Uppity-Negro.com

While Jason is off galivanting around Omaha, George and I have to pick up the slack. Typical. See, this is why we never get nowhere as a people.

Of course, starting Saturday it'll just be George, but let's not worry about that now. Instead, have a look at the article he linked titled People of Color Who Never Felt They Were Black:

Brazilian slavery ended in 1889 by decree, with no civil war and no Jim Crow -- and mixing between light- and dark-complexioned Indians, Europeans, Africans and mulattoes was common and, in many areas, encouraged. Although discrimination against dark-complexioned Brazilians was clear, class played almost as important a role as race.

In Colombia, said Luis Murillo, a black politician in exile from that country, light-complexioned descendants of Spanish conquistadors and Indians created the "mestizo" race, an ideology that held that all mixed-race people were the same. But it was an illusion, Murillo said: A pecking order "where white people were considered superior and darker people were considered inferior" pervaded Colombia.

Murillo said the problem exists throughout Latin American and Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries with noticeable black populations. White Latinos control the governments even in nations with dark-complexioned majorities, he said. And in nations ruled by military juntas and dictators, there are few protests, Murillo said.

In Cuba, a protest by Afro-Cubans led to the arming of the island's white citizens and, ultimately, the massacre of 3,000 to 6,000 black men, women and children in 1912, according to University of Michigan historian Frank Guridy, author of "Race and Politics in Cuba, 1933-34."

American-influenced Cuba was also home to the Ku Klux Klan Kubano and other anti-black groups before Fidel Castro's revolution. Now, Cuban racism still exists, some say, but black, mulatto and white people mix much more freely. Lopez, the Afro-Venezuelan lawyer, said, "Race doesn't affect us there the way it does here," he said. "It's more of a class thing."

I may have added emphasis, for no particular reason.

Especially since the focus of the article is (ugh, hate this term) mixed-race people from elsewhere in this hemisphere dealing with the Icky Racial Issues here in the States, which are almost, but not totally unlike the Icky Racial Issues in their nation of origin.

Obsessing over the things ain't healthy, but ignoring them altogether isn't much better. . .