The author of the preposterous
1619 Project seems miffed by the growing grass-roots backlash against
the force-feeding of her anti-historical rubbish and it’s offshoots to
American schoolchildren. Over in Virginia, for example, Gov. Younkin
kicked off his term with an executive order banning Critical Race
Theory in Virginia’s public schools. And down in Florida Gov. De Santis is pushing a bill to do much the same.
“Many
in mainstream media got caught up in the Republican propaganda
campaign, which tried to conflate the teaching of a
more accurate (italics mine) history, the teaching of structural racism,
with trying to make white children feel badly about themselves or
guilty,” whined Nikole Hannah-Jones during a recent interview with the Associated Press.
Ms
Hannah-Jones seems to imply that she’s a hard-nosed investigative
historian who shrewdly and instantly detects propaganda and inaccuracy.
Well:
“Education is the cornerstone of the (Cuban)
revolution. Nearly everywhere among the magnificent Havana architecture
signs speak of equality and liberation through education," said a euphoric Nikole Hannah-Jones after a Potemkin tour of Stalinist Cuba.
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted,” famously boasted Vladimir Lenin
Appropriately enough, Castroite Cuba’s most famous “elite” high school is named for Vladimir Lenin.
“This
summer (2008) I (Nikole Hannah-Jones) traveled to Cuba with six
journalists, documenting the experiences of the African diaspora in the
Western Hemisphere for the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies in
North Carolina. While there, I found a Cuba you may not know. A Cuba
with a 99.8 percent literacy rate, the lowest HIV infection rate in the
Western Hemisphere, free college and health care…When Castro took power,
fewer than one-quarter of Cubans were literate. Many couldn't afford
school. One of Castro's first acts was to universalize education….
Cuba's universal health care system is seen by many as a world model.”
Fact-Check: In
fact, when Castro took power, which was barely 50 years after a
devastating war of independence that cost Cuba almost a fifth of her
population, Cuba boasted almost 80 percent literacy and budgeted the
most (23 percent of national expenses) for public education of any Latin American country.
Fact-Check: In
1958, Cuba had a higher standard of living than Ireland and Austria,
almost double Spain and Japan’s per-capita income, more doctors and
dentists per capita than Britain and lower infant mortality than France
and Germany — the 13th lowest in the world, in fact. Today, Cuba’s
infant-mortality rate — despite the hemisphere’s highest abortion rate,
which favorably skews the figure -- is much lower from the top. So
relative to the rest of the world, Cuba’s health care has worsened under
the Castros and a nation with a formerly massive influx of European
immigrants needs machine guns, water cannons and Tiger sharks to keep
it’s people from fleeing, while half-starved Haitians a short 60 miles
away turn up their nose at any thought of immigrating to Cuba.
Without Castro, Cuba’s full literacy would have
come about probably as quickly and without firing squads, mass graves
and a political incarceration rate higher than Stalin’s. Most countries
in Latin America with lower literacy rates than Cuba in 1958 have done just that.
Better
still, before the Castros and Che Guevara converted Cuba into an
intellectual, moral and material sewer, Cubans were
actually educated —not indoctrinated with worthless Marxist claptrap, as
will many U.S. schoolchildren if Biden’s Education Department in
cahoots with such as Nikole Hannah-Jones prevails.
Instead
of being force fed essentially the same Marxist imbecilities the 1619
Project and Critical Race Theory force-feed its hapless victims,
children in pre-Castro Cuba were allowed (encouraged, actually) to read
such as George Orwell and Thomas Jefferson not just the arresting wisdom
and sparkling prose of Che Guevara. A specimen:
"To the
extent that we achieve concrete successes on a theoretical plane — or,
vice versa, to the extent that we draw theoretical conclusions of a
broad character on the basis of our concrete research — we will have
made a valuable contribution to Marxism-Leninism, and to the cause of
humanity."
I quote "this intellectual, this most complete human
being of our time" (Jean Paul Sartre’s description of Che Guevara)
exactly. Cuba’s prisons aren’t its only torture chambers. With such
reading assignments Cuba’s classrooms amply qualify for an inspection by
Amnesty International.
“Black Cubans especially are
wary of outsiders wishing to overthrow the Castro regime,” Nikole
Hannah-Smith reported after her Potemkin Cuban tour. “They admit the
revolution has been imperfect, but it also led to the end of codified
racism and brought universal education and access to jobs to black
Cubans. Without the revolution, they wonder, where would they be.”
They
would have been spared the boot-heel, lash and slave-yoke of a
totalitarian regime which jailed and tortured the
longest-suffering black political prisoners in the modern history of the
Western hemisphere, that’s where. Many Cuban blacks suffered longer
incarceration in the dungeons of Che and the Castros than Nelson Mandela
suffered in South Africa’s. Eusebio Penalver, Ignacio Cuesta Valle,
Antonio Lopez Munoz, Ricardo Valdes Cancio and many other Cuban blacks
suffered almost 30 years in the Castros’ prisons. Bloodied in their
fight against Hannah-Jones’ tour guides, they remained unbowed.
But have you ever heard any of their names mentioned
by the U.S. media? Eusebio Penalver became a U.S. citizen and lived in
Miami for almost 20 years. He would have been a cinch for the media to
track down. Has CNN interviewed any of them? Have you ever see any of
them on “60 Minutes,” or read about them in The New York Times? Have you
ever heard of them on National Public Radio during Black History Month,
seen them on the History channel or A&E? Has the NAACP or
Congressional Black Caucus mentioned them?
As Ernesto “Che” Guevara wrote in his famous “Motorcycle
Diaries” (but was “overlooked” in the famous movie), "The Negro is
indolent and spends his money on frivolities and drink, whereas the
European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent." And as he
famously sneered at a black Cuban questioner during a press conference
in early 1959 who asked him what the revolution planned for blacks:
“We’ll do for Cuban blacks exactly what Cuban blacks did for the Cuban
revolution. By which I mean: nothing!”
Che was much too
modest. “Nothing” is not at all an accurate description of Castroite
treatment of Cuba’s blacks. In fact, these lily-white European soldiers'
sons (Fidel and Raul) along with Che forcibly overthrew a Cuban
government where Cuban blacks served as President of the Senate,
Minister of Agriculture, Chief of Army, and Head of State (Fulgencio
Batista, a grandson of slaves who was born in a palm-roofed shack). Not
that you’ll learn any of this from the liberals’ exclusive educational
source on pre-Castro Cuba: the Godfather II movie, or –gulp—if Biden’s
Education Department gets its wish, from the writings and blathering of Nikole Hannah-Jones.
In fact: “(Pre-Castro) Cuba had probably the nearest thing to perfect equality between whites and blacks in the world.”
“Aaaaw
come ON, Humberto!” some amigos snort. “I mean, let’s not get carried
away here! It’s one thing to correct the left’s historical
exaggerations! But let’s not exaggerate in the other direction.
Puh-leeeze!”
Fair enough, amigos. Fine, then don’t take it from
me. Take it from Life Magazine (not exactly a bastion of “embittered-
right-wing-Cuban-exiles-with-an-axe-to-grind), where the “perfect
equality between races” statement formed the headline on an article they
wrote about Cuba in November 1938.
