6 - Race and Daily Life in Cuba During the Special Period: Part Ⅱ: Survey Research

Summary

In the spring of 2000 and the spring of 2001, I had a unique opportunity to conduct surveys regarding racial attitudes in Cuba. While survey research on race has its limits, as discussed in the previous chapter, the surveys I conducted in Havana allowed me to produce statistical measures of the salience of race in Cuba and to investigate to what degree racial politics in Cuba conform with the theories of Marxist and Latin American exceptionalists and Black Nationalists or with the alternative: inclusionary discrimination.

Most important, the surveys enabled me to conduct a broader test of many of the arguments I made in the previous chapter, which were based on in-depth oral interviews with a relatively small sample of Cubans. Using the surveys, I was able to test the following propositions: Racial categories are coherent and salient in Cuba; race affects Afro-Cubans' life chances; the new dollar economy is racially stratified; racism continues to exist among Cuban whites; blacks continue to support the regime because of its past successes and their mistrust of other alternatives; and the economic downturn has exacerbated Cuban racial differences, producing differing perspectives among blacks and whites on the Cuban economy and social life.

If the Marxists and Latin American exceptionalists are correct, there should be few differences of opinion across racial lines, and racism should almost be nonexistent in Cuba today.