We Want the Airwaves – Joamette Gil

Nia King: You did this really great comic that I just read this morning about mixed-race identity
and Latin America and how it’s often misunderstood by American whites essentially. It was a
really great comic for The Nib that helped answer a lot of my questions. [laughter]

Joamette Gil: [laughter] wonderful.

Nia: But yeah what I wanted to talk to you about you’re Afro-Cuban and there was this point
where I was getting ready to interview another Cuban artist, and I’m not gonna name them
because people who do like 10 seconds of research can figure out for themselves, and you were
like “Oh. that artist isn’t a person of color” that person is a white Cuban’ and at that time I didn’t
know that time that white Cuban was a thing. [laughter]

Jo: [laughter]

Nia: I feel like in the last couple of years there has been more conversations especially online
and on twitter, about Afro-Latinx identity and the way that like Afro-Latinx people are
marginalized within the larger sort of like Latinx discourse or whatever you want to call it, but I
mean... I realize that there’s a lot but I don’t know about race in Latin America and the
Caribbean and I think like this conversation I had with you was the beginning of this realization
[laughter] or at least part of it.

I mean do you feel like the way race is talked about in Cuban communitiy is different than, sort
of like, because race is understood differently in different countries, right?

Jo: Mmhm.

Nia: I don’t know, do you feel like there’s different aspects of racial identity in Cuba that don’t
translate to the United States context?

Jo: Do you want me to sort of point out any specific differences between how race is viewed in
Cuba and how it is viewed in the United States?

Nia: Sure! [laughter] That seems like a great place to start.

INSERT INTRO

Nia: [laughter] So what I actually wanted to ask, and I’m sorry this is not how it usually goes

Jo: That, that’s fine.

Nia: Like I understand now that there are white Cubans and that there are Black Cubans and that
there are Cubans of some combination of those two things.

Jo: Yes.
Nia: But what about brown Cubans? [laughter]

Jo: ...brown Cubans?

Nia: ...Yeah.

[laughter]

Nia: Well okay, so when I did—

Jo: What, define, what do you what are you referring to when you say “a brown Cuban”?

Nia: I guess like, I mean, not all Cubans are white or Black or mixed white-and-Black right?

Jo: No, because some are Asian. [laughter]

Nia: Okay. So I guess what I’m trying to get at is when I interviewed that other Cuban artist they
told me that they are basically like no Indigenous people left, like no Indigenous Cubans or
people indigenous to the land that is called Cuba left on the island and that the ones that are do
exist consider themselves Black and would be very insulted to be identified as Indigenous, and
that’s something I have never heard before.

Jo: There are definitely Cubans on the island that still identify as indigenous people. There-
there’s not a lot of them and the majority... Well, I’m going to say all of them. All of them are
mixed. There’s no such thing as a non-mixed person of indigenous descent on the island of Cuba
just because of how thorough the campaign against them was when the island was first
colonized. It was, it was massive slaughter and massive—I’m going to call it a campaign—of
Spanish colonizers taking indigenous women, specifically, for wives so the mixing was very
very intentional and I guess strategic from the very beginning, to sort of eradicate their
community, if not like directly eradicating each and every one of the bodies.

Nia: Right.

Jo: There is indigenous ancestry present that I guess, that people who might have done
mitochondrial DNA studies have sussed out from the population and there are very, very small
communities in Southern Cuba who still sort of identify primarily as Indigenous though is more
like “our ancestors” way and our like political decision to align with that identity way, more so
than that there’s been untouched...

Nia: What else do you know to be different about race in Cuba than in the US?

Jo: The way that, the way that people are determined to be a certain race over another is
different. Like my mother considers me white but she would never use the word white, ‘cause if
you use the word white with her she’ll think white American, like an Anglo-Saxon person.
That’s were a lot of confusion I feel comes from in the Latinx community when people are like
“Hey, you know you have white privilege?” and they’re like “but I’m not Anglo-Saxon so what
are you talking about?” because that’s sort of the connotation that the word white has, but my
whole life my mother has told me “you’re blanca,” which is the Spanish word for white, and it’s
really fascinating just saying the same word in a different language carries a different completely
it carries a sort of different profile in the imagination.

Nia: Okay.

Jo: And in Cuba being blanco or blanca literally means “white” and it’s sort of referring to what
you look like more than what your actual ancestry is. Like it’s actually common in Cuba for
someone to say they are like “Oh, your mother’s mulata, but you’re blanca.” Regardless of the
fact that you’re mother’s of clear Afro-descent. If you’re not visibly of Afro-descent, you’re...
It’s sort of like the opposite of the One Drop Rule almost.

Jo: [laughter]

Nia: So like if you have any white blood in you you’re considered white?

Jo: You’re considered white if that’s the first assumption people make when look at you. If
people look at you and they don’t see your Blackness immediately then you’re not Black to
them.

Nia: Hunh. I mean that’s kind of my experience of growing up mixed in the US as a light-
skinned, white-passing mulatta but I know that’s not... I mean like I know the One Drop Rule is
still sort of predominant way of understanding race in the U.S. when it comes to mixed people
who are Black and white.

Jo: Yeah, like it feels like in the U.S. I can sort of claim like my ancestry, and not even
ancestry—makes it sound so far away—I can claim my mother [laughter] and have people be
like “Well, of course you’re part of the community your mother is, she is your mother.”
[laughter] But in Cuba it’s just sort of seen as like “Why are you saying you’re that? You’re just
Cuban, like why are you trying to be extra? Why are you trying to confuse it? You’re Cuban, like
just leave it alone.” If you’re non-white-passing Cuban then we’ll add a modifier beause at that
point we can’t just ignore what you are.

Nia: Wait, sorry I think I lost you... if you’re a non-white-passing Cuban?

Jo: If you’re a non-White passing Cuban we’ll add a modifier onto you since we’re incapable of
letting you be.

[laughter]

Nia: Got it. So white Cubans are considered Cubans and non-white Cubans are considered
Cuban+.

Jo: Yes.
[laughter]

Nia: Okay, yeah I think, I’m sorry, I feel like I’m trying to have an intelligent conversation about
race in Cuba and just like showing my ignorance left and right... [laughter] Right? I got really
hooked on this show called Celia I don’t know if you’ve seen it?

Jo: Oh my god.

Nia: [laughter].

Jo: [laughter] Oh my gosh. I, I haven’t watched it but I may have bad news for you depending
on what you know about it. [laughter]

Nia: Oh no. Well I mean I don’t want to make this too much about the show and how what little
I know from race in Cuba is from TV.

Jo: [laughter]

Nia: But a lot of it is about race and the most important characters are Afro-Cubans. There’s this
scene where her dad is like “Oh she’s not like us, she’s mulatta and we’re white” and I’m
looking at the dad like “...really?” [laughter]. Because in the US he would clearly be considered
...brown. That’s why I was like “Where does the brown come from?” Because I feel like there
are Cubans themselves that don’t look White, Black or mixed. I don’t know maybe that’s the
problem of trying to separate it everyone into neat racial categories. [laughter]

Jo: Oh, oh, Nia, Nia, I gotta call you on something.

Nia: Go ahead.

Jo: You can’t say someone doesn’t look mixed... because mixed people look like everything.

Nia: That’s fair [laughter].

Jo: [laughter].

Nia: But I also feel like Latinx people look like everything. [laughter]

Jo: Because most of them are mixed. [laughter]

Nia: Okay. [laughter].

Jo: Yeah, basically. I guess the easy answer, and not easy as to like not get into it like a real way,
but like I think the real simple way is the ones that read as some third thing, well not third, I
don’t know why I’m numbering races.
Nia: [laughter].

Jo: Well that don’t read as you’re clearly European or you’re clearly of African descent or
you’re clearly this, they are just “mixed race.” That’s why they look like that. [laughter]

Nia: I guess my understanding also is that it’s sort of maybe more about skin tone. Like what am
I trying to say? In Spanish there are all these different words for skin tone right? Like you
already talked about.

Jo: Yeah.

Nia: Blanca and mulata but then also morena and prieta but these are different that racial
categories in the United States because they refer to—this is a question but it sounds like a
statement, but I’m asking [laughter]—to skin tone rather than necessarily phenotype or what
your features look like?

Jo: Yes.

Nia: [laughter]

Jo: [laughter] Yes, they are referring to skin tone primarily, I think skin tone is, I don’t want to
say is the primary focus of how race is conceived of in Latin America because there’s also terms
like jabao in Cuba, I’m not sure if other places use that term, but you’d be considered jabá it
means someone who is white according to their skin tone but whose features are Black.

Nia: Incognegro, basically.

Jo: Yeah, basically! [laughter] I think your questions about brown Cubans—

Nia: [laughter]

Jo: —or brown Latinx was a really good question honestly, because I think like it really sort of
the heart of like where the misunderstanding is I think for Americans like, I think Americans
think that Latinxs are something...

Nia: [laughter]

Jo: Like that that’s a thing, but like Latinx countries, it’s not like, like it’s not like Pakistan
where there’s people specifically indigenous to that area and look a certain way because that’s
where they’ve always been. Latinx countries are very similar to the US in their history and
formation. Like if you want to look at North and South America asd just “the Americas,” as just
one land mass including the Caribbean: there were indigenous Americans throughout both
continents and when different Europeans when to different parts of it, decimated their
populations, took their land and brought over Africans as slaves, and then immigration from
other countries kept going throughout the centuries. Yeah, it’s all the same white colonial
bullshit [laughter] throughout both continents and the big kicker is that like so much
miscegenation happened in Latin America, whereas in the US it was straight up illegal for a long
time.

Nia: Which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen—

Jo: Yeah, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. One of the sort of white colonial strategies in
different Latin American countries to sort of unify people was to, sort of, create an enemy out of
the Spanish Crown once they were seeking independence, and in order to make Spain the enemy
they then had to be something other than Spanish, and they were like “Oh, well we’re Mexican,
we’re not like the Spanish because we’ve got Indigenous people and we’ve got Black people and
it’s like all a hodgepodge and we’re a beautiful melting pot, we’re not Spanish—

Nia: But at the same time like maintaining—

Jo: —Yeah

Nia: —a super intense pigmentocracy.

Jo: —a super intense pigmentocracy and then super intense “Oh, let’s make like a little picture
chart of all the presidents of all Latin American countries, and it’s like oh yeah there’s a few
indigenous-looking ones and all the rest of you are blondes and redheads. I wonder what’s going
on.” [laughter]

Nia: Yeah, I think you covered a couple of important points I wanted to talk about [laughter] and
so much more articulately [laughter] than I did.

Jo: [laughter]

Nia: And I don’t know I think on one hand it is all part of the same colonial project but at the
same time it is obvious the way race is understand in Latin America varies from country to
country... because colonialism didn’t always operate exactly the same in every place right?

Jo: Oh yeah not exactly the same but there was sort of an overarching theme just because the
same crown was overseeing every one of those nations as they were built—

Nia: —most of them, I mean I think—

Jo: —well not counting the French countries and Brazil.

Nia: This is my last question about race in Cuba. [laughter]

Jo: [laughter]

Nia: —I recently learned, I recently read [laughter] that there was a certain point in time, I wish
I could remember the exact year, where the Cuban Revolutionary government declared racism
over?
Jo: Oh yeah, that happened.

[laughter]

Nia: Which seems like it would make it... you know talked about Latinx folks identifying with
nation over race or ethnicity and it seems like that’s something that would make it... You know
when Obama got elected and people started saying “post-racial,” I thought that was a new and
very misinformed idea, but apparently Cuba has been doing that for a while.

Jo: Oh yeah, and even before that, I think the, and this might not be the first either but, I think
the earliest thing I read [laughter] about the Cuban Government being like “there’s no race, what
are you talking about?”

Nia: [laughter]

Jo: Was right after the Spanish-American War when Cuba got its independence from Spain, the,
one of the major Cuban generals [Antonio Maceo] in that struggle was, he was mulatto but when
it came time to sort of speak to the Cuban nation post-war he sort of let the sentiment of “Now
now. Now that we’re free from Spain we all have like to be united we have to be proud of
ourselves, we’re Cuban. I’m not Black I’m not this or any of these things I’m just a Cuban.” And
that was a mess—

Nia: [laughter]

Jo: —and there were [laughter] I might be forgetting the exact name of the organization, but
there was, there was an organization [the Independent Party of Color] that called itself like the
Cuban Organization of People of Color—

Nia: —okay.

Jo: —that were sort of protesting unequal treatment towards Black Cubans and mixed Cubans
around that time and soon after – I wish I could remember his name – that general did his whole
song and dance they were disbanded by the government, they were not allowed to organize
anymore.

Nia: Oh, wow.

Jo: So that’s a thing, and it was reading that I even learned there was a concept of referring to
oneself as a person of color in Cuba. But yeah, that was a whole thing in the whole earlier 20th
century that got snuffed out.

Nia: So, I guess maybe that hopefully can bring us to you [laughter] and the present.

Jo: [laughter]
Nia: I guess I’m curious how, I mean I don’t want to say how the country doesn’t talk about race
because that’s an oversimplification and also I straight up don’t know. Like coming from that...
like it seems like a strategy employed to make talking about race and racism more difficult,
right? Denying the fact that racism exists in Cuba. How did you come to identify as Afro-Cuban?
Is that something that you’ve always done or is that something that emerged with a growing
political consciousness?

Jo: It definitely emerged growing up a political consciousness. For most of my life I identified
with the word Hispanic mainly because that’s the popular word in South Florida. Like in South
Florida I never really heard anyone say Latino or Latina to refer to themselves, like the word
came up when they were talking about Latinoamérica.

Actually the first time I started calling myself Hispanic was when I came home from school one
day, in elementary school and I had been bullied I was crying to my mom and she was like
“What’s wrong?” And I was like “These girls were pulling my hair” and they did all this and I
was like “and they kept me calling me white girl and I don’t know why they were calling me
white girl!” [laughter] My mom looked really upset and she was like “You’re not white, you’re
Hispanic!” [laughter]

Nia: It’s like what does that even mean though? [laughter]

Jo: Yeah, first of all what does it even mean? But I wasn’t like conscious enough at age 7 to be
like “What does that even mean, Mom?” [laughter] it’s just like.

Nia: Right.

Jo: I was just like “Okay, that’s what I will say next time”.

Nia: Did you go to a majority-Black school?

Jo: Yeah.

Nia: Okay.

Jo: At the time I was living in North Miami. I was raised by my grandma for the first like 7 years
of my life and she lived in South Beach, but then when I moved in with my mother we moved to
North Miami, which is a predominantly Black area of Miami, especially Haitian-American. So
that’s what the majorities were at my school, along with I guess a minority of Hispanic kids and
Asian kids. Growing up, the white American child was like the sore thumb in any classroom.

Nia: That’s so interesting because I just interviewed someone who’s like mixed Puerto Rican
and white and grew up in the South being called “white girl” [laughter] in the school because
they were in a majority-Black context. I didn’t realize, I guess I haven’t talked to a lot of people
of color that grew up being called “white girl”. [laughter]

Jo: [laughter]
Nia: You’re now the second person that has sort of told me this story and I’m like wow I wonder
how common that is.

[Above transcribed by M. Salazar]

Jo: It's super common for Latinx—or if I'm saying girls, it's just Latina [laughs]. It's really
common for Latinas who grow up in majority Black environments, just because if you're the
lightest person around, then I guess, by comparison... Though there's sort of a split between
Latinas who were called “white girl” because they were the lightest person around, and Latinas
who were called “white girl” because they were literally white. [Both Jo and Nia laugh.]

Nia: I mean, I imagine that there's probably some overlap though, right?

Jo: …Yes. [laughs] It's a story that I've heard a lot. I've primarily heard it from blonde, blue-
eyed Latinas, who are like, “Everyone called me 'white girl,' and I don't understand. Because I
spoke Spanish, and my lunch was weird.” [Nia laughs] And I'm like, “That has nothing to do
with your skin.” [laughs] “Or your ancestry. Not being able to speak English is a thing a lot of
white people who immigrate here can't do, actually.” [laughs]

Nia: You grew up being called white by girls at school, and being told you're Hispanic by your
mom. So how did you come to identify as Afro-Cuban?

Jo: It was just a long time growing up really confused. Very early on it became clear to me that
my mom was sort of prejudiced against a lot of the people in our community. As I got older…
Just cue that GIF of the white lady with the math rolling in front of her face. [Nia laughs] Where
it was just, me thinking, then looking at my mom. Then thinking. Looking at my mom. And
being like, “Mom, aren't… Aren't you Black? I mean, I figured, because you look Black, that
you were Black, so….why are you saying this stuff about Black people?” [laughs] So, once I
was old enough to put those two together, it became a whole nother conversation with my
mother, where it usually just turned into “Well, I'm not that kind of Black. I'm not Black like
that.” Or “You know what I'm talking about.” I'm like, “No, I don't know what you're talking
about.” [both laugh]

Nia: So your mom sees herself as a non-Black Cuban? Or she sees herself as… Hispanic? I
don't even like using that word. [laughs] I feel like it's—

Jo: Yeah!

Nia: I feel like it's a slur, even though this is the word she used.

Jo: Oh my gosh. That's amazing that you consider it a slur. There's so many people, Latinx,
that prefer it. [laughs]

Nia: Yeah, well. I mean… What do I… I'm not trying to use it as a slur, obviously. I feel like
it's – And please correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like it's fallen out of fashion with “woke”
people, the way that “colored” or “Negro” fell out of fashion. Where it's like, “Oh, we're not that
anymore. We're this now.”

Jo: Oh my god, that's amazing. The reason I find that amazing is that Hispanic and Latinx are
both white-supremacist terms.

Nia: OK. [laughs]

Jo: So [laughs] it's weird that one is favored over the other. I've thought about that a lot. I grew
up and it was really clear to me that my mother was dancing around something. She identifies as
mulatta. One day when I was old enough, she took me to a government office because we were
on—We were on housing assistance and food stamps my entire life. My nuclear family still is.
So one day I went with her, and we were filling out the forms. I think it was because I had
turned 18 and I had to prove I wasn't secretly making money. I had to sign the forms, too. And I
noticed that on her forms, she was checking “white” on them, when it asked for self-reporting on
that kind of thing.

Afterwards I was like, “Mom, why'd you put that you were white?” She was like, “Because
that's what it says on my birth certificate.” I was like, “Why does it say that on your birth
certificate?” She's like, “Because I looked white when I was born. You know, lots of babies
look white when they're born. But now I don't. But I don't want to lie on a legal form.” [laughs]
She didn't want to have a discrepancy on a legal form, because she thought she would get in
trouble. I'm like, “I'm pretty sure you can put whate er you want.” [Nia laughs] “I felt really
weird when you put white on a form, and then handed it to the white social worker, who's like,
‘I'm not going to be rude.’ Just saying.” [both laugh]

Nia: I feel like that gets at another way that race is different in Cuba from the US, is that— My
impression, and this could totally be wrong, is that mixed Black people, or mulattas in Cuba
don't consider themselves Black? It's a separate racial category? To be mulatto?

Jo: Oh yeah. It has been for— I guess ever since Spain decided to create those racial categories,
and to organize society by them. There's sort of been a hierarchy, where Black people were at
the very bottom, and then Indigenous people, by a thin margin, above that. Simply by the fact
that they weren't slave labor. Then there was sort of a gradation scale. Kind of like when you
buy a black and white marker set. How they have a different degree of every grey, until you get
to the lightest grey. There was a different name for being half-Black, being one-quarter Black,
being one-eighth Black. There's a specific term for each fraction.

Nia: We had that in the US, too, in terms of “quadroons” and “octoroons” [laughs] which
obviously are not words that people use in a positive way anymore.

Jo: Oh, yeah. In Cuba, those are just still words that no one thinks twice about. They're not
considered bad words. People stick to them pretty religiously, because being Black is frowned
upon. No one wants to say they're Black, if they can get away with saying they're not.

Nia: Mmm. OK. So, your mom fills out this form saying she's white. [Jo laughs] You're
confused, and maybe the social worker is also confused. [Joamette laughs] But when did you
really start to identify as Black? Or as Afro-Cuban? How did that come to be?

Joamette: It was after I went to college, and I learned about the actual history of race in Latin
America. I started learning more about the history of oppression of different racial categories in
the United States, as well. Just gathering a view of how things went for people of the African
Diaspora in different ways, and in different places. I didn't want to erase my relationship to
those things. The way that the categories for identifying yourself racially, in Cuba, were all set
up around erasing as much Blackness as you possibly could, as you went along. I didn't want to
do that. Especially because I have seen my mother be mistreated for the color of her skin. No
matter how much she wants to say that she isn't Black, that she's some other technicality. I see it
as an acknowledgement of my mother being real, and her identity and existence as being real,
and being a part of me.

Transcribed by Joyce Hatton