Opposition to interracial marriage in Cuba reflects shared valuation of whiteness, not antiracism

Evidence

This form of resistance hardly represents a rejection of whitening or a revaluation of blackness. On the contrary, it is a recognition of the power differential likely to exist in a relationship in which both whites and people of color evaluate physical beauty and cultural superiority on the basis of traits that reflect predominant European descent. Thus the parents of both Rafael and Luis were resistant to their sons’ relationship with white women because they recognized that the racial hierarchies involved in interracial relationships in Cuba were so powerful that they trumped patriarchy. They realized that their sons’ white partner would be able to use her racial privilege as a weapon against them (see Burdick, 1998b:29; Twine, 1998:96), Such a position does not constitute a rejection of whitening, as Fernandez implies, but rather represents a recognition of blacks’ shared valuation of whiteness. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3630

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how parental opposition to interracial relationships gets misread as antiracist resistance when it is actually an accommodation to white supremacy’s power gradient.