I was born in Güines, a small town in Cuba, where I had what I remember as a happy childhood. My parents were devoted to me, and I grew up surrounded by friends. Like many Cuban children, we spent our days playing in the neighborhood, running around, and getting into mischief. Life was simple, and our world felt familiar.
Growing up, I was exposed to ideas that I accepted without questioning. Girls were expected to learn how to cook and serve men, and homosexuality was often described as something abnormal. My great-uncle was gay, and I remember watching him file his nails, dye his hair, and take care of his appearance. As a child, I found his habits amusing, without understanding the social prejudice behind the reactions of the adults around me. My mother later told me that he had been imprisoned for being homosexual, at a time when homosexuality was criminalized in Cuba. I did not fully understand the injustice of his experience until much later.
My childhood also shaped my understanding of race, class, and religion. Cuba’s racial diversity and history of intermarriage made racial categories feel less clear-cut in my everyday life. Although economic hardship was widespread, material differences were often less visible than in societies where wealth is more unevenly distributed. Religion, however, was a diverse part of our lives. My grandmother and uncle followed Yoruba traditions, my mother was a Christian who attended church daily, and my father, a physician, was an atheist with a spiritual side. From my mother, I learned faith; from my father, I learned to question religious institutions and seek meaning beyond dogma.
Despite these experiences, I once believed that I was free from prejudice, particularly toward people with disabilities. That belief was challenged when I entered university to study Russian. Admission required an aptitude test that assessed several skills, including oral expression. One year, the Faculty of Foreign Languages decided to suspend the test to determine whether it was truly necessary. As a result, a student who stuttered was admitted.
My immediate reaction was that he would struggle. How could someone who had difficulty speaking his native language learn to speak a foreign one? I had reduced his potential to a single characteristic.
The reality proved me wrong. He became the best student in the class. Learning a foreign language gave him a new way to approach speech, and he discovered that he could communicate without stuttering in that context. His achievement challenged my assumptions and forced me to recognize a prejudice I had not known I carried.
Prejudice is not always born of deliberate cruelty. Sometimes, it grows quietly from the beliefs, habits, and limitations of the environments in which we are raised. We can sincerely consider ourselves open-minded and still hold assumptions we have never examined.
Personal growth begins when we stop assuming that we already know how to see others and become willing to question our own perspective. We cannot undo everything we have learned, but we can choose what deserves to remain with us. Sometimes, becoming more understanding means learning something new. Other times, it means unlearning.
References
Contino, L. (2026). No one wants to go toward the light.