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An American in CubaErin Aubrey Kaplan
When Los Angeles Times columnist Erin Aubry Kaplan visited Cuba for the first time, one observation jumped out.
People are black. And black in an American way, with a range of skin color and features and that I see every day from Leimert Park to Compton. I know folks like these, have family like them. Ninety miles offshore from my native country, I am home.Yet, unlike the U.S., Kaplan wrote in a February 21, 2007 column ("An American in Cuba"), in Cuba "people of color identify first with their country, not with their race." Race in Cuba is different, though hardly in the way I expected. People I met did tend to talk ideology first, but it was more mundane things that stood out: the casual, confident way people walked and talked, the lack of tension in the streets (which also lacked decent cars and were lined with decrepit buildings). Where I saw ghettos, Cubans simply saw the places they had always lived, a byproduct of a 50-year social experiment that had worked in their favor. They had literacy and life expectancy and college attendance rates on a par with, if not greater than, those in the U.S.Read the full article here. |
The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund provides support for the research costs associated with investigative journalism. The Fund emphasizes reporting on subjects often ignored by the mainstream media, and seeks to improve the scope and overall quality of investigative reporting in the independent press. Above all, we want to support reporting with the potential to have a social impact. The Fund encourages its grant recipients to publish their findings in a variety of print, broadcast and electronic outlets. Director Joe Conason and investigative editor Esther Kaplan initiate and oversee Investigative Fund projects. Joe is an award-winning investigative reporter and a national correspondent for The New York Observer and a columnist for Salon.com. Esther is a longtime reporter and editor and author of the investigative book With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and the Christian Right. The first step in applying is to email us a story query and a budget request. It's useful to include information about what's new and enterprising about the research, your reporting approach, the story's potential impact, and what publication or broadcast outlet is interested in the piece. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. |