right?

but it started in like 4th grade

we lived in Miami & people would keep saying "Cuba is so wild bc Spanish-speaking! but everyone from there is blond & blue-eyed!" I was like, tf are they on about. none of my classmates from Cuba are blonde https://twitter.com/Maureen_Lapis/status/1279860397546377217

then one day 20+ years later it was like OHHHHH girl you were working-class in Scarface-era Miami

you were hangin with the Marielitos

not an underworld per se but definitely A Deep Cut Subniche

for those not familiar w Scarface-era Miami, when they say "Cubans = blonde" what they mean is "folks who owned the plantations & fled Fidel in the '50s are blonde." It's a lot like the US that way.

the Mariel boatlift was a much more comprehensive cross-section of Cuban society

years later, ran into a fellow grad student at UF who also grew up in Miami & we started talking about it

he mentioned he's Cuban & I was like "yeah" and he said "omg thanks for believing me, nobody does" ... because he's Black

the myth of White Cuba is, uh, messed up