Cuba

The “One-Drop” Rule

The long history of legal segregation and biracial thinking in the United States has led to the internalization of what is known as the “one-drop rule” of racial identity; that is, “one drop” of African blood/ancestry defines a person as Black, with “blackness” traditionally understood as a contamination of “whiteness.” In Cuba, on the other hand, racial identification is much more flexible and context dependent. Indeed, if there is a Cuban equivalent to the “one-drop rule,” it is that “one drop” of European blood/ancestry defines a person as non-Black. Thus, many Cubans who would not think of themselves or be identified by others as Black in Cuba (because of the European element of their mestizo ancestry) would be considered Black in the United States (based on the African element of that same mixed ancestry).

Furthermore, given the great extent to which the cultural, religious, and linguistic characteristics associated with Africans have been absorbed into the very idea of what it means to be Cuban, all Cubans practice at least some of the cultural traditions that originally came to Cuba from Africa. This reality is reflected in the popular expression, “He who has nothing of the Congo, must have something of the Calabar” (“El que no tiene de Congo, tiene de Carabalí”). This popular belief that all Cubans share in the island's African heritage (regardless of their particular ancestry or pheno-type) has been captured even more emphatically by Juan de Marcos, the Cuban music impresario behind the musical success of the “Buena Vista Social Club.” “Get one thing straight, man,” de Marcos declared to Washington Post reporter Eugene Robinson, “Cuban music is Afro-Cuban music. There are no Whites in Cuba. There are people who think they are White, but they are all African.”

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