Sharing Strategies for Racial Uplift: Afro-Cubans, Afro-Puerto Ricans, and African Amer-
tant to Serra for nationalist reasons. Rather, it affected the socioeco-
nomic status of black people within the nation. In the same piece
where he lauded white Americans for assisting Booker T. Washington
and denounced white Cubans for not doing the same with black
Cubans, he pointed out that the effects of their lack of concern is that
Afro-Cubans have very few job opportunities. He gave examples of
jobs in public service, of which only a small percentage were held by
blacks. His concern with white-black cooperation, therefore, also con-
nected with his concern for black economic progress within the
nation—and it is there that he saw Booker T. Washington and his
white supporters succeeding.Juan Gualberto Gómez and the Tuskegee InstituteJuan Gualberto Gómez was an Afro-Cuban intellectual, journalist,
and later statesman who emerged as a figure of considerable impor-
tance when he returned from exile in NY to sit in the Cuban Constit-
uent Assembly. Historian Aline Helg has criticized him because of his
supposed lack of concern for the specific plight of Afro-Cubans and
what she considers his whole-sale acceptance of the myth of racial
equality and the idea of a cross-racial Cuba. “Although he protested
racial discrimination on various occasions,” she admits, “he mostly
used his political skills to preach resignation to impatient Afro-
Cubans...In other words, Gómez backed the official policy, which
delayed Afro-Cubans’ full participation in the nation.” Helg also pos-
its that Gualberto Gómez’s insistence on education for Afro-Cubans
to be qualified for public service jobs delayed the creation of a black
middle class in Cuba, since these were the only kinds of jobs available
(Helg, 1995: 120- 123).
Yet under Gómez’s leadership the Directorio Central de las Sociedades
de la Raza de Color, an umbrella organization of separately organized
black mutual aid societies, had flourished. That his concern for Cuba’s
independence and his opposition to American imperialism should
overshadow his denouncement of continuing racism in Cuba is not