Posted on 01/03/2010 9:30:31 AM PST by kristinn
Reporting from Atlanta - President Obama has loosened travel restrictions to Cuba. His critics accuse him of harboring socialist sentiments. And he is, of course, a member of the African American intelligentsia -- a group that has tended, for the last half-century, to have a soft spot for the Cuban revolution.
It sounds like the perfect atmosphere for the love affair between black American liberals and the regime of the Castros to fully flourish.
Except that it's not.
A group of 60 African American artists and thinkers have launched a rare -- and some say unprecedented -- attack on Cuba's human rights record, with a particular focus on the treatment of black political dissidents.
SNIP
The statement, "Acting on Our Conscience," was denounced by the Cuban government.
SNIP
"Racism in Cuba has been sort of under the radar screen for, what, 50 years? And many of us who have supported the revolution and the gains it has made have kind of kept quite about it," said Ron Walters, a political scientist and campaign manager for Jackson's 1980s presidential bids.
Black activists were long silent, Walters said, because they were worried that "those people who were opposed to the Cuban revolution, such as white Cubans in Miami and their organizations, would take advantage of it."
The Castros' Miami critics have indeed taken notice. In an interview, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) called the statement "critically important" for highlighting the "lie and the myth" of the egalitarian promises of the Communist government.
To others on the right, the statement was a farce that only betrayed the black left's fundamentally flawed thinking about the Castro government.
"Murderous totalitarians failing to provide affirmative action? Oh noooo," wrote one anonymous commentator on the conservative website Free Republic. "They seemed so nice."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
You were quoted by the L.A. Times. Congrats!
In Cuba (now 60-70% black and mulatto, as the whites left for Miami and Spain a long time ago), the Communist elite is almost lily-white.
Funny line. Congrats
LOL ... classic!!
Good job! Kudos to you!
LOL—the LAT monitors FR.
Now if they would only get their editorial board, uh, on board.
Maybe these “black liberals” should move down there with benevolent Uncle Fidel and try to straighten him out.
Oh the irony of having to exerpt the Los Angeles Times because they SUED FReeRepublic for copyright infringement a few years ago, when they seem to have no problem with quoting a FR poster verbatum now.
The WaPo writer seems so dense he fails to grasp the sarcasm in Kbennkc's post and takes it as an example of Right-wing anti-Black racism and support for Castro's regime.
On the other hand, he may not be dense - it may be a beautiful intentionally disguised turn of phrase to tar and feather the Right and FreeRepublic. Most of the people that read the LA Times will take it as gospel - "the Right hates blacks"
These people are beyond dumb - they are conniving and dangerous.
Unfortunately, we have no effective way to answer this distortion - most voters don't read Conservative blogs.
A group of 60 African American artists and thinkers have launched a rare -- and some say unprecedented -- attack on Cuba's human rights record, with a particular focus on the treatment of black political dissidents.Eldridge Cleaver wrote about Castro's racism years ago -- a brief analysis that naturally drew a knee-jerk leftwing response from the self-aggrandizing coward Abbie Hoffman, then living in hiding under the name Barry Freed (but still holding on to his rent-controlled NYC apartment under his own name).
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