Socialism has made Cuba the most "equal multi-racial country" in the Western hemisphere, 1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones has argued.
"The most equal multiracial country in our hemisphere, it would be Cuba," Hannah-Jones said, in a 2019 podcast with Vox's Ezra Klein and The New York Times, reports Fox News. "Cuba has the least inequality between Black and white people anyplace really in the hemisphere."
Countries in most of the Caribbean have small populations of white people, Hannah-Jones also said, and many are run by Black people.
"But in places that are truly at least biracial countries, Cuba actually has the least inequality, and that's largely due to socialism, which I'm sure no one wants to hear."
Hannah-Jones also praised Cuba in 2008 in an opinion piece in The Oregonian, noting the country has many accomplishments that have been overlooked including a low HIV infection rate, a very high literacy rate, and a "model" universal healthcare system. She also wrote that the Cuban revolution brought about the "end of codified racism" as well as universal education and access to jobs for Black Cubans.
Hannah-Jones led The 1619 Project, an initiative spearheaded by The New York Times, that studies the effects of slavery on U.S. history. She is a professor at Howard University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.
Meanwhile, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has also come under fire for recent comments she's made about Cuba after she wrote on Twitter that the United States has contributed to the country's suffering through "absurdly cruel" embargos.
In response, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., slammed Ocasio-Cortez on "Fox News Sunday" this week as a "communist sympathizer who wants to bring socialism" to the United States.
"I'm sure she sympathizes with the regime in Cuba," Malliotakis, the daughter of a Cuban immigrant, said. "The reality is that they use everything that they get when they do business with other countries for the regime, they use it to reward the people in the ruling class, it never gets to the people."
She added that "what's cruel is the way that the communist regime treats its people. There are two classes in Cuba; one is the ruling class, run by the communists, and then there is everyone else who lives in squalor. They don't have access to food, they don't have access to medicine, they don't have access to the basic necessities — and it's certainly not because of the embargo."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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