For Immediate Release
Media Contact:
(202) 643-1136
communications@blackallianceforpeace.com
The Biden Commitment to U.S. White Power Is the Real Race Issue in Cuba!
Black Alliance for Peace condemns new sanctions imposed on Cuban officials
JULY 22, 2021—The Biden administration that greenlighted dictatorship, violence and repression in Haiti as one of its first acts in office and has yet to call for accountability from its ally, Colombia, for the dozens of deaths and disappearances during the ongoing national strike, imposed additional sanctions today on Cuban government officials. And how are the justifications for sanctions being framed? In language calling for the protection of human rights, democracy and freedom!
In imposing these sanctions and in its Cuba policy since taking office, the Biden administration has demonstrated it is more clear on its motivations and interests than U.S.-based progressive forces, including so-called “radicals,” according to Black Alliance for Peace National Organizer Ajamu Baraka.
“Biden understands upholding the power of the pan-European, colonial-capitalist white-supremacist patriarchy requires the judicious use of state violence, subversion, and the denial of democracy and national sovereignty for the millions who reside in the Americas region,” Baraka said. “The only challenge for Biden—and any other U.S. president—is how to frame the message to obscure from the U.S. public the imperatives of U.S. imperialist policies.”
The protests that erupted on July 11 helped to re-introduce race as a centerpiece of the propaganda offensive, the real intent of which is to suffocate the Cuban socialist project.
We understand contradictions of race exist in every national context that has grown out of the colonial construction of nations. In those national projects, white-supremacist ideology is at the core of national identity and economic productive relations. Cuba does not escape that knotty reality, even within the context of a revolution. But the race issues in Cuba are qualitatively different from the systemic brutality and structural racism in the United States that kills hundreds of African/Black people every year in police encounters. The U.S. system also has killed tens of thousands of people, who died due to the COVID-19 pandemic that was exacerbated because of the social conditions created by capitalism.
That is why U.S. policy makers actually caring about racism in Cuba defies history and common sense. But what is truly bizarre is academicians, the Black liberal intelligentsia and elements of the broad left have given political cover and legitimacy to a well-oiled propaganda campaign that has highlighted the “racial” problem in Cuba.
The Black Alliance for Peace will not allow itself to be used as cannon fodder in the immoral war on Cuba and its revolutionary process. We condemn the sanctions, the embargo, the attempts at subversion, and the denial of Cuba’s national liberation and sovereignty.
We say to all those who pretend to be concerned about Cuba to demand an end to the embargo and to respect the right of the Cuban people to work through their own problems. As the first republic established on the basis of race and subsequently invented apartheid, the United States should be the last on the planet to lecture anyone on race relations.
Banner photo: Cuban supporters of the government of President Miguel Diaz-Canel at a demonstration in Havana on July 17, 2021. (Yamil Lage / AFP)