Why were these black and brown children asked to leave a pool site in the city of brotherly love? Why were several bars in liberal San Francisco found to be charging black and brown men cover charges when none existed, more for cocktails, and showed a pattern by a city attorney investigation of not hiring black and brown bartenders?
I've just returned from seeing BRUNO, a shocking, in some ways brilliant, gross, hilarious collection of Sasha Baran Cohen being the court jester he is and making deliberate mockery of our civilization. Go Girl!!!
The movie previews made my mind turn to the those children at the pool in Philadelphia and my old news reportage on those bars in San Francisco's Castro District who demonstrated a pattern of the sort of racism one might expect to find in the Jim Crow South.
The previews were well-crafted, nicely edited for shock and suspense and laughs, and were 99.99% white and just as close to being blond. Such is the cultural trash our enterprises continue to litter the landscape and hide the truth of our differences, even to the harming of young children.
Does this country know from whence it came?
Recently, in an interview printed widely in Europe in general, the UK in particular, Mariela Castro, niece to Fidel and daughter of current Cuban president, Raul, was interviewed. She was asked to speak at an LGBT Pride rally in London last week, and the interviews were perhaps more the usual publicity of her visit.
Ms. Castro has had a lot to say about LGBT rights and been a staunch advocate for enshrining these rights in Cuba's constitution. We in the US probably wouldn't know about this since Cuba has long ago been reduced to an old, bearded revolutionary named Fidel after it had long been a Caribbean casino for US jet-set, new class. Most things, including most movies, are grossly simplified.
Ms Castro was also asked the usual political questions about socialism and Cuba, and she used a term that resonated: in saying Cuba always strived to be authentic and participatory, she distinguished its "creole socialism."
These are two concepts alien to the US popular and political cultures. But the first is a reality we continue to ignore - hence those dreadful movie previews and the ousting of those children from an afternoon of fun; the other is a reality we must evolve toward if we are to meet the needs of humanity.
Creole. Socialism.
James Baldwin wrote in his last book that white people do not hate black people: if they did, he observed, they'd be all black. Please digest that. Digest it ,and know it extends to all the colors of what one colonial Mexican writer described not as creole but rather as the "cosmic race." The continent is not white and has never been. It is not the extension of a racist fantasy of a handful of Europeans on the make, but the continent has been victimized by their efforts.
Ignoring this creole or cosmic race has perpetuated Nazi, eugenicist films with white, blond people and maybe a minority side kick tossed in, ghettoized our literature, and shocked the good white people of Philadelphia to storm the dark children away like fumigators.
For more info: BBC Mundo entrevista con Mariela Castro Espin [español]
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