IslaS, 67 (212): e1545; septiembre-diciembre, 2025.
Recepción: 12/03/2025 Aceptación: 03/07/2025
Artículo científico
Communication for Social Change and Socio-Humanistic Training: Theoretical Perspective on Overcoming Racialized Equity Gaps
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Comunicación para el cambio social y formación sociohumanista: perspectiva teórica en la superación de brechas de equidad racializadas
Sarais Díaz Pérez
Universidad de Las Tunas, Las Tunas, Cuba
ORCID: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-7596-2592
Correo electrónico: saraidiazperez4@gmail.com
Clara de los Ángeles Guzmán Góngora
Universidad de Las Tunas, Las Tunas, Cuba
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8576-1742
Correo electrónico: cguzman@ult.edu.cu
ABSTRACT
Introduction: The following article aims to provide a theoretical systematization of the relationship between communication for social change and socio-humanist training. Given its central role in bridging racialized equity gaps, this issue requires new perspectives to achieve greater levels of coherence with the inclusive social orientation that is the essence of the Cuban model of society under construction.
Methods: Materialist dialectics was used as the general method, and a qualitative-quantitative research paradigm was adopted. The theoretical method of analysis-synthesis, combined with induction-deduction, allowed us to determine the regularities and trends in the subject. A bibliographic review was prioritized to validate the theories and concepts adopted.
Results: Communication and its connection to social inequalities expressed as racialized equity gaps were examined. Emphasis was placed on the qualitative uniqueness of this content for its inclusion in the socio-humanist dimension of training. It was conceived from an innovative perspective that reconfigures and justifies its inclusion in favor of a non-racialized communicative practice.
Conclusions: These results provide a philosophical and pedagogical perspective for understanding these relationships: communication and socio-humanist education as a process and outcome in and for social change. This underpins the relevance of particularizing raciality in delimited structuring, as a cause for the harmonization of conflicting racial issues, combined with raising awareness and eradicating inequalities rooted in the popular imagination and sociohistorically communicated cultural symbols.
KEYWORDS: communication; socio-humanist formation; social inequalities; racialized equity gaps
RESUMEN
Introducción: El siguiente artículo tiene como objetivo una sistematización teórica sobre las relaciones entre comunicación para el cambio social y la formación con enfoque sociohumanista. A razón de su protagonismo en la superación de brechas de equidad racializadas, la problemática precisa de nuevas miradas para la búsqueda de mayores niveles de coherencia con la orientación social inclusiva, esencia del modelo de sociedad cubana en construcción.
Métodos: Se empleó la dialéctica materialista como método general y se asumió el paradigma de investigación cuali-cuantitativo. La utilización del método teórico de análisis-síntesis, en vínculo con la inducción-deducción, permitieron determinar las regularidades y tendencias del tema. Se privilegió la revisión bibliográfica para validar las teorías y conceptos asumidos.
Resultados: Se examinó la comunicación y su nexo con las desigualdades sociales expresadas como brechas de equidad racializadas. Se enfatizó en la peculiaridad cualitativa que adquiere este contenido para su inserción en la dimensión sociohumanista de la formación. Se concibió a partir de una visión innovadora que reconfigura y justifica su inclusión a favor de una práctica comunicativa no racializada.
Conclusiones: De estos resultados aflora una perspectiva filosófico-pedagógica para la compresión de las relaciones: comunicación-formación sociohumanista en calidad de proceso y resultado en y para el cambio social. Ello fundamenta la pertinencia de particularizar la racialidad en la estructuración delimitada, en tanto cause para la armonización de problemáticas raciales conflictuales unido a la concientización y erradicación de inequidades cimentadas en el imaginario popular y los símbolos culturales comunicados socio-históricamente.
PALABRAS CLAVE: comunicación; formación sociohumanista; desigualdades sociales; brechas de equidad racializadas
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The socio-humanist concept, in its most general sense, searches for the development of learning for life. As a conscious and intentional process aimed at the acquisition of skills and competencies, it requires the use of different formative spaces to produce the contents of the profession in the educational, instructive and developmental dimensions. Such a perspective makes possible to understand training as a concrete expression of the culture-education relationship; which essence is based on a key principle of modern education: the integral formation of the student.
The epistemic references on the essence, relationality and practical concreteness of the training process constitute the object of study by various authors (Ramos, 2000; Pérez, 2009; Hernández, 2013; Intriago and López, 2016; Guzmán, 2024). The authors mentioned refer to training in correspondence with the humanistic ideals of sustainable development, expressed in the ways of feeling, thinking, acting and in the estimation of the human being in all his dimensions of personal and social realization.
In its socio-humanist dimension, the training process involves the theoretical-practical relationship of the concepts of society and humanism, modeled from a philosophical-historical-materialistic conception. It indicates the human essence of the individual-society relationship expressed in the dialectic of the existence-development of the individual in a concrete social context. The qualitative peculiarity of such an approach lies in the estimation as epistemic support of the individual-society relationship and its ways of concreteness in the solution of the essence-existence conflict.
Such perspective is relevant to reveal the link between socio-humanist training and communication in favor of social change, as an epistemological basis for an innovative and contextual policy in overcoming racialized equity gaps. This problem requires new methods in the search for higher levels of coherence with the inclusive social approach that is the essence of the Cuban model of society under construction. In turn, communication for social change as a counter-hegemonic and decolonizing paradigm is appropriate for the sensitization and attention to social problems derived from racism and discrimination.
The response to this task requires searching for communicative alternatives to eradicate racist and discriminatory feelings latent in the Cuban society as an urgency of the social project under construction. For higher education it is fundamental, in order to deepen from the theoretical systematization, the possible relations between communication and socio-humanist formation for social change because of its protagonism in overcoming racialized equity gaps; which is essential to elaborate this proposal.
To this end, the article is structured in two parts that allow us to examine communication and its relationship with social inequalities: racialized equity gaps, while emphasizing its place in the content of socio-humanist education from an innovative sense that reconfigures its content and justifies its inclusion linked to the transformation of racialized social problems through the prism of communication.
Communication is a concept as diverse and complex as human activity itself and the social relationships that are its essence. When it is studied from different fields of knowledge, it becomes difficult to define it in all its extension. Despite the epistemological diversity, most scholars of the communicative phenomenon agree that it is an everyday activity inherent to human beings, from which meaning is given to actions and behaviors in social life. This vision is defended by Cordero (2018), assuming that communication is configured in the social relationships and is also a space for its organization.
This requires a conception of communication that encourages exchange with the environment, so that those who participate in it are in competition to evoke meanings, to assign it as a collective praxis that is instituted and manifested through symbolic forms. From the above, it is confirmed that the evolution of social communication processes has marked the processes of symbolic integration of societies in a significant way (Torres, 2023).
In this sense, it must be understood that, regardless of the context, the symbolic production of race is revealed as a conflictual process, as an expression of the global hegemonic power that produces and reproduces coloniality; at the same time, it establishes racial hierarchies and imposes colonizing models of otherness. On the other hand, given its plural nature, it is associated with the diversity of situations in which it occurs, the problems it addresses, and the consensus it builds (Cordero, 2018). This connotes the prominence of the communication paradigm for social change in the deconstruction of social inequalities.
The scientific conception of communication, on the other hand, is based on the dialectical materialist understanding of man and society, that is why it is not possible to conceive it outside the process of social relations and its manifestation in practice. This requires thinking of it as an exchange of social activity between men, as a concrete and complex determination that depends on human activity.
Such an assertion is summarized in the general philosophical foundations connoted by Guzmán (2021), distinguishing it as a guideline that runs through all forms of activity, while integrating and dynamizing them. It is expressed as a relationship between practice, knowledge and assessment in and through its development. It constitutes a unifying element of the remaining forms of activity, as an exchange, concrete and personified expression of social relations and a means of self-knowledge that guarantees the existence and functioning of the process of conscious relationality; a condition of the practical-knowledge-assessment integration and its results expressed in transformation-understanding-significance through the whole: communicative activity.
It also reveals the level of maturity reached by the subject, translated into his or her actions and expressed in ethical-axiological references. Thus, the relationship established in communication is mediated by the gnoseological-cognitive activity and the value-axiological orientation in the movement of the social and the individual relationships. The cognitive-value content of human work is dialectically combined at the psychological and ideological levels and in the ways in which the spiritual and material world is manifested. It contains a symbolic charge that, in addition to the representation of nature, signifies knowledge, culture, interests, customs, feelings, ideas and values in mutual transmission as indicators of their levels of consciousness.
It is an activity that transforms nature, society and man himself, and at the same time, it is an essential tool in the public ordering of the various economic and social formations. It is considered concrete human production and “a patent or latent contract for the dialectical tension of the struggle of meanings, a social trance of more than two” (Buen Abad, 2006, p. 106).
An approach from the communication sciences was provided by Orozco in 1997, cited by (Saladrigas, 2006). Its conceptualization is considered by the authors of this work to be of significance, since it derives from its complexity, variety of nuances and perspectives. Regarding this, it is focused as:
Phenomenon, process and result, practice or set of practices, essential part of culture and cultural innovation, symbolic and material support of social exchange as a whole, area where power is generated, won or lost, link and record of agents, agencies and social movements, tool for dialogue, space for conflict, set of images, sounds and meanings, languages and logic of articulation of discourses, device of representation, tool of control at the service of a few and of exclusion of the majority from the benefits of development, differentiating area of social practices. (Saladrigas, 2006, p. 12)
For Cordero (2018), the process´ character is at least, ideally dialogical and inherent to the contact through the interaction of meanings between subjects. The roles of sender and receiver are constantly being transformed; it can manifest itself as a direct phenomenon or supported by technological platforms: mass media or social networks. It is a sociocultural process in which meanings and symbolism are exchanged and constructed.
The communication process takes place within the framework of previous experiences and culture, where one perceives and generates conclusions from the processes associated with it in which one participates. This processing offers as a result what is thought and felt with respect to something, expressed as an image, which results in a construction that is executed and motivates actions. With the help of communication, it is possible to develop attitudes and values such as: building consensus, increasing participation, developing involvement, social and political commitment, strengthening identity and the feeling of belonging.
Understanding it in its permanent relationship with the transmission and reception of values, attitudes, actions and ideas, allows us to grow and develop as groups and organizations with the conviction of overcoming setbacks, undesired behaviors and achieving more dignity in favor of life. All behavior expresses a way of communicating, that is why it is impossible not to communicate in all areas of personal and social life.
Its role in the acquisition of cultural knowledge is also considered, so that all the factors that intervene in the communicative act interact, through the mediation of codes that dynamize interpersonal and social relations for the creation of identity values that enrich the arguments related to the racial issue. Such bases allow us to connote it as a complex web of social relations, where specific forms of relationship are generated, in which the color of the skin influences or conditions attitudes, perceptions and behaviors that become naturalized, due to the subjectivation of the racial categories’ differences.
Culture and identity provide each society with an unmistakable stamp of spiritual and material values, from the level of supreme ethics. Communication is a liberating act that conditions the recovery of these principles, an expression of freedom as a human dimension. This requires a sensitive communication to the recognition of acts of discrimination in the reproduction or rupture of social disadvantage, in practice and in everyday life to be addressed, instrumented, appropriated, re-signified and consequently, to increase knowledge in terms of equal treatment and non-discrimination.
Associated with the transmission and reception of values, communication allows the growth and development of groups and organizations, the overcoming of adversities and undesired behaviors, the achievement of dignity, the development of attitudes and values such as: consensus building, increased participation, development of involvement, socio-political commitment. This contributes to strengthening identity and sense of belonging. As a cultural resource, it reflects the communicative interaction, encloses all forms, expressions, information and skills possessed by human beings by making them more rational, critical and ethically committed (Guzman, Amado and Cardoso, 2016).
Communication as a structured value and a constituent part of culture is analyzed by Martín Barbero (1984, 2012), who emphasizes the role of mediations in the communicative process. Buen Abab (2006, 2024) alludes to the elements of culture in the communicative process; while Massoni (2019), takes it up and contextualizes it in his strategic perspective. His position is based on the understanding that:
Communication is a sociocultural encounter [...] it is encounter in diversity, spatio-temporal reconfiguration that “enacts”. Actions and meanings shared by actors transforming themselves in the communicative act. That is, fluid interactions in the environment of a modality of the micro or macro social intersubjective link. (Massoni, 2019)
The theoretical support of the referred authors summarizes the role of communication in the process of social relations and its manifestation in the practice thought as an exchange of social activity among men, indicative of the levels of consciousness for the sensitization and transformation of racialized social problems.
Thus, examining its articulations with the content and actors of communication makes it possible to understand the meanings and senses in the communicative exchange between individuals, groups and institutions, both in terms of activity and behavior in the material and spiritual spheres; a complex relationship between consciences in a culture. It separates its consideration from the function-value relationship, the foundation of communication, since the its very functional content as a process, becomes the foundation of communication as a value.
“Communication constitutes the most relevant strategic space in contemporary societies, because it is where transformations occur” (Torres & Ferrán, 2024, p. 185). The authors value the role of communication in the configuration, not only of concrete symbolic forms, but also in what is communicated from corporeality and emotionality. This perspective gives significance to the functions of communication. The informative role makes explicit the contribution to the formation of attitudes and convictions, as well as changes in behavior, generated by the new information. The affective-valuative function favors the formation of an image linked to significance and the regulatory function plays a leading role in the quality of people's behavior with respect to their peers.
It can be summarized that the communication-culture relationship goes beyond the knowledge of the cultural elements that the individual possesses in order to relate to the cultural other; it requires an intercultural sensitivity revealing respect, recognition, tolerance and acceptance of the other culture (Díaz and Curiel, 2022). This implies, at the same, time essential aspects for the social and the individual communication, in its condition of intersubjective process. The individual reproduces culture in a summarized form, and culture is the concretion of human activity itself, both at the level of the individual and of society. Numerous theoretical-practical experiences derive from these assertions by aligning themselves with the communicational paradigm for the deconstruction of social inequalities.
Among its supporters there are authors who ponder the capacities to articulate social spheres by strengthening participatory democracy, partaking communication and the theoretical-practical perspective of community communication (Gumucio, 2011; Barranquero, 2012; Drake, 2018; Castillo, 2019; Saladrigas et al., 2021; Gómez et al., 2022; Angel et al., 2024). Thus, the relations between media, politicians and citizens are exalted, with transcendence for development from a public dialogic on social problems and social action to generate change, from the action-reflection of man on his environment.
The dialogic on public social problems is based on the sociocultural dimension of development, from where culture and communication are located as a source of social change that intertwines, maintains and simultaneously transforms such space, generated by a dialectical-gradual cycle of communications on such experiential and problematic setbacks. It is important to point out that despite the common positions in relation to the emancipatory essence of communication for social change, approaches and theoretical-practical tendencies of marked differences are revealed.
Correspondingly, Angel et al. (2024), value the existence of a process of rupture concerning the approach to social change between the North American and Latin American thought and he points out how North American agencies conceive social change from an economistic perspective. On the other hand, the Latin American vision values social change as a process of participatory construction, founded on community-based communication.
Such opposition is based on the transgressive nature of the North American agencies for development, focused on arranging scientific and technological development [...] in the “backyards” of the Western powers, with the double purpose of placing their industrial production and maintaining their political and economic influence. (Gumucio, 2011)
Such consideration of social change ignores the right of peoples to a truly authentic, participatory and democratic development.
In contrast to this approach, the Latin American perspective of social change has understood it as a process of active participation and construction, driven from and for the community. It is an advocate of respect for traditions, identity and culture that values the potentialities of its interlocutor. Thus, Latin American critical theory rejects dependency and highlights the importance of defining indigenous and distinct forms of social change. It considers it as a transformation that defends local epistemologies arising from dialogic processes led by communities (Barranquero, 2016; Angel et al., 2024).
Theoretical constructions are the result of concrete historical processes that acquire significance from the particularities of each region, country or locality. This premise makes it possible to understand and analyze communication for social change in the Cuban reality. However, “for the Cuban society, communication for social change is a field under construction and consolidation in education, research and professional practices” (Saladrigas et al., 2021, p. 18). But it is truthful in the context of the socio-economic transformations and projections taking place in the country, where communication constitutes a strategic axis for overcoming racialized social inequalities.
This leads to its treatment and symbolic (re)configuration in the dialogue process by focusing on argumentation, the construction of social pacts and the agreement of social action around the problem addressed. The communicative process from everyday life facilitates the exchange of knowledge that favors the transmission of stereotypes regarding population groups based on skin color. This constitutes a conflictual social problem, due to the assumption of race as a stratifying instrument of social relations in articulation with other variables such as gender, class and generation.
Thus, racial constructions and their effects have had an impact on people's lives up to the present day. This manifest, on the one hand, the social inequality in which black and mestizo groups are overrepresented, and on the other, cultural-communicative practices that reproduce stereotypes and prejudices and contribute to reinforce inequalities. These institute a prolific field of analysis in social science research, whose approach must consider the interconnection of economic, political and social factors as a core aspect that exposes existing disparities and illustrates features that mark the dysfunctionality of the social system.
A conceptual approach based on Guzmán's criteria (2021) reveals social inequality linked to the socioeconomic situation in a context of competition and/or struggle. From its treatment emerge as qualifying features: its link with a social problem that makes explicit the individual-society relationship, its historical-cultural character as well as its association with social classes, race, gender, religion and others. It is expressed in a factual way as unequal or different treatment; it indicates contrast or discrimination of various kinds. Circumscribed to the frameworks of a society, it is recognized as political, environmental, economic, cultural, racial and educational-informational inequality. In the case of the individual, the incompatibility stems from his or her social position: economic, religious, race or skin color, sex, and others.
Meanwhile, Espina et al. (2021), renew the conception of raciality from the relation with public policies in Cuba and the approaches to overcome racialized equity gaps. They consider the treatment of inequities that are reproduced and expressed simultaneously in multiple levels and areas, which in turn, influence each other, with a strong weight of structural disadvantages. Their purpose is the elimination of barriers that hinder access to benefits generated by public policies and the strengthening of equity, social inclusion and/or attention to vulnerable groups based on skin color.
They attribute value to the meanings given to the socially constructed and shared knowledge of raciality, containing cognitive, affective and symbolic contents of a socio-affective nature and behavioral orientation that translates into intersubjective organization-communication and consciously or unconsciously consensual constructs in their relationships. They are created with objective and subjective elements: images, ideas and beliefs, saturated with affects that condition the meaning to understand and interpret the phenomenon, the individuals and their context. It is through the process of appropriation-transformation of reality that the way in which the subjects learn the events of life, of their environment and the information produced therein is established. They show the urgency in the reconfiguration of public policies and the application of innovative approaches that deconstruct the logic of discrimination in order to overcome racialized equity gaps.
Despite the policies of inclusion practiced by the Cuban revolution, there are still differences in non-white populations that place them at a disadvantage and vulnerability group concerning their access to welfare, with impacts on institutional action and national social conscience. Thus, the attention to racial discrimination practices and overcoming racialized equity gaps to improve the socioeconomic situation of blacks and mulattos, as well as eliminating discriminatory and stereotyped practices in different areas and levels such as institutional, interpersonal, communicational is a priority work strategy that places training with a humanistic sense among one of its advantages.
In the conditions of current development, socio-humanist training represents a proposal that allows validating theoretical-practical tools in favor of a development that increasingly links cognitive goals with the human sense. This requires deepening its content, in order to integrate the socio-humanist aspects of thinking, feeling and acting from an accurate scientific conception; it is a question of its incorporation into the whole logic of the training process.
The realization of this vision in the context of Higher Education leaves open the role to be played by the Cuban university, which contributes to the nature of the socio-humanist, scientific and technological paradigm as a social problem of socio-educational interest for the integral formation of the new generations. Its culmination is the increasingly effective integration between the university and society.
This emphasizes the importance of promoting the integral growth of human beings based on affirmative action policies to eradicate the vulnerabilities and racialized equity gaps that prevail in the Cuban reality. In this context, the accompaniment, preparation and research on racial issues are outlined in the National Program to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination.
Overcoming asymmetries in the training process implies articulating, from the university processes, a non-racialized education that complies with the principle of unity between education and instruction. This must be translated into communicative actions that go beyond the merely conceptual framework related to raciality and that institute a conscious anti-racist practice in the conduct and behavior of the student being educated.
Thus, the socio-humanist vision of training advocated implies considering the theoretical-practical relationality of the concepts of society and humanism, modeled from a philosophical-historicist-materialist conception. It alludes to the human essence, to the indissoluble individual-society relationship expressed in the dialectic of the existence of the individual in the social, spatio-temporal context and its integral development in connection with the society.
At the same time, the socio-humanist formation constitutes a vital tool to achieve a transcendent development of the student's personality. For this, an educational policy aimed at the integral formation of students for their performance in society is essential (Cedeño et al., 2019). The qualitative peculiarity of such an approach lies in the estimation as epistemic support of the individual-society relationship and its ways of concreteness in the solution of the essence-existence conflict.
According to Guzmán's considerations:
Socio-humanistic education is a social practice, based on philosophical foundations, aimed at transforming human activity, based on the estimation of the value of life and of man as the main subject of social development and his relations with nature, the rest of men and society. It is involved in the transformation of reality with a positive ethical-axiological orientation regarding himself, society, history, his profession and the existential continuity of his species, on the basis of his own capacity for achievement, his possibilities and competences, as well as the natural and cultural circumstances in which he lives and participates. (Guzmán, 2024, p. 4)
Regarding the content of this category: Arana (1995), Valdés and Castañeda (2002), Ramos (2000), Hernández and Ortiz (2016), Cedeño et al. (2019) and Guzmán (2024), make value judgments to recognize the multiplicity of approaches according to particular research interests; these contribute scientificity to its dynamics and imminence of contextualized treatment. However, they do not address the structural components of socio-humanist training from philosophical and pedagogical foundations and there are appreciable biases in the knowledge-action-transformation relationship and among individual-personality-society.
Their coincidences reside in the appropriation of an integral knowledge about the nature of man and society, directed to the cultivation of spirituality and sensitivity to human problems, as well as the search for ways for their realization. It recognizes man as a social being mediated by social conditions and the potential for self-determination and self-regulation of his activity and behavior, together with the role of the conscience.
In consideration of this, the philosophical and pedagogical perspective of socio-humanist formation, according to Guzmán (2021), is based on the holistic-configurational conception, from the determination of dimensions and configurations of the objects and processes under study, hence the mentioned dimensions of another order of generality, can be estimated as components of a unique and complex process. It demarcates as configurations of such formation: the anthropological-social, the ideopolitical and the ethical-axiological.
Among the configurations of socio-humanist training based on the perspective of raciality, the social anthropological is based on the cultural anthropology of Basail (2010). His theory contributes to the definition of the direction of social processes from the role of man and his functionality to lead cultural processes. The historical concrete analysis of race as a cultural construction makes sense in the Cuban context, given the racialized and mestizo character of the nation, the causal connections with other social processes such as: culture, historical memory, inequality, power, and the ways in which race influences the perception, feeling and communication of raciality.
The above emerges from the study of man as a socialized being, essentially relational, who depends on the processes that take place in the human groups to which he belongs and the situations he lives with others in the process of his humanization and realization. Each person is simultaneously a unique and unrepeatable individuality and at the same time part of a society. According to Guzmán (2024), man can be dimensioned from different points of view, associated with the nature of his activity, his relationships and the reflection of it in social life. It constitutes a social construction that identifies or marks human groups with respect to other groups, depending on the relationships they maintain among themselves, the socio-classist structure and the cultural heritage.
Such a delimitation gives different features to such construction by reconfiguring raciality in the socio-humanist formation, viable for the understanding and transformation of the meanings and senses constructed on the color of the skin. This legitimizes a paradigm shift antipodal to racism, vulnerability and racialized equity gaps. In this way, the color of the skin, socially and culturally signified, configures racial groups and the consequent identities from its self-comprehension as individuality, belonging and performance, through cultural structures.
This makes possible to form a culture of rehumanization, which dismantles the mechanisms of social domination from the devices that make up the logic of racism based on the radical division between us and them, the essentialization-stigmatization. Such aspects are essential to understand racism as a conception of the world and anti-racism as a process of decolonization of the imaginary and redefinition of identity.
A racialized culture confers space for exclusion and inequity based on skin color, which is why the socio-humanist assumptions anchored in the materialist dialectic that explain the survival of racism and discrimination must be addressed. In Cuba, despite the project of social inclusion that is being built, discrimination and other concomitant evils persist, therefore, its transformation must be prioritized based on communication to overcome such cultural roots. Likewise, the approach from the human subjectivity and intersubjectivity to estimate the presence of raciality in the valuative, cognitive and socio-transformative activity. This conditions perceptions, attitudes and behaviors socially mediated and individually incorporated and structured at the level of daily consciousness and theoretical awareness.
The ideopolitical aspect as a configuration of the socio-humanist formation points to the conceptions of ideology and its nexus with politics resulting from contextual dynamics, in which priority social problems such as raciality favor its redimensioning, to be treated in the communicative act. It is theorized as a substantial determination of all existing modes of spiritual production, a determinant factor of all forms of activity, in social institutions and modalities of culture.
Racist ideology is not only a doctrine, it is a system of beliefs socially shared by a collectivity, a set of social representations that defines the social identity of a group, that is, its shared beliefs about its fundamental conditions and its modes of existence and reproduction (Van Dijk, 2003). This label is attributed to any attitude or manifestation that recognizes or affirms both, the inferiority of some racial groups and the superiority of the group to which it belongs. It is based on the principle of superiority translated into rejection and manifested in aggressiveness, symbolic violence and mistreatment where different racial groups coexist.
Guanche's studies (2020) deny the existence of race; however, he ponders the study of raciality to understand the economic, social and cultural inequalities that are reproduced and socialized in everyday life. This sets the guidelines towards a renewed socio-philosophical approach to raciality, which means racialized social inequalities and their reproduction-socialization with the nuances that signify the new Cuban context and its socioeconomic dynamics.
Renewing anti-racist action from a critical and transformative approach means deconstructing the fundamentally racist dominant culture and building an authentically anti-racist counterculture (Tevanian, 2008) that makes its understanding-transformation viable. This qualifies in education the moral, ethical and human values, traditions, ideological stereotypes and the way people act.
In this sense, in the current process of improvement of Cuban society, it is defined as one of the ideological barriers that can compromise the unity of the nation and the socio-economic development of the country. Despite the extraordinary humanist work of the Revolution, evident in the political, economic, social and cultural transformations experienced in more than six decades, and the place given to the fight against all forms of discrimination as a pillar rooted in domestic and foreign policy, it is necessary to promote the foundations of an anti-discriminatory ethic in Cuban society today.
Thus, the formation of values associated with raciality should contribute to banish individualism and the naturalization of social inequalities based on discriminations, in the production and distribution of hegemonic cultural contents and their consequences, from the critical analysis of media-symbolic and communicative productions with their own identity codes. For Zurbano (2015) it is essential to value the development of consciousness in the reconstruction of a racial paradigm of justice and equity, based on a communication that contributes to this paradigm. While Romay (2015), explains the need to reinterpret raciality in its connection with the ethical-axiological values from perceptions, attitudes and behaviors, connected to the theoretical foundations, the symbolic universe and the communicational codes created to that effect.
This favors the culture of communication that makes it possible to raise awareness and identify the problems as well as contradictions associated with raciality. It translates into ignorance of this as a social and historical-concrete problem; excluded from the content of communication, approached with lack of objectivity within the subjects and/or in their relations with others equal or different with respect to the color of their skin. Other aspects are linked to being and should be, expressed in the way of perceiving the positive, negative or contradictory in their most relevant relationships.
The system of non-racialized values is based on the designation of dignity as a distinctive systemic quality of the values of the Cuban Revolution. In relation to raciality, it is joined by social justice and equity to mean the equality of people as human beings in society, to be treated with the respect they deserve, their rights and the fulfillment of their social duties, as well as the real possibilities and opportunities for their full development.
These conceptualizations also privilege tolerance based on respect, acceptance and appreciation of the existential diversity of the human being. They encourage it towards knowledge, openness, communication, freedom of thought, conscience and creed, in order to avoid disparities or unjust exclusions. Furthermore, its essential to fight against discrimination of any kind or humiliation, and to achieve the development of the potential of individuals and access to citizens' rights, respecting the characteristics of their identity, recognition of diversity and elimination of any discriminatory attitude.
An innovative approach against racism, vulnerability and imbalances that transfigures the socio-historically communicated cultural symbols and tends to a better balance of the multiracial image in everyday life and in the media is thus advocated. This broadens the spectrum of solutions and options for social change and the overcoming of racialized equity gaps from the particularities that raciality acquires in the anthropological-social, ideopolitical and ethical-axiological configurations.
It is adduced to the organic and transversal incorporation of the communicative dimension in all the levels of the complex processes of transformation of the reality that is concretized and personified in the interracial social relations; in the strengthening of the national identity, the increase of the participation in the decision making and the consequent execution of actions that contribute to eliminate the racial conceptions. A communication for human development should be seen from the above-mentioned perspective.
This will contribute to renew the contents of communication in the socio-humanist dimension by connoting the racial phenomenon, favorable to the deconstruction of the racist logic still reproduced by socializing agencies and agents. It also makes it possible to transform the vision and self-vision regarding skin color, the development of sensitivity, the reflection of racialized equity gaps in their conscience, reflections, actions and ways of intervening and communicating.
Such purposes constitute a strategic priority in Cuba. Its climax is to reach a truly multiracial society, in which, all racial groups must be in socioeconomic and cultural conditions to demand a balance of power since the implementation of the National Program against racism and racial discrimination (2019). Likewise, it should favor to the elimination of the conditions that generate equity gaps and racial discrimination linked to the skin color. These place non-white populations in a situation of disadvantage and vulnerability in relation to access to welfare, with impacts on institutional action and social awareness. However, the model of society that is being built amplifies the potential for overcoming them from a new conception of the social policy.
A philosophical-pedagogical perspective emerges from the theoretical systematization carried out in this study for the understanding of socio humanist formation and communication relationships as a process and result in and for the social change. It alludes to the recognition of its visions as social practice from the role in the production and transformation of subjects in interaction with others, the connection with the gnoseological-cognitive activity and the value-axiological orientation. This summarizes them as exchange of knowledge, as cultural resources or constituent parts of a cultural nature, argument of activity and behavior based on meanings.
The innovative approach that is defended is based on the holistic-configurational conception that reconfigures and justifies the position of raciality in the content of socio-humanist formation. This is viable in the comprehension and transformation of the socio anthropological, ideopolitical and ethical axiological configurations from the meanings and senses built on oneself and on the others, in the social representations to individualize the communicative treatment of social disparities. It is based on the pertinence of particularizing on raciality in the delimited structuring, as an effective way in the eradication-awareness of inequities based on the popular imaginary and the socio historically communicated cultural symbols. All of which should tend to a greater balance of the multiracial image and to the overcoming of racialized equity gaps.
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Sarais Díaz Pérez (1969, Palma Soriano, Cuba). Graduated in Education (1991) from the Pedagogical Institute of Santiago de Cuba and Master in Communication Sciences (2013) from the University of Havana. Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Las Tunas, researches raciality in the areas of communication and pedagogy. International Network of Researchers in Social Sciences and Humanities Huika Mexihco and the Association of Pedagogues of Cuba.
Clara de los Ángeles Guzmán Góngora (1960, Las Tunas, Cuba). Graduated in Philosophy (1983) from the University of Oriente, Cuba and PhD in Pedagogical Sciences (2009) from the same university. Professor of the Department of Philosophy, University of Las Tunas. Expert in Management of University Processes, from the University of Seville, Spain (2010). She does research on values, culture and socio-humanistic training. Member of the Association of Pedagogues of Cuba.
Cómo Citar este artículo: Díaz, S.; Guzmán, C.d.Á. (2025). Communication for social change and socio-humanistic training: theoretical perspective on overcoming racialized equity gaps. Islas, 67(212): e1545.
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