Nikole Hannah-Jones wants both races to be equally miserable
Margaret Thatcher made a memorable point in 1990 about socialism. Her example involved the standard of living:
Nikole Hannah-Jones, head of the 1619 Project, seems to take the same tack as the leftists in the above clip, only Hannah-Jones spoke about the situation of black people and white people in Cuba:
In 2019, around the original launch of the 1619 Project, Hannah-Jones identified Cuba as a model for racial equality. The 1619 Project claims to unearth systemic racism in the United States, and the original version claimed that the “true founding” of America came not with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 but with the arrival of the first slaves in Virginia in 1619 (the first slaves actually arrived far earlier). In an interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein, Hannah-Jones suggested the U.S. should follow Cuba in fighting racism.
“Are there candidates right now — or even just places — that you think have a viable and sufficiently ambitious integration agenda, and if so, what is it?” Klein asked Hannah-Jones on his podcast, recently unearthed by The National Pulse.
“I’m definitely not an expert on race relations internationally,” Hannah-Jones began. She also admitted that “it’s also hard to look at countries that didn’t have large institutions of slavery and compare them to the United States.”
“If you want to see the most equal multi-racial democ… — it’s not a democracy — the most equal multi-racial country in our hemisphere, it would be Cuba,” Hannah-Jones said…
“Cuba has the least inequality between black and white people of any place really in the hemisphere. I mean the Caribbean — most of the Caribbean — it’s hard to count because the white population in a lot of those countries is very, very small, they’re countries run by black folks, but in places that are truly at least biracial countries, Cuba actually has the least inequality, and that’s largely due to socialism, which I’m sure no one wants to hear,” Hannah-Jones argued.
This was not a one-off for Hannah-Jones. She had written pretty much the same thing back in 2008:
“Black Cubans especially are wary of outsiders wishing to overthrow the Castro regime. They admit the revolution has been imperfect, but it also led to the end of codified racism and brought universal education and access to jobs to black Cubans,” she argued. “Without the revolution, they wonder, where would they be?”
Where would they be? Probably a lot better off. The Cuban revolution happened in the late 50s, and I am pretty sure that without Communism the black population of Cuba would have made even more progress between then and now than it actually has made. They certainly would have had more liberty – as would the white population of Cuba.
And it’s not even as though what Hannah-Jones is saying about race relations and racism in Cuba is true. Plenty of Cubans dispute the Party line that racism is gone in Cuba:
Typically the proponents of the elimination of racism position are close to the revolutionary government, supportive of the revolution in total, and/or come from an older generation of Cubans that are more familiar with pre-revolutionary racism. They argue that the dismantling of economic class through socialism destroyed the material perpetuation of racism. In 1966, Castro himself said that, “Discrimination disappeared when class privileges disappeared.”…
While many opponents of the revolution, such as Cuban emigrants, argue that Castro created race problems on the island, the most common claim for the exacerbation of racism is the revolution’s inability to accept Afro-Cubans who want to claim a black identity. After 1961, it was simply taboo to talk about race at all. Antiracist Cuban activists who rejected a raceless approach and wanted to show pride in their blackness such as Walterio Carbonell and Juan René Betancourt in the 1960s, were punished with exile or imprisonment.
Esteban Morales Domínguez, a professor in the University of Havana, believes that “the absence of the debate on the racial problem already threatens {…} the revolution’s social project.” Carlos Moore, who has written extensively on the issue, says that “there is an unstated threat, blacks in Cuba know that whenever you raise race in Cuba, you go to jail. Therefore the struggle in Cuba is different. There cannot be a civil rights movement. You will have instantly 10,000 black people dead.” He says that a new generation of black Cubans are looking at politics in another way.[24] Cuban rap groups of today are fighting against this censorship; Hermanos de Causa explains the problem best by saying, “Don’t you tell me that there isn’t any [racism], because I have seen it/ don’t tell me that it doesn’t exist, because I have lived it.”
It seems that Hannah-Jones would have had to flee Cuba, or be imprisoned, for speaking the way she does. Here she’s rewarded for it. But like the good leftist that she is, she nevertheless praises Cuba for its racial policies.
The argument for the wholly imaginary “systemic racism” from disparity in household wealth (with the corresponding emphasis on “equity”, i.e. state-mandated equality of outcome) falls apart very easily when one considers the numerous factors responsible for the creation of wealth nationally and for the ability of citizens to benefit from the systems in place. Individuals vary greatly in ambition, intelligence, perseverance (and all other elements of temperament), and there exists considerable evidence that groups (considered statistically) do as well. It therefore follows that the only possible result from the forcible attempt to equalize all is to immiserate (almost) all, for, of course, in the society imagined by most “progressives”, they are the privileged minority of materially comfortable commissars ruling over the vast majority of impoverished kulaks.
j e:
People also vary in interests and goals, which often affect income. This is often ignored, for example, in the income gap between men and women. People sometimes choose careers that have lower income potential; and not all of those choices are irrational.
Hmmmm. “Equally miserable.” Isn’t that the Commie Party Line? For those who’ve read their Solzhenitsyn, at least?
Must admit she is rather entertaining…in a “Night of the Living Dead” kinda way.
(But then it seems that the Democratic Party and its supporters have been zombified now for quite some time…with the help of the corrupt media and infotech certainly. But how long can THAT be used as an excuse?)
In related news, US students interviewed by Campus Reform cannot fathom why equity champions from Cuba hoist Old Glory in protest against their great State’s achievements….?
From the National Mall in occupied Washington, DC:
“Students in Washington DC were confused to see the American flag, which they don’t believe is a symbol of freedom, flown by Cuban citizens in recent protests against the communist government. One student suggested Cuban anti-communists should fly the flag of Sweden.”
https://www.breitbart.com/tag/cuba/
The USA used to be the richest and best educated nation in the world. Today, we spend more per capita than anywhere on K-12.
Yet 15 year olds rank a F-d up 37th in STEM.
But hey. We’re so rich and successful, we really need Diversity and Anti-racist Training (TM)!
Hannah what’s her face, OMG! She’s soooooo GRT!
NHJ is probably making $500k-$1m per year with her new gigs.
Coates, the alleged writer, has a place in Paris.
The race industry has been very, very good to them.
I don’t believe the World Bank has published data on Cuba’s income distribution. Ever. In terms of per capita income, Cuba has a half-dozen peer countries in Latin America; together they account for < 10% of Latin America's population. Everyone else more affluent.
The entire group of Caribbean islands had extensive African slavery back in the 17th and into the 19th century, including Cuba. Wikipedia says there were 224,000 African slaves in Cuba in 1817. Also:
In part due to Cuban slaves working primarily in urbanized settings, by the 19th century, the practice of coartacion had developed (or “buying oneself out of slavery”, a “uniquely Cuban development”), according to historian Herbert S. Klein.
But it wasn’t a uniquely Cuban development. It was part of the Vatican’s (corrupt?) accommodation with slavery. Slaves in France and some of its territories were allowed to work for cash on weekends and eventually buy their freedom.
Winston Churchill long ago pointed out that socialism results in the “equal sharing of miseries”. Perhaps he thought it too obvious to mention that all collectivist ‘philosophies’ also result in ‘some animals being more equal than others’.
As for Cuba, it’s one of those “shithole” countries of whom Trump spoke…
There’s no shortage of countries that have and do demonstrate the intellectual, social, economic and moral bankruptcy that results from implementing collectivist governance.
So by now, the only motivation for championing such systems is either mendaciousness or useful idiocy. Some are too intelligent for useful idiocy to be the category within which they fall, Chuck Schumer for instance is a manipulative man who serves evil. Others are hard to pin down. And some are clearly useful idiots like most ‘celebrities’. ‘Meathead’ being a prime example.
Out of puerile curiosity, I do wonder how much Bozo Hannah-Jones fixation on white incomes v. black incomes arises from a resentful comparison of her father’s family with her mother’s.
This was her grandmother:
https://www.papich-kubafs.com/obituary/2041858
What happened to this family?
The problem for the loonie left is that their argument for women earning less makes no sense. If it were true that a woman is worth less, than any business with a brain would hire more women because they would have to pay them less.
There you go again Robert, confusing the issue with facts…;-)
Engaging in any kind of debate with people of Hannah-Jones’ ilk is an exercise in futility. She is the embodiment of uniformed, Bad-Faith political discourse. No effective rebuttal is even possible with such people – they will simply move on to newly-shifted premises once they perceive a confrontation. AS others have pointed out (I think correctly), theirs is a successful grift, and grifts can’t survive in the harsh light of classical debate.
Art Deco : a good question. And a sad commentary.
Maggie T was a wonder. We need someone like her right now.
The business of politics is not abstruse theorizing and it’s not moral preening. The business of politics is making Nikole Hannah-Jones feel especially miserable. Trust me, the more miserable she feels, the better you will feel. Embrace the Dark Side 🙂
My question for Hannah-Jones is when was the last time she saw a Cuban official who was black?
Neo quoting:
In 2019, around the original launch of the 1619 Project, Hannah-Jones identified Cuba as a model for racial equality.
Johann Amadeus Metesky:
My question for Hannah-Jones is when was the last time she saw a Cuban official who was black?
Johann beat me to it. Neo also beat me to it, by mentioning Carlos Moore, who knows a bit more about being black in Cuba than Ms. Nikole Hannah-Jones does. I read Moore’s book, but years ago.
It is a sad state of affairs when an ignoramus like Ms. Nikole Hannah-Jones gets so much attention.
Neo:
It seems that Hannah-Jones would have had to flee Cuba, or be imprisoned, for speaking the way she does. Here she’s rewarded for it. But like the good leftist that she is, she nevertheless praises Cuba for its racial policies.
For example, Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin lived in Cuba for 4 years, but got booted out for her big mouth. (While lefties in the US love “speaking truth to power,” that POV doesn’t go over too well with the rulers of Socialist paradises.) While fellow radical Margaret Randall didn’t get booted out of Cuba, her decade in Cuba came to a bad end circa 1980, when due to internal politics (not, as far as I can tell, for a big mouth), she was not permitted to go to her job- though she still got paid. Margaret Randall went on to Sandinista Nicaragua, but eventually returned to the US.
Regarding Art Deco’s pointing out that Nicole Hannah-Jones has a white grandmother, here is an article about that, but for mothers instead of grandmothers. I haven’t read it yet.
https://www.unz.com/article/my-bob-bob-why-black-leftists-often-have-white-mothers/
TJ – it looks like we’re 4th in expenditures, at least in 2017.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd
But I think your point still stands.