of patterns and racist criteria is the main obstacle in Cuba to achieve the integration and the equality promised so many times in political speeches and always broken in everyday life . The American author also asserted awareness and humanist sensibility are the ideal weapon to promote equality in law practical by embracing criteria and assessments designed to fight the persistent racist mentality , silences and concealments that distort history . She made highvalue considerations about the importance of awareness and participation of whites in the multiracial societies with a slave past and a vocation of modernity . In the long and difficult struggle for equality and justice , she recalled how important was the involvement of white people in the antiracist movements of the U . S . and South Africa , where institutionalized segregation lasted too much . She posed a question that implies a transcendental concept : " Why is it so difficult to recognize that both the trauma and terror of racism and its manifestations and violence hurt not only African Americans and people of color ? Racism is a worldwide aggression . It also hurts me as a white person ." The present and future are seriously compromised by the inequalities and polarization that still persist and place Cubans of African descent in a serious situation emerging from the new socioeconomic correlations . For Cuba it is essential and crucial that all citizens without exception take part in the struggle for building racial equality and respect for diversity and identities as principles that provide the meaning of life and irreplaceable means to achieve personal growth and social harmony . This is important because the racist mentality has been standardized in the references and visions of the majority , to the extreme that even the very victims of racism often reproduce these patterns and are incapable of perceiving the daily manifestations of discrimination in all social areas . The history provides unequivocal lessons . Over a hundred years ago , one of the costly mistakes of the PCI leaders was abstaining from popularizing that white people were also among the militancy and from appointing some of them to prominent posts in order to avoid the accusation of racism . The latter was widely used to justify the disproportionate repression and we can hear such an accusation even today in the ruling academic spaces . Our society is obliged to direct its inevitable fight against racism from the perspective of racial integration . Together with the self-esteem , identity and self-recognition of the African descendants , the racial integration must transform the long common history of all Cubans in another one of balanced coexistence and equal opportunities . For such a purpose , we need to activate all educational , intellectual and propagandistic mechanisms to add white Cubans with greater sensitivity and commitment to the recovery of historical truth , the public debate and active fight against the manifestations of racism and inequality . Unfortunately , besides the obvious manifestations and racist attitudes of the Cuban rulers , some kind of institutional racism remain in certain areas of the society along with a deplorable discriminatory bias against African descendants in some regions of the country . José Martà , known as the Apostle of the Independence and named so after the African American patriot
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