In Castro's Corner - African Americans' alleged affinity for Cuba

National Review, March 6, 2000 by Jay Nordlinger

A second Dellums aide, Carlottia Scott, had written several notorious notes to the Grenadian strongman, Maurice Bishop, the most infamous of them being the most telling: "Ron [Dellums], as a political thinker, is the best around, and Fidel will verify that in no uncertain terms.... Ron had a long talk with Barb and me when we got to Havana and cried when he realized that we had been shouldering Grenada alone all this time. Like I said, he's really hooked on you and Grenada and doesn't want anything to happen to building the Revo and making it strong. He really admires you as a person, and even more so as a leader with courage and foresight, principle and integrity. Believe me, he doesn't make that kind of statement often about anyone. The only other person that I know of that he expresses such admiration for is Fidel."

Last year, the Democratic National Committee appointed Carlottia Scott to its "senior political leadership team."

If black America has a secretary of state, it is Randall Robinson, the stylish and respected head of the Washington-based foreign-policy group TransAfrica. He is best known for his advocacy of intervention in Haiti, but he is also a full-fledged member of today's Venceremos Brigade. A year ago, he shuttled down to Havana with a party that included such luminaries as Danny Glover, the movie star. The trip was typical: All came back gushing. "I admire the relationship that Castro has with African-Americans," said Camille Cosby, wife of the entertainer. "It's nice to know that an international leader has that much interest in African-Americans."

Johnnetta Cole, the constantly honored former president of Spelman College, said, "What impressed me most [about meeting Castro] was the way in which his grounding in the history and reality of Afro-Cubans informs his view of Cuba; the sense of personal outrage he has over racial discrimination."

Robinson, in a lengthy report on the visit, made clear that his view of Cuba--its history, its problems, its relations with the United States--is identical to that of the regime, right down to his condemnation of "anti-revolutionary" elements in South Florida. Robinson found Castro utterly compelling--"frank and thoughtful."

It is this sort of thing that drives Cuban-Americans to near despair. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart has said, "For the life of me, I just don't know how Castro can seem cute after forty years of torturing people."

So: How to account for the enduring affair between black elites in America and the tyrant on Cuba--immune, seemingly, to post-Solzhenitsyn, post-Valladares, post-Cold War awakenings? First, there is the simple pleasure of tweaking white, conservative sensibilities. As Latin America scholar Mark Falcoff observes, "Castro is anti-American; therefore he has to be good. Jesse Helms hates him; therefore he has to be good." Then there is the question of resentment felt by a slice of black America toward Cuban-Americans as a successful, and politically conservative, immigrant group. Then, too, there is the oft-expressed appreciation of Castro's military adventures in Africa, a gratitude for--as an article in Emerge recently put it--the "thousands of Cubans [who] volunteered in liberation wars in Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Angola, helping to defeat South Africa's apartheid military." Also, the idea persists that Castro, with his Communism, has been a friend to the poor. (The novelist Alice Walker: "Fidel Castro respects poor people, and I can see that when I go to Cuba.")