Sunday, October 23, 2022

Nikole Hannah-Jones and her ignorance of the plight of black Cubans

When I first wrote the below post a few years ago, I then printed it and mailed it to Nikole Hannah-Jones.... hopefully she's better educated now, although dogma is a pretty harsh mistress.

New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, the leader of that paper's controversial 1619 Project recently showed a spectacular lack of background knowledge on the Cuban dictatorship's well-documented racist history and abuses of its black population by her statement that If you want to see the most equal, multiracial democ … it’s not a democracy — the most equal, multiracial country in our hemisphere, it would be Cuba,” and then proceeding to cite socialism as her reason to make the statement.

Ms. Hannah-Jones' rosy-eyed view of the Marxist dictatorship's oppression of its citizens, especially its Black citizens not only reveals loads about her own political leanings, but also serves as a brilliant example of suspicious lack of research skills about a subject as widely discussed as Cuba's oppressive and racist government.

Had Ms. Hannah-Jones - who visited Cuba in 2008 - bothered to look past her clear admiration for the Marxist government, and bothered to take a quick tour of the facts, she would have discovered that much has been written and documented about racism in Cuba, and it was even one of the earliest subjects addressed by the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson upon his arrival to the DMV a few decades ago from his various Latin American postings.

In his article a couple of decades ago, Cuba Begins to Answer Its Race Question, Robinson, also clearly and openly a very extreme left-wing oriented writer, tried hard to find excuses for the dictatorship, but nonetheless admits that:
Academics say that black Cubans are failing to earn university degrees in proportion to their numbers--a situation to which Castro has alluded publicly. The upper echelons of the government remain disproportionately white, despite the emergence of several rising black stars. And while perceptions are difficult to quantify, much less prove true or false, many black Cubans are convinced that they are much less likely than whites to land good jobs--and much more likely to be hassled by police on the street, like Cano's husband, in a Cuban version of "racial profiling."
But how about some Cubans inside Cuba discussing the subject?
In primary [Cuban] education, skin color is not mentioned," ... If we are still living in a society where white people have the power, and we don't mention color in education, we are in practice educating [Cuban] children to be white.

Cuban history as we teach it is a disgrace, because it is predominantly white history, and explaining the role of black people and mulattoes in building this society and its culture is not given its due importance.

Esteban Morales
University of Havana
Centre for the Study of the Hemisphere and the United States
A lot of hopes have been pinned by many people (who know little about Cuba and the repressive nature of its government) on President Obama's monumental decision to re-establish diplomatic relations with the unfortunate Caribbean island prison of Cuba; but first another Cuban quote:
...to carry on "hiding" the issue [of racism in Cuba] would lead black people to think that "they belong to another country, and that there are two Cuba’s as there were in the 19th century, a black Cuba and a white one."

Roberto Zurbano
Director
Casa de las Américas publishing house
Havana
And thus, it is curious to me that in his attempt to re-establish diplomatic ties, our socially conscious President (and his cadre of advisors) back then also - like Ms. Hannah-Jones - appeared to know little or nothing about the way that Afro-Cuban citizens are treated in their own country.

In reference to the President's visit to Cuba, 
Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean literatures and cultures at the University of Connecticut and a scholar at Harvard University, and writing in Ms. Hannah-Jones own newspaper, noted in the New York Times that  
“The images of the meetings, the agreements, they’re all shameful for many black Cubans — I’m including myself in this — because it’s difficult to feel represented.
Was the projected flow of American tourists expected to help Black Cubans in a pre-COVID Cuba? Roberto Zurbano, a Cuban expert in Afro-Cuban identity, race and literature based out of Havana wrote in his 2013 New York Times article that:
Most remittances from abroad — mainly the Miami area, the nerve center of the mostly white exile community — go to white Cubans. They tend to live in more upscale houses, which can easily be converted into restaurants or bed-and-breakfasts — the most common kind of private business in Cuba. Black Cubans have less property and money, and also have to contend with pervasive racism. Not long ago it was common for hotel managers, for example, to hire only white staff members, so as not to offend the supposed sensibilities of their European clientele.
Zurbano was subsequently punished by his Marxist government for daring to express that opinion on the pages of Ms. Hannah-Jones employing newspaper. Because that's how Communists roll!

That "not long ago" is still the case, as anyone who has been to Cuba recently can testify to and which Ms. Hannah-Jones could clearly see during her 2008 visit to the island - it is very rare to see a black face in any of Havana's "tourist only" hotels and nearby beaches. Discussing those lucrative jobs, Yusimí Rodríguez López, an Afro-Cuban independent journalist, said in a 2016 New York Times article that there were job listings in Revolico — sometimes called Cuba’s underground Craigslist — “where they say they only want whites.”

In the same NYT article we read:
“They talk a lot here about discrimination against blacks in the United States. What about here?” said Manuel Valier Figueroa, 50, an actor, who was in the park on Monday. “If there’s a dance competition, they’re going to choose the woman who is fair-skinned with light, good hair. If there’s a tourism job, the same.”

He added: “Why are there no blacks managing hotels? You don’t see any blacks working as chefs in hotels, but you see them as janitors and porters. They get the inferior jobs.”
One would hope that Ms. Hannah-Jones' exploration of Cuba, a nation with one of the world's worst human rights records, where Amnesty International has been denied access to (except to that bit of Cuba where the Guantanamo Naval Base is located); a nation where gay people were once given lobotomies to "cure" them; and where HIV+ Cubans were detained and segregated in guarded colonies away from the general public, could at least have educated her on the disturbing status of blacks in their own island nation.

Fact: Twice as many African slaves were brought to Cuba than to the United States... twice!

And what really bugs me, in my own pedantic hell, is how often historically and socially clueless American academics, journalists, activists, etc. make spectacularly ignorant statements - as Ms. Hannah-Jones did - about the government of one of the world's most racist dictatorships (a government which talks a talk of equality while walking a walk of institutionalized racism against its own Black population) without even mentioning the issue of racism... or is Ms. Hannah-Jones' case praising the socialist dictatorship!

Ms. Hannah-Jones should learn about the Cuban version of the 1619 Project, which in Cuba's case would have been called the 1511 Project, as that was when Spanish Conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar set out from Hispaniola to establish the first Spanish settlement in Cuba, and brought the first African slaves to the island.

Since then and to its present day, Cuba has a long and agonizing history of racial issues, starting with its long bloody history of slavery, which didn't end on the island until 1886, and continuing through its freedom from Spain, birth of the Republic, and the triumph of the Castro Revolution in 1959. It continues to this day.

Cuba even had its own race war.
General Antonio Maceo

General Antonio Maceo, known as "the Bronze Titan." He was the true warrior leader of the Cuban Wars of Liberation. His father was white of French ancestry; his mother was black, of Dominican ancestry. After the first Cuban Liberation War ended in a truce with Spain, some say that Maceo was so disillusioned with the realities of life in Cuba as a black man, that he left Cuba and lived in Panama, until he was called back to lead the Cuban rebels in a new rebellion in 1895. He returned to Cuba and was killed in battle against the Spanish Army in 1896.


In 1912, Black Cubans in Oriente province had enough of the new Cuban government's racist practices and the degrading treatment of Cuban black veterans, who had been the bulk of the Cuban rebels in the wars of independence against Spain. The Cuban government moved on a path of genocide and eventually the United States had to send in troops to end the war between the white Cuban government and the black rebels in Oriente.

As I recall from the CIA Factbook of 1959, on that year the island was about 70% white, about 20% black and mixed, and the rest Chinese, Jewish and other. The Cuban Diaspora which started a few months after the Castro takeover and continues to this day, with the exception of the Mariel boat lift of the 1980s, saw a mass exodus of mostly white Cubans, and as a result the island's racial balance shifted dramatically and although 65% of Cubans self-identify as white in recent censuses, many experts estimate that today the island is actually about 60% black or biracial.

But Cuba's black population has not seen a proportionate share of the power and a quick review of the governing Politburo/Parliament reveals few black faces in the crowd. 

In fact, "the Cuban cultural journal Temas published studies by the governmental Anthropology Centre in 2006 that showed that on average, the black population has worse housing, receives less money in remittances from abroad and has less access to jobs in emerging economic sectors like tourism, in which blacks represent barely five percent of managers and professionals, than the white population."
"I think silence is worse. The longer nothing is said, the more the racism fermenting underground is rotting the entire nation..."

Gerardo Alfonso
singer/songwriter
Havana
While the Cuban constitution of the 1940s (since then abolished by the Communist government) outlawed segregation and racism on paper, and the current Cuban Constitution guarantees black Cubans the right to stay in any hotel and be served at any public establishment, as it has been documented by many foreign journalists, black Cubans will tell you in private that those rights exist only on paper. They would have told Ms. Hannah-Jones during her visit to Cuba in 2008 - but she probably didn't notice that nearly everywhere that she visited, the presence of the Cuban government was not far, and people fear that presence.

The harsh Cuban reality today, Black Cubans will tell you, is that "black Cubans won't be served" and that Cubans, regardless of race are in general barred from places frequented by tourists.
Unfortunately, these things [disparities in the treatment of blacks and whites] are very common in Cuba.

Ricardo Alarcón Quesada
President of the National Assembly of People's Power
Cuban Parliament
Do these Cuban voices from within Cuba itself sound like the subjects of a government whose murdering tyrants' atrocities should be dealt with in silence? -- especially in view of our nation's own racial history and what Ms. Hannah-Jones so expeditiously attempted to document in her controversial 1619 Project? 
We have practically apartheid in this country sometimes... racism is deeply rooted in Cuba's history and will not disappear overnight.

Rogelio Polanco Fuentes
Director
Cuban Communist Party-owned Juventud Rebelde newspaper.
What would she say if she had discovered the "permanent and shameful police harassment of young Cubans of African descent in our streets..." as noted by Leonardo Calvo Cardenas, the Cuban National Vice-Coordinador of the Citizens' Committee for Racial Integration (Comité Ciudadanos por la Integración Racial (CIR))?

As Omar López Montenegro, the Black Cuban director of Human Rights for the Fundación Nacional Cubano Americana recently stated in the Panama Post:
The situation for Black Cubans worsened after Castro assumed power... even though there were always racial issues, before Castro in Cuba there had been Black governors, a President of the Senate, Martín Morua Delgado, and also many Congressmen such as the labor leader Jesús Menéndez, a member of the Socialist Party. 

When Cuba became a Communist dictatorship, and democracy was lost, the advance of Black Cubans came to a halt. 

And this is what makes it even more maddening to a pedantic Virgo like me -- when even the lackeys of the Cuban dictatorship like Alarcon Quesada and Black voices from within the brutalized island speak out, knowing that there will be consequences - as Zurbano discovered after his New York Times opinion piece - why does Ms. Hannah-Jones live in this rose-colored atmosphere where she perceives the poor jailed island as an example of equality?

Does she know that even though about 60% of Cubans are Black or brown, that 94.2% of the students at the University of Havana are white?  Is she aware - as evidenced by the hundreds of videos one can see at #SOSCuba, that the epicenters of the demonstrations in most Cuban cities during this historic uprising are in the Black neighborhoods? Does she know about Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, a young Black Cuban from La Güinera who was arrested and then murdered by the Cuban police? When notified that her son was dead, his mother committed suicide. Does she know that her own newspaper, The New York Times documented a few years ago how Black Cubans are routinely discriminated in Cuba? Is she aware that while 48% of white Cubans have an annual income of less that $3,000 USD, a whooping 95% of Black Cubans fall below that incredible line?

By the way... In 1959 Cuba had the third-highest per capita income in Latin America, exceeded only by Argentina and Venezuela (around $550 a year back then which is about $5,170 in today's dollars). In 1959 that was also higher than Italy, Japan, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal and every single Eastern European nation in the Soviet bloc.

Nikole Hannah-Jones now has an opportunity to clear the air, clear her mind, clear her perception and gain instant respect from Cubans of all races. All she has to say is that she's learned a lot since the statements that she made in 2019 surfaced during the current Cuban uprising - which as video evidence clearly shows, appears to involve Cubans of all races - and state that she was wrong and is now aware of the sorry and sad state of the Marxist government's deeply rooted racism.

Boom! Case closed.

Saturday, October 22, 2022

Residency in Denmark

The objective of the Læsø AiR programme for professional visual artists is to support the development of artists’ practice and to promote the exchange between Danish and foreign artists and the Danish art scene.

The foreign artists granted residencies will be given the opportunity to take part in a visiting program, networking activities and study visits with institutions and individuals from the Danish art scene. Læsø AiR also wishes to support the artistic process and research phase by providing the artists with time, space and opportunities for reflection and contemplation.

DEADLINE: December 1, 2022

DATES: Mid-March to Mid-June 2023, Early August to End of October 2023

FEE: Free to apply 

WHERE: Denmark

WHO: International; Visual Art 

Friday, October 21, 2022

She felt that everything that she saw belonged on TikTok

"She felt that everything that she saw belonged on TikTok", charcoal and conte on reclaimed, repurposed unfired Bisque. Will be in booth A29 at the CONTEXT Art Fair in Miami during the Art Basel Miami Beach week of art fairs starting November 29th!

She felt that everything that she saw belonged on TikTok
She felt that everything that she saw belonged on TikTok
by F. Lennox Campello


Thursday, October 20, 2022

The Hopper Prize

Deadline: November 15, 2022

The Hopper Prize is now accepting entries for Fall 2022 artist grants.

Simple Application!  They have made their grant application simple to reduce the stress of submitting your work and save you time. The application is short and can be completed in under 20 minutes.

To apply for a grant, you only need to submit this information:

• Name & Email

• Instagram Username (optional)

• Up to 10 Image or Video attachments

• Artwork captions

• Artist Statement & Biography (optional)

• $40 submission fee

Apply Now at https://hopperprize.org

$3,500 Grants - All Media Eligible

Offering $3,500 and $1,000 grants to artists and photographers around the world.

Grants will be awarded through an open call art competition juried by leading contemporary curators. Current Jurors:

— Simone Krug, Curator, Aspen Art Museum

— Rachel Reese Waldrop, Director & Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Chattanooga

The Hopper Prize was established in order to increase the recognition of artwork created by artists and photographers. The aim is to advance artists' careers by providing them with unrestricted financial support that is coupled with a platform for increased visibility. We accept submissions twice a year via an open call.

Program Highlights

Total Awards: $11,000.00 USD for visual artists

• $3,500.00 – 2 artists will each receive a $3,500 (USD) grant

• $1,000.00 – 4 artists will each receive a $1,000 (USD) grant

• 30 artists will have their work archived at hopperprize.org

• A selection from the submissions will be featured on our Instagram feed @hopperprize

• Additional exposure will be available to winners through the Journal: Insights into Contemporary Art

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

JJ McCracken - Fruit for Geophages (Hunger) at CONNERSMITH

 

JJ McCracken: Fruit for Geophages HUNGER

October / November 2022

by appointment and online. at 

PREVIEW HERE

CONNERSMITH is pleased to present a select view of JJ McCracken’s latest sculpture series: Fruit for Geophages (Hunger). These unique wall-mounted steel panels feature ceramic forms of lush vegetables including peppers, squash, corn and potatoes.

The artist describes this work as “a visual poem about need.”


CONNERSMITH.WASHINGTON, DCPhone: 202-588-8750Email: info@connersmith.us.com

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

36th Annual Northern National Art Competition

I am honored to announce that I have been selected to be the Juror/Judge for the 36th Annual Northern National Art Competition in Rhinelander, Wisconsin!

This national show is held at the beautiful Nicolet College campus on Lake Julia, Wisconsin. The competition began in 1988 with a mere 37 entries. Thirty-six years later, it attracts work of artists from all over the United States- this year they had 646 entries as diverse as the artists themselves!

The calendar for 2023:

1/9/23: Registration opens via Cafe

3/24/23: Registration deadline

4/21/23: Acceptance notification

5/15/23: All shipped work due at Gallery

6/12- 6/15/23: Judging, Judge's dinner, Opening Gala/Reception

More later!


Monday, October 17, 2022

Sunday, October 16, 2022

Meet the Artists of Otis Street Arts Project

When: Saturday October 22, 1-5-PM

Where: Otis Street Arts Project, 3706 Otis Street, Mount Rainier, MD 20712

What: Spend a casual afternoon with the artists of Otis Street Arts Project.

Meet the artists, view their latest exhibition "ARTgineering v2.0," and be prepared for some enjoyable conversations. Check out the new mural by Jeff Huntington. Plus, see an aluminum casting demonstration.

Otis Street Arts Project

On View Now: ARTgineering V2.0

Gallery hours through December 3: 12-4 PM Saturdays, Tue-Fri by appointment

On view now: Art + Engineering = Artgineering: “the action of working artfully to bring something about”

ARTgineering v2.0 is a sequel to Otis Street Arts Project’s 2017 exhibition, “ARTgineering.” It reexamines engineering in art with a group show of eight artists, working in both 2D and 3D media: interactive electronics, geometric paintings, and 3D-printed action figures. These artistic explorations are infrequently considered, and can be stimulating to neuroplasticity—elasticity of the mind. In this “Version 2.0” show, we dive deeply into the formal engineering, structural engineering, and conceptual engineering of art.

Featured artists:

Jason Bulluck

Melissa Burley

​Emily Francisco

Billy Friebele

Jason Gubbiotti

Kelly Heaton

Michelle L. Herman

Frank McCauley​​​​

Saturday, October 15, 2022

UNDER $500

CALL FOR ENTRY: Have your work noticed and purchased by local buyers & collectors, just in time for the holidays! Maryland Art Place (MAP) is seeking artists for “UNDER $500”, our upcoming winter benefit exhibition & affordable art sale. The exhibition will include approximately 1-3 works by each selected artist (scale dependent – in the case of smaller works more than 3 pieces may be accepted). Each individual piece must retail for $500 or less. If selected you will be issued an UNDER $500 profile form to fill out inquiring anecdotal information to help better engage patrons with the artists and their work alike. 

Proposals should be emailed to under500@mdartplace.org no later than Monday, November 14, 2022, at Midnight.  Subject line: Under $500 Application. OR fill out this FORM online.

UNDER $500 is MAP’s winter benefit. Proceeds from the sale of artwork will be split 50/50 between Maryland Art Place and the artist. The event is ticketed ($25) however participating artists are welcomed free of charge,

UNDER $500 is a hybrid, physical and virtual exhibition event. The physical exhibition opens Friday, December 9th from 6 pm-10 pm. Artworks may be purchased by patrons and taken off the walls on a first come first served basis that night. All works will be wrapped in brown paper with MAP’s signature holiday bow.

The virtual sale will launch the very next day, Saturday, Dec. 10 at 10 am and run through Wednesday, December 14th, 10 pm. The virtual sale will include more artists than the physical sale. *Please note: applications received will be selected for either the virtual sale (featured online) exclusively or for both the physical (featured in gallery) AND virtual exhibition (featured online). Your acceptance letter will indicate in which capacity your work will be presented.

MAP will maintain gallery hours from Saturday, Dec. 10 through Wednesday, Dec. 14th from noon-4pm for any remaining physical works that may be left for purchase.

AFTER PARTY: On December 9th, once the sale closes, MAP will open up its basement venue, UNDERBar for a post-event party, Ticket holders and artists have access to both the sales event and party. Guests can expect light fare, an open bar, our fabulous drag queens, and music from DJ Aran Keating of Ridiculous Entertainment. This year's theme? UGLY SWEATER!

TIMELINE 

  • October 12 – Call For Entry Announced
  • November 14 – Call For Entry Deadline
  • Week of November 21 – Artists Notified of Selection
  • Wednesday, November 30 – Saturday, December 3– Artwork Drop Off – 11 am-4 pm
  • Friday, December 9 (6 – 10pm) & Saturday, December 10, 2022 (12 to 4pm)– Under $500
  • Saturday, December 10, 10 am  – Wednesday, December 14, 10 pm – Virtual Exhibition & Sale

Thursday, October 13, 2022

Wanna go to an art opening tomorrow?

 "Sense of Place"

Opening Reception

Friday, October 14th

Gallery B welcomes, "Sense of Place." The exhibit's opening reception will be Friday, October 14, from 5-8 pm. Come view a collection of paintings and mosaic plates from five different artists from the group localColor.

localCOLOR is an organization bringing artists together in the Greater Washington, D.C. The exhibit will include a combination of work from Anne Albright, Shelley Dane, Courtney Severe, Judy Gilbert and Jean Schlesinger.

Gallery Hours: Thur.-Fri., 12-6pm

Sat., 12 - 5pm

Sun., 11am - 3pm

Gallery B is located at 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E - the site of the old Fraser Gallery.

Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Call for Art

World AIDS Day is observed around the globe in remembrance of those who lost their lives to the disease and as a reminder that, while there has been progress, the epidemic is not over.This year, to coincide with CAMP Rehoboth’s World AIDS Day commemoration, an AIDS related community art exhibition “ART & AIDS, A Story to be Told” will be hosted in the CAMP Rehoboth Gallery.The exhibition will open on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2022 and will be on display through January 6, 2023. Multiple visual art forms will be included – paintings, photography, digital art, video, sculpture, glass art, fabric art, and more.Click the link below to register. You will be asked to provide contact information, a description of your work, a jpeg if you have it, and a description of how your artwork relates to the exhibition theme.ART & AIDS, A Story to be Told RegistrationThe first 12 artists to register will each be able to exhibit one original work in this exhibition. The registration period will close when 12 artists have registered. Registered art will need to be delivered to CAMP Rehoboth on November 22, 28, or 29 between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.The purpose of this exhibition is to promote dialogue and raise awareness. HIV/AIDS has a complicated story, one of devastation, loss, anger, and isolation, as well as survival and hope. There are many aspects to consider: the deep cultural history of HIV/AIDS and activism, contemporary issues around Black and Brown lives, the disproportionate infection rates among youth of color, homophobic and transphobic driven laws still present today, and the hope for a future in a world without AIDS.AIDS experiences have changed the world of art. Self-expression and social commentary are important aspects of the art we create. How have you used your art to give voice to these issues?CAMP Rehoboth looks forward to including your art in this thought-provoking exhibition.

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

ARB at ACO

 On Saturday, October 29, Art Clinic Online (ACO) will have an exciting guest, and one of the DMV's hardest working art dealers!

The guest is Owner/Director of Adah Rose Gallery, Adah Rose Bitterbaum.



Saturday, 10/29 at 10:30am - details here.


The mission of the Art Clinic Online (ACO) is to create dialog, relationships, and community among artists of all levels working in the DMV area.  Every other Saturday, we virtually join together to discuss art. At least once monthly, a featured artist showcases their work and takes questions from participants. At the ACO, our aim is to curate a variety of different presenters’ perspectives, backgrounds, and art making styles in order to highlight the diversity of our incredible DMV artists. 

The ACO is FREE. 

No membership required. 

"We’re providing artists and art supporters with a platform to talk about local art, often their art. Please show support by attending, asking questions, and spreading the word! We’re hoping this experience is educational and provides different perspectives for everyone involved."
- Jordan Bruns