NBC News: Prof. Benson on Cubans’ African Roots
September 5, 2017
According to NBC News, a growing number of Cuban scholars are calling for the Caribbean nation to re-examine its Afro-Cuban heritage.
A large percentage of Cubans can trace their roots to Africa and the slave trade, but despite their presence in Cuban society, Afro-Cubans are frequently overlooked or, worse, discriminated against.
Latin American and Africana Studies professor Devyn Spence Benson says that this bias makes it hard to accurately determine how many of the 11.1 million Cubans are Afro-Cubans.
"Many Afro-Cuban intellectuals have called for a new count of people of African descent because they are sure that it is higher than the one-fifth seen in the official census," adds Spence Benson.
