The Production of Racial Logic in Cuban Education: An Anti-Colonial Approach by Arlo Kempf A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto © Copyright by Arlo Kempf, 2010 The Production of Racial Logic in Cuban Education: An Anti-Colonial Approach Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Arlo Kempf Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education University of Toronto Abstract This work brings an anti-colonial reading to the production and maintenance of racial logic in Cuban schooling, through conversations with, and surveys of Cuban teachers, as well as through analyses of secondary and primary documents. The study undertaken seeks to contribute to the limited existent research on race relations in Cuba, with a research focus on the Cuban educational context. Teasing and staking out a middle ground between the blinding and often hollow pro-Cuba fanaticism and the deafening anti -Cuban rhetoric from the left and right respectively, this project seeks a more nuanced, complete and dialogical understanding of race and race relations in Cuba, with a specific focus on the educational context. With this in mind, the learning objectives of this study are to investigate the following: 1) What role does racism play in Cuba currently and historically? 2) What is the role of education in the life of race and racism on the island? 3) What new questions and insights emerge from the Cuban example that might be of use to integrated anti-racism, anti-colonialism and class-oriented scholarship and activism? On a more specific level, the guiding research objectives of the study are to investigate the following: 1) How do teachers support and/or challenge dominant ideas of race and racism, and to what degree to do they construct their own meanings on these topics? 2) How do teachers understand the relevance of race and racism for teaching and learning? 3) How and why do teachers address race and racism in the classroom? The data reveal a complex process of meaning making by teachers who are at once produced by and producers of dominant race discourse on the island. Teachers are the front line race workers of the racial project, doing much of the heavy lifting in the ongoing struggle against racism, but are at the same time custodians of an approach to race relations which has on the whole failed to eliminate racism. This work investigates and explicates this apparent contradiction inherent in teachers’ work and discourse on the island, revealing a flawed and complex form of Cuban anti-racism. ii Acknowledgements For the lucky student a dissertation is in many ways a group effort. I have been very lucky. I would like to acknowledge the tremendous support of my committee. My supervisor, Professor George Jerry Sefa Dei has provided guidance throughout the process and has, quite simply, taught me an immeasurable amount. Professor Peter H. Sawchuk has supported me at every turn and has gone out of his way to strengthen and solidify this work. Professor Njoki Nathani Wane has been an ally for years, supporting and welcoming my family and me in countless ways. George, Peter and Njoki I am truly grateful to have had the opportunity to work with you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I would also like to acknowledge the support of Professor France Winddance Twine, whose comments will guide future versions of this work, and who helped me to contextualize the project as a whole. I also thank Professor Paul Olson for his ongoing interest and availability. In the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, Kristine Pearson, Kari Dehli and Paul Tsang have been consistently kind, open and supportive of me and my work, and have made OISE a human and thus manageable place. I also wish to acknowledge the community of learners and activists which have surrounded me over the past 5 years at OISE and elsewhere, and in particular the members of the Uhuru collective which grounds and guides so many. In Cuba, tremendous thanks are due to the teachers who shared their time, thoughts, learnings, wisdom, food and homes with me. There is no study without you. Thanks as well to the research team, whose members have asked to remain anonymous — the survey would have been impossible without you. To Daylen and Xiomara, thank you for your generosity and hospitality. To the staff at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, in Havana, thank you for your patience and for warning me to stay away from the cafeteria food. The tremendous challenges and joys of this process have been shared, necessarily with those closest to me. I thank Todd Eagle Light and Peter Poulet for reading countless early drafts, talking to me about the thesis well past the point of their own interest on many occasions, and for their intellectual generosity and friendship throughout. I thank my mother-out-law, Darlene McKee, for her inestimable support of our family during the past 3 years. I thank Heather Douglas, my friend and co-parent who reminds me not to take myself or grad school too seriously. I thank my father, Randall Kempf, for teaching me to learn and for his generosity of energy and interest throughout this process. To Lola, my daughter, it was your imminent arrival 12 years ago which sent me panicking to undergrad, so thanks for pointing the way. To my little son Cy, thank you for giving (and sometimes taking) the energy needed to do this work. You two are the joy. Finally, I wish to thank my partner, Meghan McKee, for just about everything. A professor at OISE once remarked that it is hard for a partner to understand that you are working on your thesis as you sit looking out the window while he or she goes off to work. While I always try to look busy while you go off to work, I think this remark rings false in your case. No apprehension, no tension. In the course of love you have been all things from the beginning. I am ever grateful to have you in my life. iii Table of Contents Abstract... ii Acknowledgements... iii Chapter One. An Introduction... 1 1.0 Introduction... 1 1.1 Objectives, context and location... 5 1.11 On location... p. 13 1.2 Overview of the study... 14 Chapter Two. Situating Cuban education in the post revolutionary context: Structure, tenets and issues... p. 21 2.0 Introduction... 21 2.1 Education and the revolution: Politics and structure... 22 2.12 Structure... 31 2.2 The content of revolutionary education... 33 2.3 Equity issues in Cuban education... 39 Chapter Three. The anti-colonial discursive framework: Toward an application to the Cuban educational context... 42 3.0 Introduction... 42 3.1 Introducing the anti-colonial framework... 44 3.11 Key thinkers and works: Dei, Fanon, Césaire and Memmi ... 47 3.2 The operations of colonialism and anti-colonialism... 57 3.21 Mechanics... 58 3.22 Saliency and entry points... 61 3.3 Anti-colonialism and trans-historical analysis... 63 3.31 From post-colonialism to anti-colonialism... 63 3.32 Anti-colonialism and history... 67 Chapter Four. Review of selected relevant literature... p. 72 4.0 Introduction... 72 4.1 A Nation for All: Race Inequality and Politics in Twentieth Century Cuba... 73 4.2 Afro-Cuban Voices: On Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba... 84 4.3 Castro, the Blacks and Africa... 96 4.4 Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba... 106 Chapter Five. Race, racelessness and anti-Racism: An anti-colonial genealogy of race discourse in Cuba... 118 5.0 Introduction... 118 5.02 A note on discourse... 121 5.1 Stolen land, stolen peoples... 122 5.2 Founding discourses... 126 5.3 Discursive republics in transition and the birth of a nation: Republican Cuba (1898–1912) ... 138 5.31 See no, hear no, speak no: Cubanidad, silence and denial... 145 5.32 Saco’s Cubanidad... 146 iv 5.33 Martí’s Cubanidad... 147 5.34 The PIC and the Massacre of 1912... 150 5.4 Race discourse in post revolutionary Cuba, (1959-present)... 159 5.41 Cubanidad and the new revolutionary man... 162 5.42 The Special Period (1990 –2001)... 170 5.43 Nascent race in the public sphere: From the Special Period to the 21st century... 174 Chapter Six Part One. Methods and methodology... 184 6i.0 Introduction... 184 6i.1 Description of research questions and areas of data collection... 185 6i.2 Implicating the politics of the project and researcher location... 188 6i.21 Politics of the project... 188 6i.22 Researcher location... 190 6i.3 Methodological rationale: Assessing qualitative and quantitative approaches and the mixed method approach ... 195 6i.31The qualitative approach... 195 6i.32 The quantitative approach... 198 6i.33 The mixed method approach... 199 Chapter Six Part Two. Interview data analysis: Cuban teachers and general understandings of race... 201 6ii.0 Introduction... 201 6ii.1 Official stories... 203 6ii.11 Disconnection... 206 6ii.12 Formal equality... 208 6ii.2 Instances of racism: Tourism and police... 212 6ii.21 Tourism... 214 6ii.22 Law enforcement... 216 6ii.3 Conceptions and constructions of race, racism and equality... 218 6ii.31 Racism defined... 219 6ii.32 Racism (un)explained... 223 6ii.33 Socialism and race... 231 Chapter Seven Interview Data Analysis. Constructions of race and racial logic in Cuban schools... 236 7.0 Introduction... 236 7.1 Official stories... 239 7.11 The story of racism, denials of racism... 239 7.12 Representation..