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bahareads's review
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
A history of black civic and political activists in the republic who struggled for resources despite complex mechanisms of racial subordination. Pappademos offers a reconfiguration of questions on how Black Cuban activism has been understood, looking at political machinations. She reconstructs social and political heterogeneity by showing motivation in complex circumstances.
She uses the Cuban case to help move the theory of racial politics beyond racial binaries and historical dimensions of black experience and discourse. Gender constructs, the role of class, ethnicity and cultural practices intersectionality are undertheorized and Pappademos helps theorize them. Black experiences are silenced by polarizing nationalist narratives that ignore micro/local level engagement.
Scholars have conflated studies of Cuban race relations with black politics with black daily experiences with universal racial consciousness. Pappademos builds on De la Fuente and Helg's books by decentering nationalism as a primary frame for understanding racial politics and black activism by looking at how social and political communities worked within a larger system. She moves beyond nationalist and race relations histories (black/white dichotomy) etc for which state policies serve as its principal muse. She expands concepts of African diaspora consciousness and activism, by saying they are influenced centrally but partially by race.
Pappademos examines the range and meaning of formal and informal political participation to see culture, sociability and political engagement. She historicizes the process that Black politicians and clubmen built political authority and resources. She maps the experiences of Blacks and shows how it was shaped in its contexts. The book destabilizes race as a static category by looking at the ways Cuban activism challenges the misrepresentation of Black life. Pappademos argues Black activism should consider Black political machinations and reject universal race consciousness. Blacks were not the only people to rally around race in Cuba.
Pappademos suggested the absence of a national mass-based civil rights movement can be attributed to the local experience which trumped black engagement. She recovers part of the history of the Black Cuban struggle for resources. Arguing that Black leaders' negotiation for power intersects with racial discourse and mass Black experience. The Black population in republican Cuba were nuanced.
She uses the Cuban case to help move the theory of racial politics beyond racial binaries and historical dimensions of black experience and discourse. Gender constructs, the role of class, ethnicity and cultural practices intersectionality are undertheorized and Pappademos helps theorize them. Black experiences are silenced by polarizing nationalist narratives that ignore micro/local level engagement.
Scholars have conflated studies of Cuban race relations with black politics with black daily experiences with universal racial consciousness. Pappademos builds on De la Fuente and Helg's books by decentering nationalism as a primary frame for understanding racial politics and black activism by looking at how social and political communities worked within a larger system. She moves beyond nationalist and race relations histories (black/white dichotomy) etc for which state policies serve as its principal muse. She expands concepts of African diaspora consciousness and activism, by saying they are influenced centrally but partially by race.
Pappademos examines the range and meaning of formal and informal political participation to see culture, sociability and political engagement. She historicizes the process that Black politicians and clubmen built political authority and resources. She maps the experiences of Blacks and shows how it was shaped in its contexts. The book destabilizes race as a static category by looking at the ways Cuban activism challenges the misrepresentation of Black life. Pappademos argues Black activism should consider Black political machinations and reject universal race consciousness. Blacks were not the only people to rally around race in Cuba.
Pappademos suggested the absence of a national mass-based civil rights movement can be attributed to the local experience which trumped black engagement. She recovers part of the history of the Black Cuban struggle for resources. Arguing that Black leaders' negotiation for power intersects with racial discourse and mass Black experience. The Black population in republican Cuba were nuanced.
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