. Incorporating critical race perspectives into the future of immigration research allows us to better examine the multilayered dynamics of interminority relations in such areas.¹¹ Examining these relations, even those that are antagonistic, allows us to more effectively examine the complex ways race relations manifest in a demographically transformed U.S. society. We capture not only how immigrants must adapt to and contest their exclusion from the nation but also the ways they can also operate as local state-level actors and producers seeking to gain and assert a modicum of privilege in a white hegemonic sphere (Aja 2016, 7–8). In the case of Cuban exiles, this not only means celebrating how they resist traditional assimilation models by gaining success and upward mobility by holding fast to their own culture and traditions (as we see in the scholarship of proponents of the segmented assimilation model) but means also challenging instances when they deem newer immigrants “bad immigrants” and instances when they disparage Afro-Cuban and African American blackness. In taking on this challenge to understand how immigrants of color can turn around and stigmatize or malign other minority groups or more recent immigrants, our scholarship must continue examining how the racial understandings immigrants held before coming to the United States intersect with the ideals about race they may acquire in the new and different racial climate of the United States (Roth and Kim 2013). In the case of studies on immigrants coming from Latin America, doing so allows us to contribute to Latino and Afro-Latino studies, accounting for the multiple ways transnational histories of white settler and colonial domination overlap and intervene in intra-Latino relations in the geographical context of the United States. Taken together, integrating scholarship on race and immigration can allow us to examine the multiple layers involved in how immigrants experience race in the United States as they work to be included or, at least, survive in the “host” county.

Extending African American Unity

Just as it is important to take notice of the struggles of immigrant groups to be included and survive in the host county, in an era of Black Lives Matter we must continue to recognize the legitimacy of African American concerns about their social, economic, and political losses. The strength of racism and the continued disenfranchisement of African Americans justify black leaders’ continued attempt to organize around black identities and create a united front. The social devaluation of blackness has been and remains foundational to how race is made in the nation and is related to the historical positioning of African Americans “others” against white “citizens.” The unequal conditions and life chances endured by African Americans are in part a result of continued racial discrimination and white privilege. As Stuart Hall argues, African Americans become conscious of their subordination through race, and thus they understandably use that modality to resist subordination (1978, 347). Therefore, they may look to bond with other blacks for a common cause. In their efforts to combat this inequality, African Americans have also traditionally sought to frame race relations within a structural framework; hence, they have often organized their struggle in a manner inclusive of other immigrant groups who, because they share the experience of living in a white supremacist society bent on preserving the status quo, also share a similar history of racism and discrimination. However, the complaint of some African Americans, as expressed in the Miami Times for instance, was that this stance of advocating for everyone else’s rights places African Americans at a disadvantage because no one else is looking out for African Americans.

How can African Americans continue to work toward social justice for themselves while also building alliances with other minorities? How will they incorporate non–African American blacks and other immigrants without an African heritage? As this book discusses in Chapters 3 and 4, the Miami Times demonstrated that Pan-African ideals were important to the community the newspaper served, especially during the time of Mariel, but there was some evidence that the ideals were less important during the Balsero crisis, perhaps because of growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the country as a whole. For instance, Haitians, who were placed under the African American umbrella, were somewhat less accepted. In the Miami Times, Afro-Cubans could be integrated with African Americans because of their blackness, but because the newspaper often painted Cuban Americans and other Latinos as Spanish speakers taking their jobs, in reality a dichotomy was set up that would also exclude Afro-Cubans because they speak Spanish and are Latinos. This exclusion was further corroborated by the interviews with Afro-Cubans, who reported that they were at times viewed as outsiders by African Americans, a fact that further attests to the limits of the Pan-African ideal. In Miami today, the numbers of African Americans are decreasing, with much of the growth of the black population attributed to the increasing numbers of Afro-Caribbeans. More widely, research by scholars on African American acceptance of other black immigrants, such as Jamaicans, Haitians, and so on, indicates that a shared black identity is not always enough to form alliances, especially when black immigrants are viewed as taking African American jobs and when they do not automatically support causes championed by African Americans (Greer 2013; Kasinitz 1992; Waters 1999). Thus, demographic shifts and the question of how black Cubans and other black immigrants fit within or outside a Pan-African or black identity present new dilemmas for African Americans, disrupting their long-standing reliance on black racial identity for political mobilization.

Asians, Latinos, and other immigrants of color have challenged the logics behind native/foreigner divides, and black immigrants such as the Afro-Cubans in this study challenge the meaning of “black” or, more specifically, of black American. The experiences of Afro-Cubans and that of other non–African American blacks challenge African Americans to reassess the models they use for organizing and challenge the impulse among some African Americans to measure true blackness by an American identity and the use of the English language.¹² As African Americans not only in Miami but across the nation as a whole are confronted with these challenges, they continue to grapple with how to truly fold immigrants into their fight for African American civil rights. Material realities, such as the fact that at 13 percent in 2013 unemployment among African Americans was twice the national average, often inspire the fears expressed by blacks taking on a nativist stance (like Pitchford at the 2013 rally, described at the beginning of this chapter). Still, the African American dedication to the ideals of the civil rights movement also remain strong, as revealed in the Miami Times coverage that did provide some examples of how some African Americans saw coalition with immigrants as a possible solution to African American social problems. Black leaders also cautioned the African American public not to fall into a trap set by dominant whites of divide and conquer. Such perspectives point to the resistance efforts African Americans have and can continue to put forth against the black/white binary and the native/foreigner frame.

Though African Americans and Latino immigrants often share residential space, the experiences of African American communities are often lacking in immigration scholarship. Moreover, African American scholarship tends not to capture how the lives and struggles of immigrants overlap with the struggles of African Americans. In our research on the dynamics of race in multicultural America, we can contribute to African American studies by further examining African American concerns about the impact of immigration on their communities and by examining the dynamics of relations between African Americans and other minority groups. Given their continued systematic disempowerment, we must be careful not to forget the specificity of African American experiences and the particularities of their situation when it comes to race. In the spirit of a commitment to examining the specificity of African American experiences, I chose to give their perspectives focused attention in this book. Because they are the descendants of enslaved Africans who endured the “peculiar institution,” de jure segregation, and other efforts by white elites to disenfranchise and disparage them, their experiences differ from those of recent immigrants regardless of race or origin. But given the realities of demographic change, African Americans must also continue to look to what they share with other marginalized groups. As they gain greater understanding of how racism affects Afro-Cubans and other Afro-Latinos in particular, African Americans across the country can draw on similarities to solve problems facing not only African Americans but all blacks in the United States. At the same time, they can continue to draw parallels between their experiences and those of immigrant groups who are currently being disparaged and criminalized by dominant elites in order to achieve mutually beneficial social justice goals.

Rethinking Racial Paradigms

Earlier in this chapter, I discussed how Afro-Cubans and other Afro-Latinos mount a challenge against limited notions among some African Americans about what it means to be black. My focus on Afro-Cubans in this book also allowed for a challenge to the stigma attached to blackness as accepted not only by white Americans but also by Latino groups such as Cubans and Mexicans. By weaving the voices of black Cubans throughout the text, this book also provided a lens into how antagonistic racial discourses affect individual lives. As such, the research contributes to a “critical Latino whiteness studies” (López 2010, 190; see also Aja 2016). Furthermore, the Afro-Cubans interviewed for this book allow us to broaden our thinking about black and Latino identities and the boundaries between them. Their lived experiences illustrate the porousness of the boundaries that were being placed around identities such as white, black, native, foreigner, Cuban, and African American. As blacks and Latinos, the Afro-Cubans in this study helped illustrate how people on the margins can challenge dominant racialization paradigms because their multiple positionality allows them to act as mediators, translators, and interpreters at crucial sites of encounter (Anzaldúa 1999; Jiménez Román and Flores 2010). There is a long history of U.S. familiarity with Afro-Cubans through enjoyment of Afro-Cuban music, from the popularity of Mario Bauzá in the 1930s to the “boom Cubano” of the late 1990s and the popularity of the late Celia Cruz (Gosin 2016; Hernández 2002; Knaur 2001). There is much to be celebrated about Afro-Cuban contributions to music and culture, but when Afro-Cubanidad is relegated to the realm of “the cultural,” this reaffirms dominant stereotypes about difference, particularly blackness, and signifies an inclusion predicated on the idea of exclusion (Dávila 2001; De la Fuente 2001). This book complicates research on Cubans, other Latinos, and African Americans in the United States by listening to Afro-Cuban immigrant voices and paying attention to their experiences as political subjects, particularly their views on how race is lived in the United States.

Focusing on post-1980 Afro-Cuban immigrants and race, I contribute to Cuban studies by adding my voice to the growing scholarship analyzing anti-blackness among Cuban Americans. The words of Dora Amador, the Afro-Cuban award-winning journalist from El Nuevo Herald, captures why this is such a touchy topic as she comments on responses to articles she wrote on black Cuban experiences with white Cuban discrimination in the United States:

On two more occasions, I have taken on the issue of racism in my writings; on both I have met with the same despicable objections to bringing up this topic: that it fosters division in the exile community, that it hurts the Cuban cause, that Fidel Castro uses it for his own ends, that this is not the time to talk about this—interestingly enough, it is never the right time—that first we have to free the motherland, and later there will be time to talk about such things, etc.¹³

Amador goes on to take a very strong stance against the excuses made by critics, arguing that now is the time to broach the issue of racism among Cubans to help unite the Cuban community. El Nuevo Herald’s general depiction of a singular Cuban voice is disrupted by her and other articles that illustrated how black Cubans experience the exile identity differently. These perspectives underscore the experiences recounted by Afro-Cubans I interviewed, who found that Miami Cubans sometimes disparaged them and were surprised when they did seem educated or upwardly mobile. The newspaper coverage and the voices of black Cubans interviewed for this book undermine the “happy” picture of the Cuban American family unified in their exaltation of the American ideals of freedom and democracy and anti-communism. Furthermore, Afro-Cubans disrupt the boundaries between “white” and “black” Cubans by drawing on ideals of Cuban racial fraternity in ways different from their white counterparts (who often used them to stifle black claims of racism) to challenge anti-black frames of reference as they are manifested in the context of the United States.

When thinking about the Latino category more broadly, we are able to see the ways Afro-Cubans challenge the tendency within Latino studies to emphasize the idea of Latinos as mestizo and transnational subjects in ways that obscure the problem of anti-blackness among Latinos (Rivera-Rideau et al. 2016). With the rise of the U.S. Latino population, the Pan-Latino identification has grown in significance in the United States; however, many scholars have disputed the use of the ethnic umbrella terms “Hispanic” as well as “Latino,” because the labels obscure the localized differential experiences of peoples of Latin American and Caribbean heritage based on national origin, gender or sexuality, and race (Beltrán 2010; Flores-Gonzalez 1999; Frank et al. 2010). Yet in specific settings, Spanish-speaking peoples from disparate groups have found families of resemblance, adopted one another’s cultural practices, and broadened their sense of identity to include a collective one. William Flores and Rina Benmayor (1997) have argued that in the context of the United States, this construction resists imposed binaries of race, gender, or national origin and emphasizes the ability of marginalized groups to reconfigure race. But the experiences of black Latinos (and other immigrants of African descent) in the United States also demonstrate that according to the one-drop rule, they are expected to identify according to their race of black identity over and above their other identities (Bailey 2000, 2001; Landale and Oropesa 2002; Torres-Salliant 2010; Waters 1999, 2001). Thus, investigations of the “Latino” experience must also examine, as does the current research, what has been made invisible in the discussion of pan-ethnic identities.

The rejection of Afro-Cubans by some white Cubans can in part be attributed to attitudes about black inferiority held among whites in Cuba; in the U.S. Afro-Cubans are also directly affected by the negative evaluations by some white Cubans of African Americans. For instance, the blackening of Mariel Cubans in El Nuevo Herald on the basis of qualities used in the United States to disparage African Americans could be seen in the stories focusing on criminality and using the word “ghetto” to discuss a set of behaviors among the Marielitos not sanctioned in U.S. society. Furthermore, Afro-Cubans in Miami and Los Angeles explicitly attest to the fact they are affected by the stigma attached to an African American identity when they are mistaken for African Americans by white Cubans and Mexicans. Seeing the particular ways Afro-Cubans drew on their Cuban heritage to contest anti-blackness as experienced in the United States and deployed not only by whites but also other Latinos, we gain insight into how ideas about blackness shift as Afro-Latino immigrants move across space and time. As we see the ways they affirmed their blackness, we also add to Afro-Latino scholarship by “further mov[ing] us away from the assumption that … Afro-Latinos are somehow prone to pathologically deny[ing] their blackness” (Rivera-Rideau et al. 2016, 13).

Future research on Afro-Cubans and other Afro-Latinos would do well to investigate their political orientations. The interviewees in this research were not directly asked about their political stance, in regards to either U.S. or Cuban politics, so we do not know if they are more inclined to support Latino or African American leaders and causes. What will be their response if Latino groups vie for their support as Latinos, and African Americans seek to include them as blacks? A larger study might reveal reliable patterns and a more conclusive answer to the question of how their racial identities intersect with their political choices.

The responses from the Afro-Cubans interviewed for this study capture just a segment of Afro-Cuban immigrant experiences, but they challenge us to think about what we can do in our daily interactions to undermine racism and inequality. We see clear problems in their everyday experiences—in the African American rejection of Afro-Cuban foreignness, sometimes rooted in language issues, as African Americans tend to associate English with a true African American identity. Latinos, in contrast, may associate Afro-Cubans with an African American identity, which is also stigmatized among some Latinos. But some of the Afro-Cubans interviewed demonstrated a willingness to cross boundaries viewed as rigid by others, in an effort to connect with others on the basis of shared race, culture, immigration status, and language. By drawing attention to gaps and overlaps, the Afro-Cubans interviewed for this project challenge us to answer the hard questions about race and nationalism, belonging, and the boundaries drawn as we create political communities. This book’s investigation of the Afro-Cuban experiences indicates that their complex racial identities contribute to their manipulation of otherness, revealing overlaps between African American and Latino communities. Together, these racialized minorities can provide and take advantage of spaces for resisting dominant racializing frames, thus enhancing the possibilities for greater interethnic understanding and alliances. Such alliances do not simply reinscribe the use of race as the principal basis of identity. Rather, these sorts of alliances are about going beyond the limits of racial/ethnic identities to find common ground that can then be galvanized for the fight against already existing racial and racist institutions and orders.¹⁴

Miami Today

Decades removed from the crises discussed in this research, the Miami of today has continued to transform. While Cubans continue to hold power and influence and represent more than half the Latino population in Miami, the Latino population has greatly diversified.¹⁵ In Little Havana, one can find the growing presence of other Latin American immigrants, who run businesses and restaurants there. As mentioned earlier, the African American population has also declined overall, with the growth of the black population today being attributed to immigration from the Caribbean. While in previous decades incidents would flare up because of the tensions between African Americans and Cuban Americans, today these populations generally do not often interact with one another. Tensions between African Americans and Cubans may thus seem to be a thing of the past, but the fact that these populations, who could gain so much from coalition, generally avoid one another is a problem. What we do see today in Miami is that the traditional mode of race making, which positions blacks at the bottom of the social order, is still in effect. The interviews in the current study, corroborated by Alan Aja’s work (2016), demonstrate that white Cuban racism against black Cubans and other blacks is not a thing of the past. Furthermore, as Aja (2016) found, in general, black populations in Miami, whether native born or immigrant, are struggling economically disproportionately compared with other local groups in Miami-Dade County. As Aja contends, Cubans, along with Latinos from South American countries who on the U.S. Census are most likely to report themselves as “white,” tend to fare considerably better than blacks in the area. All these factors illustrate that, in a diversifying Miami, race continues to be a strong mediating factor in the social and economic situation of Miamians.¹⁶

Cubans have a well-deserved reputation of being an insular and staunchly conservative community; thus, scholars have been pessimistic that they will play an active role in working to create more equal conditions in Miami. Concerning African American and Cuban relations in particular, scholars have been even more pessimistic about the prospects for political cooperation because they traditionally support opposing political parties, Democratic and Republican, respectively. However, the actual diversity in thought and opinion that has always existed but was submerged in the insistence on a united anti-Castro posture became more apparent during President Obama’s first run for president. For the first time in history, a Democratic candidate won the majority of the Miami’s Latino vote. The Latino victory was largely due to the strong non-Cuban Latino presence that had grown in Miami during the first decade of the twenty-first century. But 55 percent of Cubans aged twenty-nine and younger voted for Obama. This contrasted sharply with the proportion of Cubans sixty-five and older, 84 percent of whom continued to vote Republican. Hence, we saw a growing division within the Miami Cuban community, as the older Cubans remained loyal to the Republican ticket while younger Cuban Americans voted more in line with Latinos across the country.¹⁷ The increasingly moderate and liberal views of the second and third generations provide room to be hopeful that political alignment among younger Cubans, Afro-Cubans, African Americans, and the increasing population of black Caribbeans can allow greater understanding and coalition to work toward solving problems affecting all these groups in Miami.¹⁸

Still, dramatic political transformations spurred a backlash and tightening of the exile identity among some members of the exile community. During the Obama administration, dramatic moves were made to reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba, such as the softening of travel restrictions for U.S. citizens seeking to visit Cuba, slackening import restrictions, and expanding the ability for U.S. imports to Cuba. Cuba was also taken off the terrorism list, and a U.S. embassy in Havana was reestablished. The Cuban old guard was strongly opposed to these moves, and Trump’s promises to undo the warming on U.S.–Cuba relations enhanced the support he gained among Miami’s Cubans, half of whom voted for him. Thus, it appears at least for the near future, the unique conflict between the U.S. and Cuba will continue to play a strong role in Cuban exile politics and may also determine the nature of relations between Cubans and other groups in Miami that remain marginalized.

There is a new political economy Cubans seeking refuge in the United States are forced to navigate, however. With the death of Fidel Castro and the transfer of power from his brother Raúl to Miguel Díaz-Canel, it is not clear how the political climate in Cuba will develop and how (or if) the United States’ relationship with the nation will shift in response. Moreover, the United States recently made the historic move of closing the open door to Cuban immigration. At the end of his presidential term in January 2017, Obama ended the “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy that had specially benefited Cuban refugees. Although the policy was originally meant to be restrictive, it still allowed Cubans to be given access to immediate asylum if they entered the United States by land. Obama’s move was meant to make the immigration and asylum process more equitable for migrants regardless of national origin. Advocates for immigrants from other countries other than Cuba see this as a very positive development, but for Cubans, it does signal the end of an era when the United States deemed them “favored” migrants. Despite the many Trump administration moves to undo Obama-era policies, “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” has not been reinstated. Thus, the plight of Cuban migrants is currently more similar to that of others seeking U.S. entry. Future scholarship on Cuban Miami will likely need to examine how Cuban Americans contend with the new contradictions they may face as politicians seek to simultaneously castigate the Cuban government and maintain its intensified focus on immigration restrictions, particularly if this comes to involve increased surveillance and the ramping up of deportations of Cuban nationals. This research could also examine whether such changes in the political economy might heighten the prospects of greater community building between groups in Miami that have traditionally found themselves on opposite sides of the political spectrum.

In the face of rigidly drawn borders, such as those drawn in cases of interethnic conflict in Miami and across the nation, we must take stock of the greater complexity of a political climate in which anti-immigrant, anti-refugee policies and continued efforts to reverse civil rights movement gains are enacted simultaneously and in concert. Today, an official voice from the White House has argued that the Statue of Liberty is not actually a beacon for all the world’s tired and poor to come to America. Denying the ability of migrants to seek asylum and working to limit even legal forms of immigration, the administration is moving even further away from the pretense that the nation cares about suffering and human rights. The nation is currently experiencing a strong (white) nativist backlash that, according to scholars such as Juan Gonzalez (2011), has been long in the making, beginning in 1980, the year that marked the beginning of a period known as “the Browning of America.” This backlash goes right along with a “get tough on crime” narrative and policy moves that position the establishment against “errant blacks.” In this book, examining the case of African Americans, Cuban Americans, and Afro-Cubans reminded us of these greater social and political issues that overlap in the lives of people, some of whom are both blacks and Latinos, who are in reality all affected by the strength of the native/foreigner frame that dangerously positions Latinos, along with (but differently from) blacks, in the role of “noncitizens.” They are also all affected by the entrenched anti-blackness that has continued to spur the need for activists to remind the nation that “black lives matter.” This is because in a white elite-dominated system, people of color are all often demonized but in different ways. Latinos and African Americans taking this into account can resist dominant efforts to pit them against one another.

We have reason to be hopeful that those opposed to anti-immigrant, anti-Latino, and anti-black policy moves will bond together to oppose them, given that African Americans and Latinos have historically worked together in the past to redress their shared disenfranchisement (Behnken 2016; Johnson 2013; Kun and Pulido 2013; Márquez 2014). However, the changes in the economy since the 1970s, U.S. labor needs, housing discrimination, increased urbanization, and political competition have affected immigrant and African American populations in different ways, jeopardizing such alliances (Betancur 2005b; Vaca 2004). In this book, I have emphasized the role and importance of such structural forces by contextualizing Miami’s interminority conflict within histories of structural racism and illustrating how these structures set the stage for interminority conflict. Such observations make clear that along with attending to the issue of discourse and ideology also discussed in this book, the larger structural issues affecting competition need to be addressed to forge effective alliances. Indeed, my main focus on ideologies driving interethnic conflict does not preclude the importance of the objective structural factors that intervene.

Still, this book advocates that we continue to expose the inextricable links between material realities and ideologies. We must continue to expose the important role of ideology in how people of color might be recruited to carry out ideals of worthy citizenship or might be convinced, themselves, of the legitimacy of a nativism that cloaks itself in the mantle of “national security” or of the need to get tough on (black) crime. The white power base has long promoted exclusionary ideals of “the nation” as a tool for asserting power, unity, and identity. More recently, the Trump administration has placed a premium on immigrants and native-born Americans demonstrating their worthiness to belong on the basis of their “patriotism” or the approved “American” ideologies to which they adhere. According to the terms of worthy citizenship, such ideals, and the qualities that supposedly make people ideal citizen-subjects, come to be taken for granted as having moral value. Thus, as people seek to place themselves on a moral high ground, some may be convinced that not only should they police themselves in these ways but that they should also police others. As such policing reinforces the status quo and existing power dynamics, we as scholars and activists are tasked with resisting and challenging the pull to embrace white dominant exclusionary ideologies, in all their forms, as we continue working toward new ways of defining American belonging.