Fighting the Ease of Othering: Reflections on Cuba and the U.S.
We were welcomed with celebration –vibrant colors of red, orange and green and pink.
Appeared in Medium
Pictured: Two woman dancing outside Cabildo Quisicuaba Social Project. The name comes from the free blacks who lived there in the 16th century: the Quisis.
I had never witnessed firsthand people with sun-kissed skin[1] dancing in the street to celebrate any national holiday. That type of joy and pride for one’s nation was foreign to me as an African American.
This is not to say African Americans are unpatriotic. In fact, I have come to learn from my good friend, Trabian Shorters, founder and CEO at BMe Community, that the notion of Black folks as unpatriotic is a racist narrative that falsely and automatically equates Whiteness with patriotism and fuels larger narratives about who ‘deserves’ rights in this country and who does not. When we look at American Black women, where my work has been focused: (1) we engage; out-voting all other race/gender subgroups[2]; (2) we serve; enlisting in the military at a rate double our representation in the general population[3]; and, (3) we lead; standing in the vanguard our nation’s most visible social movements from Black Lives Matter to #MeToo to marches for climate justice and reproductive rights. As was said often during the 2018 mid-term elections in the U.S., Black women are constantly trying to save a country that is not even sure it wants to be saved.
If that is not a form of patriotism, I don’t know what is.
But, back to Havana.
It was 26 de Julio, or the 26th of July. We would come to learn that on this day in 1953, a band of rebels led by Fidel Castro attacked the military barracks in Santiago de Cuba, the first real threat in the eventual Castro-led overthrow of the Fulgencio Batista government.
We would also come to learn that they failed. Many of the rebels would die and Castro would later be imprisoned.
But it was the most serious attack to date on Batista.
A spark had been lit.
A revolution had begun.
This would be my second trip to Cuba. Quite unique for an American citizen given our 60+ year inhumane trade embargo on the country.
I was in Havana as part of a partnership between the Atlantic Institute, the Cuba Platform and the Haas Institute at the University of California at Berkeley to study the concepts of Othering and Belonging in the Cuban context. These concepts, created by professor john a. powell at Haas, name the processes by which our society excludes, or ‘others’ people based on a variety of identities- race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, ability, and so on. For powell, the solution to othering is not inclusion, as we have grown particularly fond of in the United States, but instead “belonging”. As powell instructs, inclusion’s core tenet is assimilation, the process whereby groups and cultures with less power come to resemble or assume the values, behaviors and beliefs of the dominant group. But with belonging, we co-create new systems, cultures, spaces and realities for everyone. We achieve a ‘Bigger We.’
I was set to participate on a panel on gender that morning that included internationally renowned feminist scholar and author, Dr. Norma Vassallo, whose research explores the shifting roles for Cuban women post-revolution, Dr. Julio Cesar Gonzalez, founder of the First Forum of Masculinities in Cuba and the IberoAmerican and African Network on Masculinities, who spoke about his campaigns to sensitize men for non-violence against women and girls, Atlantic Senior Fellow, Marcus Akuhata-Brown, founder of the intergenerational Tuia National Leadership Development Program, who works to combat hypermasculinity among Māori men in New Zealand, and then me, who presented emerging themes from my global inquiry into Black women’s intersectional leadership in the philanthropic and charitable sectors.
My imposter syndrome was running high that day.
While I learned much from each panelist, three simple words from my peer fellow, Marcus, most struck me. As he delved into the Māori concept of gender, Marcus explained it as a balance. For Māori there is no hierarchy between male and female, the Sky is the father and the Earth is the mother. One cannot exist without the other. The impacts of hypermasculinity such as domestic violence and infanticide, Marcus explained, is a symptom of being disconnected from this balance. He summed it up simply by saying, “We are unwell.”
As I sat there listening to Marcus, I could not help but think about all the ways in which I might be unwell. How my people, Black peoples around the world, may not be well, how White people are not well and how my country, the United States of America, is in a constant state of being unwell.
For me, wellness is not merely the presence of health, nor is it the absence of sickness. It is something else, something higher, something that cannot be achieved through material things or measured through medical tests. It is about connection. It is a connection to place. It is a deep connection to others, not solely as individuals, but a collective humanity.
Pictured: Agroecologist Fernando Funes Monzote (front) and Senior Atlantic Fellow for Social Equity Marcus Akuhata-Brown at Finca Marta, an 8-acre organic farm where agriculture, ecology and innovation meet to usher in a “new Cuba.”
Our earth is unwell, our nations are unwell, our people are unwell and the policies in place, at least in my country, show that our leaders are not invested in our collective wellness.
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Throughout our trip we had been traveling with Cuban changemakers and engaging in a cross-cultural dialogue reflecting on what we were seeing and experiencing through the concepts of Othering and Belonging. At Finca Marta, an organic farm created by agroecologist, Fernando Funes Monzote, I was still thinking about this idea of being “unwell,” and asked our counterparts, “Are you free? Do you feel free?”
One by one, they answered yes. Were there problems? Yes. Was there crumbling infrastructure and food scarcity? Yes. But, did they also feel free? They did.
I responded quickly stating that if I asked that question to a group of African Americans, the answer would be a resounding, “No”. For me, and most Black folks I know, to be Black in America is to not feel free. To not be free. It is to be policed for our skin color, our hair, our style of dress, our very existence. The sardonic phrase fill-in-the-blank action “while Black” is not used without reason.
I was in awe. Our Cuban friends felt free. They did not feel unwell, nor did they feel out of balance. They were deeply connected to others, to place and to their collective humanity. Right?
In a later conversation with dr. powell, he challenged my question informing me that the notion of freedom I asked about was a very American one. He explained that while I see freedom as the presence and abundance of personal and/or group liberties, many others see it as nothing more than a state in opposition to captivity. Both are notions of freedom, but they are very different things.
I left Cuba with more questions than answers. Was I unwell? Why did I feel the need to ask that question about freedom? Why did I need to hear whether the Cubans felt free? Was it a need for connection or solidarity or something else? Was it a way to rationalize what I saw, through my lens of privilege? Why do we Americans, a label I have never fully embraced, need to hear that people living in less material privilege than we are must have a different level of awareness about notions and concepts that we ourselves have little understanding of? And why did I even assume or expect for their notion of freedom to be the same as my own? Finally, as I continuously wonder, what does it mean for me, a woman who sits at the intersection of race, sexual and gender oppression at home, to also benefit from immense national privilege as I travel throughout the world?
As I said, I do not have the answers to these questions, but they are ones I will continue to explore. They require me to wrestle with self, with group, with nation, with world. Most important, they require me to constantly ask, who is being othered, who belongs and what am I doing to build a “bigger we.” I want to be well.
[1] I learned that many Cubans, who I might see as Black, do not self-identify as Black. Because of this, I will not use that label to describe them.
[2] Higher Heights for America. Black Women Cotes by the Numbers. 2018. Accessed December 2019. https://www.higherheightsforamerica.org/black_women_voters_by_the_numbers
[3] Melin, J. Desperate choices: why Black women join the U.S. military at higher rates than men and all other racial and ethnic groups. Swathmore College. New England Journal of Public Policy. Volume 28| Issue 2. https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1697&context=nejpp