“

When do you think the protests 
will stop?” My mother asked me 
this when we were both sitting in 

the kitchen a few days ago. “Didn’t they 
arrest the cop who killed that guy? I don’t 
understand why there are all these violent 
protests still. And how does it benefit any-
one to vandalize a building?” 

My mother is the daughter of two 

Cuban immigrants. My father is the 
proud son of two Cubans who also came 
to the United States decades ago. Many 
older members of my family, including 
my grandparents, have likewise voiced 
concerns about the legitimacy of the pro-
tests erupting around the country in the 
aftermath of George Floyd’s death. One of 
my late relatives was imprisoned in Cuba 
for more than 20 years for his activities as 
a political activist. I have been wondering 
lately what he would have to say about my 
family’s response, given Cuba’s own his-
tory of protest. Likewise, political activ-
ism before and during the 90s in Cuba 
bears notable distinctions from the con-
temporary protests in the United States, 
but there are also important parallels. 

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 

1991, Cuba lost its main trading partner as 
well as the source of much of its interna-
tional political support. An economic cri-
sis soon unfolded within Cuba, resulting 
in strict rationing, rolling blackouts (for up 
to 20 hours) and severe medicine short-
ages. In 1994, nearly a thousand Cubans 
gathered at Havana’s Malecon (a sea wall 
along the country’s capital known for its 
tourist appeal) to voice their frustrations. 
Protesters broke windows and destroyed 
property as others recorded the events 
unfolding, desperate for their voices to 
be heard. The uprising was effectively 
quelled on the same day it started because 
police shot, beat or threatened protesters 
who would not leave the streets. Nobody 
really writes much about this uprising. 
But many Cubans solemnly remember it, 
even if they no longer live on the island. 
Cuban-American communities should 
bear those parallels in mind when consid-
ering their role and respective privilege 
in the broader context of police violence 
against people of color. 

Despite the destructionist tactics 

used by protestors, the Maleconazo riot 
is a point of pride for many Cubans who 
now reside in the U.S. If my own commu-
nity’s continued willingness to speak out 
against past injustice at the hands of Fidel 
Castro’s military and police force is any 
indication, many Cubans who now reside 
in the United States would not be so quick 
to condemn the Maleconazo riot more 
than 25 years ago. I struggle to imagine 
any of my grandparents criticizing those 
protestors who vandalized buildings 
in a display of their frustration against 
their country’s deteriorating economic 
conditions. No Cuban-American I know 

speaks out against those who stole boats 
that same year to flee to the United States. 
In some ways, the lack of understand-
ing that many Cubans in my community 
have exhibited towards those protesting 
police brutality and the United States’ 
long legacy of systemic racism is surpris-
ing. In many ways, however, this reaction 
is predictable.

Despite the history of anti-Latino sen-

timent in the United States, Latin Ameri-
can communities have not always been 
compassionate or responsible partners 
in the fight against racism. Even though 
people of Hispanic descent have been 
racially profiled by police or are increas-
ingly the target of hate crimes, racism has 
been deeply internalized in many immi-
grant communities. As Karla McKanders, 
a clinical professor of law at Vanderbilt 
Law School, writes, instead of seeing 
themselves as natural allies in the fight for 
social and economic justice, many white 
and white-passing Cuban-Americans 
see themselves in competition with Black 
Americans. Furthermore, George Marti-
nez, a professor of law at Southern Meth-
odist University, writes that some Latinos 
“often sought to ‘pass’ as white … because 
they thought that becoming white 
insured greater economic, political and 
social security … [which] meant gaining 
access to a whole set of public and private 
privileges, and was a way to avoid being 
the object of others’ domination.” Like 
many privileged Cuban-Americans, I per-
sonally have been guilty of implicit bias and 
racism — both intentional and not — and am 
still learning how I can most effectively dis-
mantle the subtle, yet powerful hatred that 
often exists in my own community. 

Whether these comments are intend-

ed to belittle Black activists or not, many 
of the critiques I have heard of the ongo-
ing protests are nonetheless reflections 
of that same subtle hatred. Deflecting to 
concerns about property damage belit-
tles the real and immeasurable pain that 
police brutality has inflicted upon Black 
communities. Responding to the interna-
tional outcry over the irreplaceable loss 
of lives with reports of damaged vehicles 
or stores suggests that perhaps, in fact, 
you might not think Black lives matter as 
much mass-produced, replaceable objects 
from Target. (As an aside, it is never a 
good sign when a multi-million dollar 
corporation’s response to looting is more 
charitable than your own). Dismissing 
these protests as “violent” and thus irre-
deemable avoids an important discussion 
about why protests are taking place at all 
and does not consider the larger history of 
protests across the world.

5

Thursday, June 18, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
5
OPIN
INIO
ION

When do you think the protests will stop?

ALLISON PUJOL | COLUMNIST

Allison Pujol can be reached at 

ampmich@umich.edu.

KEITH JOHNSTONE | COLUMNIST

E

very morning I wake up and 
pray, Pray that my Black life 
might matter today.

Flashing lights came on behind 

our car and my lunch immedi-
ately went straight to my throat. 
My mother, who is a University 
of Michigan trained corporate 
attorney, told my sisters and I to 
quiet down as she nervously rolled 
down the window to face a white 
officer in the wealthy northern 
suburbs of Detroit. As she tried 
to explain that my father usu-
ally drove the car, he cut her off, 
“What are you doing in this neigh-
borhood?” “Officer, I live around 
the corner,” my mother explained. 
A bead of sweat appeared above 
her forehead despite the fact 
that she was telling the truth. 
The tense exchange continued, 
“Ma’am, have you been drinking?” 
If I wasn’t about to cry, I probably 
would have laughed at the ridicu-
lousness of the question. In my 20 
years on this Earth, I have only 
seen my mom drink three times 
and, certainly, none of them were 
at 4 p.m. on a Monday afternoon. 
After a few more tense minutes of 
the exchange, the officer let my 
mom go without ever explaining 
what she did wrong. As we pulled 
away, I began to cry.

Every morning I wake up and 

pray, Pray that I won’t fear for my 
safety today.

When tragedies like George 

Floyd’s death occur, the tradi-
tional response from white lib-
erals has been to go directly to 
social media, posting to remind 
everyone how woke they are 
while advocating for changes to 
the systemic disenfranchisement 
of Black people. Hashtags trend, 
protests are organized, conflict 
ensues and escalates and the con-
versation 
ultimately 
becomes 

more about the violence in these 
protests than the inequities fac-
ing the Black community, fueling 
the left’s rage. This, in turn, allows 
Fox News and other conservative 
media talking heads — who claim 
not to be explicitly racist but sim-
ply support a policeman’s right to 
kill unarmed Black people — to 
change the narrative and muddy 
the waters. Suddenly, the voices 
are so muddled that most people 
tune out, Trump or someone else 
in the Republican Party creates a 
diversion, then eventually every-
one moves on. Nothing changes.

Every morning I wake up and 

pray, Pray that I will see my bed at 
the end of the day.

With my brothers and sisters, 

I watch these movements with 
hope, believing that this time 
might be different; This time 
police might be held account-
able and real change might send 
shockwaves through the system. 
Together, we cringe when the 
president sends a tweet. Together, 
we raise our voices in solidarity 
as opposition to whoever stands 
against our movement, but we 
know that speaking up risks our 
lives. Knowing this, we speak 
louder because each word might 
be our last. Each word might force 
us to leave this world too early, like 
our brothers Trayvon and Freddie 
and our sisters Aiyana and Bre-
onna.

Every morning I wake up and 

pray, Pray that my ancestors’ 
dreams are fulfilled today.

My ancestors back in the moth-

erland were ripped from their 
peaceful villages and forcefully 
taken to a new country that they 
were forced to build on their 
backs. For 200 years, they tilled 
soil and farmed land with the 
faint hope that one day we might 
achieve freedom, that one day, we 
might get a share of our owners’ 
wealth. Despite all we gave, these 
owners bound us with chains, beat 
us with whips and instilled fear 
into our hearts. 400 years later, 
we are still put in chains by Paul 
Ryan nearly decimating Medicaid, 
by John Roberts allowing states to 
gut our voting rights, by Trump 
emboldening the “very fine peo-
ple on both sides.” Don’t even get 
me started on our fallen brother 
Clarence Thomas discrediting the 
affirmative action that got him 
into Yale Law School. Not only are 
we put down by politicians who 
don’t believe we belong here, but 
we are kept down by the police 
who have internalized their own 
privilege and hate us even though 
they do not know us.

Every morning I wake up and 

pray, Pray that, upon Officer 
Chauvin, guilt will weigh.

I believe that police have a criti-

cal function in the workings of 
any civil society, but some officers 
have replaced their mandate of 
“protect and serve” with “harass 
and demonize.” I believe that most 
policemen and women wear their 
badge with honor, but no Ameri-
can who believes in the freedom 
that this country purports to offer 
should be alright with a border 
patrolman who shoots a Mexican 
teenager across the border. We 

should not ignore a man whose 
hands are up but still gets shot. 
We absolutely should not be 
okay with a police officer who 
kneels on a Black man’s throat 
for allegedly counterfeiting a 
$20 bill. See, if you accept these 
atrocities, you don’t just support 
the police, you are a racist plain 
and simple and, if you do not 
actively oppose it, you implicitly 
support it.

Every morning, I wake up and 

pray, Pray that I can secure the 
blessings of Liberty today.

My grandfather is and will 

always be my hero. He embod-
ies the kind of heroism that we 
all should strive for because it’s 
not written in history books, but 
it entails waking up every single 
day and trying to make your cor-
ner of the world marginally better. 
He worked his whole life, being 
one of the first Black swimmers 
in Detroit, serving in the military 
during World War II and work-
ing as a public servant back in the 
city for more than 40 years. After 
he retired, he worked every day 
to teach all 16 of his grandchil-
dren what it meant to be a Black 
person in the United States, and 
what it could mean. He taught me 
that being Black means standing 
up for your community, but it can 
also mean growing prize-winning 
hydrangeas. It means lifting up 
our neighbors, but it can also mean 
beating people at Bid Whist. In his 
96 years on this Earth, he spent 
every day securing more bless-
ings of liberty for me, my sisters, 
my mother and my city. To honor 
his legacy, it is my responsibility to 
not only further secure the rights 
that he fought for but also to fight 
to spread these rights to more of 
my downtrodden brothers and sis-
ters. The most important of these 
rights is the right to live without 
the deadly consequences of police 
brutality. However, it does not just 
fall on me, it falls on all of us to bat-
tle every day to make our corners 
of the world, and thus the world 
itself, better. So, go out and peace-
fully protest today, but tomorrow, 
the next day, the next week and 
the next month, try to improve 
someone else’s life because large 
barriers cannot be broken by one 
protest.

Every morning I wake up and 

pray, Pray that my Black life will 
matter today.

Protests or no protests, I wake up Black

Keith Johnstone can be reached at 

keithja@umich.edu.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

