Juanes Talks To Soledad O’brien About His Concierto En Cuba
21 September 2009, 4:46 PM. By Cindy Casares
Did you know CNN is about to do a whole month on what it is to be a Latino? That’s right! So, Soledad O’brien dragged her usually only black-claiming, but actually half-Cuban ass over to Havana to talk to Juanes about his Paz Sin Fronteras concert in Cuba. According to Soledad, the show lasted well past the 4-hour schedule and about 1.2 million people showed up. Or, as Rick Sanchez said later, about 1/3 of the population of Cuba. See what taking everyone’s television away will do?
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Thanks Cindy, for calling out Soledad’s racial power play. Only in America can the daughter of a Cuban immigrant and an Australian man of Irish background grow up to be an African-American woman. Her parents definitely made a decision to raise her and her siblings as African-American. Soledad’s mom was the only person in her family to live in the US for a while, I’ve read (I can be wrong) and her whole fam is from/still lives in Cuba, and Soledad doesn’t speak Spanish. Call me prejudiced, and it’s not like it matters to Soledad anyway, but I really think her whole deal is more than a bit peculiar, you know? It’s like her parents chose the path of least resistance by having their kids identify with the most visible aspect of their background. She looks black, and she identifies as African American, no need to explain her Cuban or Australian roots. Both of her parents are immigrants too, I think they only came to the US for college/graduate school, which further problematizes the whole deal. It wouldn’t be significant if she hadn’t helmed that whole “Black in America” nonsense on CNN. Yes I’m a bit obsessed, whatever. Soledad’s whole family story and her racial/ethnic identification is the stuff that overeager ethnic studies undergraduate theses are made of.
Continued…and why send Soledad there? She kept referring to Juanes as “Oooaah-ness”. The jota is not silent, jeesh. Did she even know who he was? And again, she claims not to speak Spanish, so what’s the point? Why didn’t they send Rich Sanchez? Because he’d have too much fun, that’s why.
Is it too simplistic to say that she is simply a journalist reporting on something she might feel a slight connection with? You seem too judgmental in your assertion that she is not qualified to report on this situation in Cuban simply because she has not, by no fault of her own, been reared in the “traditional” Cuban-American lifestyle.
last comment from John Las Vegas
Soledad O”Brien gets paid to make Latino in America. She is in the top 1% money earners in the country. She went to Cuba only to promote Latino in America. It’s all about making money for CNN and fame for her. She’s all about being #1, she wants to be a celebrity, leaving her husband and kids behind. She seems to consider herself to be black. She mentioned in an interview that her parents made it clear to her “you’re black” and that’s all there is to it.
Soledad O”Brien gets paid to make Latino in America. She is in the top 1% money earners in the country. She went to Cuba only to promote Latino in America. It’s all about making money for CNN and fame for her. She’s all about being #1, she wants to be a celebrity, leaving her husband and kids behind. She seems to consider herself to be black. She mentioned in an interview that her parents made it clear to her “you’re black” and that’s all there is to it. John Las Vegas
I don’t consider her Latino. Frankly, Cubans are Caribbean, and to call them Latino is quite a stretch. PC run amok…