Black activist launch rare attack on Cuba about racism

From LAtimes.com

Reporting from Atlanta – President Obama has loosened travel restrictions to Cuba. His critics accuse him of harboring socialist sentiments. And he is, of course, a member of the African American intelligentsia — a group that has tended, for the last half-century, to have a soft spot for the Cuban revolution.

It sounds like the perfect atmosphere for the love affair between black American liberals and the regime of the Castros to fully flourish.

Except that it’s not.

A group of 60 African American artists and thinkers have launched a rare — and some say unprecedented — attack on Cuba’s human rights record, with a particular focus on the treatment of black political dissidents.

In a statement issued in November, luminaries including Princeton professor Cornel West, actress Ruby Dee and director Melvin Van Peebles criticized the Communist government for its “increased violations of civil and human rights for those black activists in Cuba who dare raise their voices against the island’s racial system.”

Continued at LATimes.com

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