Cubans aren’t racist towards black people. Cubans who came here with nothing and have been successful just think to themselves, if I can come from nothing and be succesful, then you have no excuse. If you were born in the U.S. you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.
This post dismisses the entire history of African Americans in the U.S. and in Miami specifically. Normally I come to Canesinsight for jokes and fun, but this needs to be addressed or I'd by dishonoring those who came before me.
If you think the history of black Miamians was one of silver spoons and excuse making, your history teacher failed you.
This reminds me of my uncle who graduated from Booker T. Washington HS in the 50s, talking about how they accepted some of that first wave of Cubans into their school, all while not being able to attend the white schools that were also accepting Cuban students.
Black people in Miami have had to bend over backwards and have still been disrespected and disenfranchised from the beginning.
African Americans and Bahamian Americans were literally forced to vote to incorporate the City of Miami at its founding (100 of the 502 voters were black) and yet, though Miami wouldn't be a city without their votes, were forced through restrictive land deeds and actual violence to go back over to "Colored Town" (modern-day Overtown) without enjoying any of the fruits of their labor. Black people had to deal with a mayor of the city of Miami who was (and it wasn't a secret) a Klansman.
My great grandfather was one of the underwater divers who helped in the construction of the bridge to Key West.
My great grandmother founded the first black hospital in Broward County, Provident Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, because those black people "born with a silver spoon in your mouth" weren't admitted into many of your favorite local hospitals even if they were literally dying. My grandfather was on the fundraising board for Memorial Hospital to be built in the 50s and when it opened, my mother, his black daughter still had to be born at that black hospital because they initially wouldn't admit black people.
That same grandfather had block buildings burned down because "a ****** shouldn't have that kind of business on that side of the tracks", only to call the police and find that some of the officers were involved in the burning of the building (if you want one of many examples of why black people are wary of the cops, there's hundreds more). You think black people like me and mine don't have some businesses because we just couldn't think of entrepreneurial ideas like everybody else? Or we were just lazy? Maybe, just maybe, they met the kind of resistance that some ungrateful people from elsewhere who came after them couldn't even fathom or want to be in denial about.
We couldn't even use the freakin beach because white people wouldn't allow us to touch the same water as them.
The audacity of someone who came from an oppressive regime, like that in Cuba or anywhere else for that matter, to come here and tell black people to essentially "suck it up" without acknowledging that THIS place has been our "oppressive regime". Some of the same horror stories you can tell about life in Cuba, I can recount from a black person about life right here. And unlike people coming from elsewhere we've had no America to flee to.
Your "came here with nothing" also came along with a clean slate. You started from zero. Black people in South Florida have been starting from -12 since the moment people like my great great grandfather escaped a slave plantation in the south to hide with the Seminoles. Or my grandmother escaping sharecropping in Alabama to come work in white people's houses on Hollywood beach, not just cleaning, often helping raise their white kids, for next to nothing. Thinking that black people are lazy and whiny excuse-makers is a slap in the face to an entire community who have put up with more than you can even imagine or want to.
African Americans and Bahamian Americans protesting and marching for their civil rights in South Florida is part of the reason some of you other people of color can even live and play in some of the (formerly white-only) neighborhoods and establishments you sit in today and disrespect us. There are local black people you don't acknowledge who died or had their lives ruined to open doors for some of the same people who say "You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth".
Being proud of yourself and your people is great. You all have went through alot. But get all the way outta here with your assumption that you're the only ones to be oppressed or that black people are just lazy, excuse makers or that we don't have legitimate reason to be miffed about how we've been treated in South Florida since its inception. Maybe learn a little more about your fellow Miamians and South Floridians, why they are in the position they're in and what forces have prevented them from changing those positions before being rude and condescending and playing the "Prejudice Greatest Hits".
Do better. Now I'm going back to making jokes about Lawrence Cager's hands and J-Lo coaching "tight ends". Good day.
