Racism in Miami?

By Elíades Acosta Matos

Seldom has been more visible on the stage of global public discussion what in politically correct language is called “multiculturalism.” Its acceptance or rejection, its exaltation to the altar or its demonization – as expected from such all-encompassing yet so ambiguous a term – depends on the cause being defended. It’s that simple.

Multiculturalism was discussed to satiety when that disappeared (but not dead) Project for a New American Century created by American conservatives pointed to the need to send troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, and George W. Bush broadened the objective in a grim speech in 2003, at West Point, in which he promised to attack “60 or more dark corners of the planet.” At the time, the ideologists of imperial expansion, headed by Samuel Huntington, spoke not of a dialogue between cultures, much less of multicultural coexistence, but of a “clash of civilizations.”

Deliciously multicultural, if we accept this delicate euphemism, were the interminable discussions about race that accompanied the 2008 presidential campaign, which led to the election of the first “multicultural” president in the history of the United States. And anti-multicultural are many of the strategies of that truculent right that today confronts Obama with the zeal of secret believers in the superiority of one race, one faith, one system and one nation. Not for nothing did one of its spokesmen, Tom Tancredo, say in a speech during the recently concluded Tea Party Movement convention in Nashville that we must struggle tirelessly “against the cult of multiculturalism and its deceits.”

Multiculturalism has been discussed recently after the premiere of “Avatar,” the award-winning and successful movie by James Cameron. “How does it feel to betray your own race?” asks one of the characters while beating up the protagonist, who has crossed to the side of those who defend original life in the faraway planet Pandora, invaded by greedy mercenaries from Earth. According to a message in Twitter, “this is a fantasy about the races told from the viewpoint of white people and it reinforces the fable of the white Messiah.” To the movie’s director, this is a call to open one’s eyes “and look at others, respect them, even if they are different, with the hope of preventing conflicts and living more harmoniously in this world.”

Within multiculturalism – if we imagine it as a Russian doll that contains inside innumerable replicas – there is a legion of concepts. Following the skein we shall no doubt run into the attitude toward those we are different from us, either by the color of their skin or eyes, by their class origin or their country of origin.

Consequently, in its noblest description, multiculturalism could be defined as the realization that difference, more than similarity, diversity, rather than unity, is what best characterizes and defines the fruits of humanity’s evolution. To recognize this truth implies to assume a coexistence that is based on respect for difference, harmony between diverse cultures, and peace.

Precisely because it is based on an elementary and obvious logic, multiculturalism has become a post-modern battlefield for the ancestral conflicts of race and class, hegemony and subjection on one side and equality, sovereignty and freedom on the other.

There is not a single nation in the world, or a single system, where the problems of coexistence of ethnic groups and races (much less different social classes) have been definitely solved. Recently, a debate arose in Cuba over whether racism exists in the country.

It’s been pathetic to see how the usual pyromaniacs and troublemakers, those people who deny water and salt to Cuban socialism, have attacked as if they lived in the best of all possible worlds and have rent their garments with the theatricality of swindlers. But, as an ironic Victor Hugo used to tell political speakers, the facts of reality are very stubborn and seldom leave harangues intact.

At the peak of the debate, Max Lesnik, a Cuban journalist who lives in Miami and has a good memory, recalled when the city’s loudmouths and their mayor, Alex Penelas, in 1990 branded Nelson Mandela as “persona non grata,” and prevented that living symbol of the struggle against apartheid and racism from accepting an invitation from the city’s Afro-American community.

The question for someone who arrives in Florida from any other part of the world – for example, Haiti, Mexico, the Dominican Republic or Central America – and for the successive generations of Cubans who have emigrated and continue to do so is if they have been excluded from some opportunities as a consequence of their origin, language or appearance.

The question is multicultural, no doubt, but at the same time very concrete. Are we going to pose it to the ordinary man on the street, the man who works the whole day long to care for his family? Would those who pontificate and give lessons on equality and social justice to Cuba give space to an account of those life experiences?

To the nightingales of capitalist restoration in Cuba, the racial reproaches to the policy of the Revolution are just weapons for hurling. It won’t be because of their noisy campaigns that we Cubans on the island will continue to struggle for what Martí called “the attainment of all justice.” The social class they represent had its historic opportunity to eradicate racism before 1959 and, in the process, all injustices, subordinations and exclusions.

It was their lenience, their failure, their indifference or complicity with the status quo that led the people of Cuba down the path of revolution. How can we believe today in the sincerity of the egalitarian and redemptive raptures expressed by those who continue to represent the same yesterday, those who coexist daily with discarnate expressions of what they reject as unacceptable? Is or isn’t there racism in the United States and in Miami itself, in that morbid and degraded variant that pits some emigrants with others and some excluded people with similar others?

Less than a year ago, a white racist in Miami used a rifle to shoot down two Chilean students visiting the city and wounded three others. A casual event, an accident or a multicultural mishap? How would those high priests of equality and rights explain that away?

While we wait, comfortably seated, for the answers to these questions, we’d do well to enjoy “Avatar.” It can’t be such a bad movie, if it has managed to remove from the closet those scabrous topics that many don’t discuss and others just skim, as they wordlessly walk past the man who sweeps the street, picks up the garbage, tends a garden or picks tomatoes in the field.

In the end, the racist in “Avatar” dies inside his high-technology robot, pierced not by a laser beam but by the arrows of the inferior races he hated and came to colonize. Unquestionably, an exemplary multicultural parable.

By the way, let me ask: To what race belong the poor, the homeless, the offended and humiliated?

Elíades Acosta Matos, philosopher, doctor in political science, and writer is a member of the Progreso Weekly/Semanal team.