ENTRE CAFRES Y BLANQUITOS: PERCEPTIONS OF RACE AND RACISM IN PUERTO RICO

By

GUILLERMO REBOLLO-GIL

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2005

Copyright 2005

by

Guillermo Rebollo-Gil

For Jim Haskins

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like the thank the members of my supervisory committee, Dr. Hernán Vera

(chair), Dr. Constance Shehan, Dr. Kendal Broad, Dr. Charles Gattone and Dr. Efraín

Barradas. Their guidance and support throughout this process proved to be invaluable.

Their disposition, accessibility and willingness to offer advice and insightful critique of the work were uncanny.

It was Professor Gattone, in his ever so subtle and kind manner, who stopped me from getting too stressed and ahead of myself during my preparation for the qualifying exams. He instilled in me a casual sense of self-confidence and basically outlined step by step what I needed to do to get through.

It was in Professor Broad’s graduate seminar that I was reminded of my passion for the discipline. Through countless chats and discussions with her in the hallway before and after class, I was once again made to feel excited about the prospects of doing sociology and that excitement has stayed with me since then.

It was Professor Shehan, who ever since I had the privilege to meet her has greeted me in the same fashion that she greets everybody: with a chilling type of warmth and happiness. During the last couple of years, I have had the opportunity to listen, share and receive advice from an individual who has nearly done it all in this University and my experience here has been better for it.

It was Professor Barradas, who I knew from his books and articles since high school and read and admired from a distance. However, after I was first introduced to

iv him as an undergraduate handing out flyers in Turlington Plaza, he has honored me with the privilege of simply “passing by” and “popping my head” in his office just to talk. I have no doubt taken advantage of his kindness and have managed to learn so much more about myself, literature, arts and Puerto Rican culture just by “popping my head” in his office than in so many courses, workshops and lectures combined. His support, guidance and friendship have been a blessing in my life.

Lastly, I would especially like to express my deep admiration and appreciation for

Professor Vera, who throughout the last four years of my life has occupied the roles of teacher, mentor, role model and friend. His gentle and amiable character combined with his generosity has served to remind me of what type of scholar and individual I want to be. I often look at him and wish that I was viewing a snapshot of myself in the coming years. That, in essence, is what I strive for. And that, in effect, is the promise I make to him as his student.

Also, I would be remiss if I failed to mention and thank Eva Mendez, who graciously aided me in contacting participants for this study in Puerto Rico. Without her help, I would have never finished the project. The moment I got too frustrated, or too tired or too lazy to do the work, I would without exception get a call from her, telling me about somebody I needed to talk to immediately.

Lastly, I would like to thank Amanda Beth, who even without reading it, would pontificate about how good the dissertation was. In a sense, I wrote it with her on my mind, often looking at the data and trying to figure out how “Amanda would interpret it,” knowing full well that I had to produce something at least somewhat decent if I was to continue sharing every single moment of my life with her.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iv

ABSTRACT...... ix

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Problema de Razas/Problem with Language ...... 3 Race Talk in Puerto Rico: A Historical Perspective...... 7 Puerto Rican Identity as White Oriented...... 12

2 METHODS...... 15

Introduction...... 15 You Gave Me Power: Interviewer/ Respondent Dynamics ...... 16 Personal Issues with Reflexivity...... 19 Cementing a Self-Reflexive Critique...... 20 Issues with Language...... 21 The Sample ...... 23 My Story ...... 26 “All about Me”: The Autoethnographic Bind ...... 27

3 RACISMO LIGHT: DEFINING RACISM IN PUERTO RICO ...... 35

Estudiantes y Yo...... 35 What’s in a Word?...... 38 “Guess who?” ...... 41 Blackness and Representation ...... 47 Black islanders and government ...... 48 No Black faces, just blackface on TV ...... 52 No Blacks allowed ...... 54 Effects of White-Only Spaces: White Island Consciousness ...... 59 Black Spaces: The Importance of Family...... 65

4 RACIAL IMAGERY: BLANQUIT@S...... 69

“Blanquito de Caparra”...... 71

vi Privileged Whites in Puerto Rico ...... 72 High School ...... 74 Components of Privilege ...... 77 “I Like to Live in America”...... 79 White Consciousness and Political Ideology ...... 84 “We All Come from Good Families Here” ...... 85 The Psychological and Social Costs of Being a Blanquit@...... 88

5 RACIAL IMAGERY: EL NEGRO, EL CAFRE Y LOS DOMINICANOS ...... 92

A Different Kind of Black ...... 92 Black Who? What?...... 94 Something about The Subject Makes It Hard to Name...... 94 Blackness in the Puerto Rican Imagination...... 97 El Negro/La Negra ...... 98 Cafres...... 101 Cafres: The Basics...... 101 Cafre Looks ...... 103 Cafre as in Criminal...... 105 Dominicans in the Island Imagination...... 110

6 U.S. RACISM WITH A TAN ...... 114

Blanquito in Blackface ...... 114 White Americans in the Island Imagination ...... 115 Gringos are Weird People to Me ...... 116 Jorge (Sketch) ...... 120 Racismo Allá/ Prejuicio Acá ...... 121 African-Americans in the Island Imagination ...... 123 The U.S. as a Total Racist Society ...... 124 U.S. Experience as “Racial Learning Program”...... 127

7 MARKETING “AUTHENTIC” PUERTO RICAN BLACKNESS: RACE AND GENDER IN THE MUSIC OF TEGO CALDERÓN...... 132

Confesionario...... 132 El Meollo del Asunto...... 133 Confesionario (2)...... 138 Loco, es Calderón ...... 139 Confesionario (3)...... 141 Llegó El Negrolo Cocólo...... 142 Me Sobra lo que te Falta...... 143 Las Gatas Gozan Más con el Canchanchán...... 147 The Impact of Reggaetón and the Future of Racial Discourse...... 148 Conclusion: Coming to Grips with the Problem...... 150 Articulation in Black and White...... 151 Looking Ahead ...... 153

vii APPENDIX

INTERVIEW GUIDE...... 156

LIST OF REFERENCES...... 158

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 162

viii

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

ENTRE CAFRES Y BLANQUITOS: PERCEPTIONS OF RACE AND RACISM IN PUERTO RICO

By

Guillermo Rebollo-Gil

December 2005

Chair: Hernán Vera Major Department: Sociology

This dissertation explores perceptions of race and racism in contemporary Puerto

Rican society. Historically, Puerto Rican officials, scholars and representatives of key cultural institutions have for the most part eluded formal and public discussions on racial formation and discrimination on the Island. The debate on race has frequently been subsumed or substituted by the debate surrounding the existence of the Puerto Rican nation. Consequently, this research attempts to bridge that gap in Puerto Rico’s cultural, literary and scholarly production by exploring how images of whiteness and Blackness are constructed within the Island context.

Drawing on data from 30 in depth interviews as well from autoethnographic techniques, this dissertation highlights how popular notions of whiteness and Blackness inform and influence Islanders’ perceptions of themselves and others. A special emphasis is placed on respondents’ accounts of racial discrimination in an effort to portray how racial difference and inequality help determine what types of experiences they undergo

ix on the Island. The interconnections between U.S. racial thought and Island racism are investigated and stressed throughout in an effort to better understand the social nature and workings of Puerto Rican racial constructs.

Ultimately, this research highlights the need for an effective public discourse on race and racism in Puerto Rico.

x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

The story, according to Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones in his book El Arte de Bregar

(2000: 40), is that when Victor Pellot was approached by the waitress in a small

restaurant in Little Rock, Arkansas and was told succinctly that they “did not serve

Negroes,” he calmly answered “That’s okay. I don’t eat Negroes. I want rice and beans.”

For Díaz-Quiñones (2000), that “casual” interchange between a Black Puerto Rican

professional baseball player and a white American waitress in the middle of the 20th century stands as a symbol of Puerto Ricans’ historical struggle with American racism.

More importantly, it speaks to the innovative, subtle and seemingly accidental way in which an Island-born Black Puerto Rican man dealt with, challenged and resisted Jim

Crow discrimination in the States. According to Díaz-Quiñones (2000), it was that apparent lack of consciousness, that seeming miscomprehension of American racial norms which Pellot exploited during his famed baseball career in the States in an effort to thwart the harassment he was subjected to daily.

The same story, retold by a middle aged light skinned Puerto Rican male dentist sitting around a domino table on his front porch during Veteran’s day weekend 2005 on the Island, however, is different. After his partner complained about the high numbered dominoes in his hand by stating that he had “Africa staring back at him,” the dentist laughed, took a big gulp from his cup and spoke of Pellot’s interchange with the white waitress in Little Rock. Contrary to Díaz-Quiñones (2000), however, the dentist did not bring up Pellot’s name in order to highlight his courage and creativity in the face of

1 2 blatant racial discrimination nor did he tell the story with the intent of praising Pellot’s wit or character. On the contrary, his partner’s anti-Black joke simply invited another one. Consequently, as the dentist repeated the phrase “I don’t eat Negroes. I want rice and beans,” he glanced at the men sitting around the table, shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to make a series of over dramatized facial expressions in an apparent effort to communicate his incredulity; as if to ask “how dumb could this guy really be?” The other men chuckled or laughed heartily as they took turns playing their dominoes on the table.

As I stood there weighing my options, balancing my responsibility to challenge the racist act that had just taken place against my concern with not offending the host, it seemed apparent to me that it was a mute issue: If I had in fact garnered up the volition to say something (which I didn’t), what would I have said? I certainly could not go off on a scholarly rant about how people’s talk reflects, creates and maintains the overarching racial ideology and structure of a given society. The men at the table would have stared at me with the same incredulous look their host had given them just moments before. Only this time that shared incredulity and/or lack of understanding would not have served to bring us closer together and bond, but rather would have invited jaded comments that spoke to my perceived inability to take a joke.

Needless to say, I felt like my graduate studies in the area of U.S. race/ethnic relations had not furnished me with any practical tools with which to combat everyday acts of racism in Puerto Rico. I kept thinking about how Victor Pellot, when living under direct and often legalized threat of physical, emotional and psychological harm, could be so eloquent, creative and effective with his words, whereas I was rendered helpless and mute in a situation that presented me with no real penalty or punishment. I then thought

3

back to other occasions when I had in fact spoken out against racism; when I was actually

able to find the precise words to subvert a particular racist act and I realized that every

single one of those incidents had taken place in the U.S. The problem then was not a lack

of tools, but rather it was my inability to translate or transport those tools from one social

context to the other. The problem in a sense was in the language.

Problema de Razas/Problem with Language

How does one talk openly and critically about a subject that as of yet does not have

a socially accepted and proven language to employ in the dialogue? Island Puerto Ricans

lack an official discourse on race. Contrary to the United States, where the term

inherently implies difference and conjures myriads of conflicting and disturbing images

of both acts of domination and resistance movements (Delgado and Stefanic, 2001;

Feagin, Vera and Batur, 2001), race in Puerto Rico is understood to mean who we are,

Puerto Ricans: the “happy” and “harmonious” mixture of Spanish, Indian and African

blood (Barbosa, 1984; Falú Merino, 2004); one race made up of three equal parts. Thus,

to attempt to carry out a research project on how Puerto Ricans talk about race and racism

and how they perceive those factors to be affecting or not their lives is to literally force a conversation on something that by definition is not supposed to exist: “How can there be racism in Puerto Rico if we are all products of the same mixture?”

People do, however, talk about race on a regular basis on the Island. Moreover,

they also appear to identify according to race (or at least according to skin color) as the

2000 U.S. Census results made abundantly clear. That year 84% of Puerto Ricans living

on the Island identified themselves as white while 10.8% identified as Black (Santos-

Febres, 2005). These figures immediately provoked consternation, as they were

understood by many to imply an apparent denial of the Island’s African heritage.

4

Although one could very well argue that U.S. racial constructs and categories do not fit within the Puerto Rican social context (Aranda and Rebollo-Gil, 2004), it is telling that

Islanders for the most part did not mark the “other” category and opted instead to define themselves as white (Santos-Febres, 2005).

According to scholars like Mayra Santos-Febres (2005) and Aixa Falú Merino

(2004), the U.S. census results in Puerto Rico only brought to the surface a historical and unstated disdain for Blackness on the Island. In Falú Merino’s (2004: 38) mind, for example, Blackness in Puerto Rico has “traditionally been associated with slavery, poverty, marginality, criminality and ugliness.” Both Isabelo Zenón Cruz (1974) and Luis

Rafael Sanchez (1997) have explored the marginality to which the Black Islander is subjected, placing a particular emphasis on how that marginality is expressed through talk. For Zenón Cruz (1974), the mere naming of Black Puerto Ricans as “Black” Puerto

Ricans while white Islanders are referred to simply as “Puerto Ricans” places racial difference ahead of the cultural and/or national identity that is shared by both races.

Dark-skinned and/or Black Islanders are thus seen as essentially different from or less than, “full blooded” Puerto Ricans.

Similarly, Sanchez (1997) draws attention to how everything that is associated with

Black physical traits is commonly referred to in Islanders’ discourse as “bad” “cheap” or in poor taste. According to Sanchez (1997), sly comments and “harmless” racial jokes serve as daily reminders of the deep seated disdain for everything that is associated with

Blackness on the Island Ultimately, both authors’ work points to the pernicious and demeaning light under which dark skinned and/or Black Islanders are viewed in Puerto

Rico.

5

This derogatory view of Black Islanders reaches startling levels once one considers the recent formation of Puerto Rican hate groups. At present, there are two separate

Island based hate organizations advertising themselves on the Internet: “Nacional

Sindicalismo Boricua” (National Puerto Rican Syndicate) and “Frente Social

Revolucionario” (Revolutionary Social Front). The stated purpose of both groups is the creation of an independent Puerto Rican nation. Their propaganda, then, for most part

denounces the present political status of the Island and indicts the U.S. government for

the countless political and social indignities it has committed against the Puerto Rican

people throughout the Island’s colonial history.

However, although both groups concern themselves primarily with the future of the

Puerto Rican nation, their political projects are accompanied by a rhetoric of racial and/or cultural purity. In fact part of the alleged indignities that the U.S. government is accused of, is its supposed imposition of American notions of multiculturalism, tolerance and racial/ethnic diversity on the Island. In the words of the Revolutionary Social Front:

El sistema nos ha impuesto dos principales paradigmas “culturales.” El primero es el mito que describe a la raza puertorriquena como una mezcla de indios, negros y blancos espanoles, y que partiendo de eso tenemos que adoptar tradiciones africanas como parte de nuestra identidad cultural. Eso es un crimen contra la razon, la sangre, el suelo y el honor de nuestro pueblo. Aunque es cierto el hecho de que existe un sustancial grupo de mestizos, en los cuales mayormente predomina la herencia blanca; en Puerto Rico residen tres principales grupos raciales y no asi una supuesta raza puertorriquena. De estos tres grupos raciales tenemos dos que son autoctonos y legitimos (Amerindios y conquistadores Europeos), y uno que es un huésped non-grato (negros africanos traidos como esclavos)…Nosotros no aceptaremos que nos impongan unas tradiciones que no nos pertenecen, y mucho menos que lo hagan en nuestro suelo. (Frente Social Revolucionario, 2005)

The [U.S.] system has imposed upon us two principal “cultural” paradigms. The first one is the myth of the Puerto Rican race as the mixture of Indians, Blacks and white Spaniards, and that based upon that myth we have to adopt African traditions as part of our cultural identity. This is a crime against reason, blood, land and the honor of our people. Although it is true that there is a substantial number of mestizos, who mostly have white blood; three main racial groups reside in Puerto

6

Rico and not an alleged Puerto Rican race. Of these three groups, we have two that are native and legitimate (Amerindians and European conquerors), and one that is an unwanted visitor (Black Africans that were brought as slaves)…We will not accept the imposition of traditions that our not ours, and we are even less likely to accept them in our own soil. (Frente Social Revolucionario, 2005)

Both the above passage and 2000 census results represent clear and violent breaks with the official construction of Puerto Rican racial and cultural identity. On the one hand, the identification of 84% of Island respondents as white points to the seemingly widespread view of Puerto Rico as essentially a white country. On the other, the manifesto of the Revolutionary Social Front showcases a clearly demarcated white Island consciousness that simultaneously defines the Puerto Rican character as exclusively white and posits that character in direct opposition to Blackness. It thus becomes apparent that though often negated in public and historically unacknowledged, notions of whiteness and Blackness influence, shape and help determine popular constructions of

Puerto Rican identity.

Therefore, one must pose the question: How does one reconcile the lack of public dialogue on race based on its presumed social irrelevance with the apparent Island-wide denial of Blackness? The fact is that while race and racism continue to be ignored as central forces shaping the lives of all Puerto Ricans, dark skinned and/or Black Islanders continue to be harassed and unjustly persecuted by police officials (Muñoz and Alegria,

1999); remain over-represented among the Island’s poor and under-represented in the

country’s principal media outlets, high status occupations and government positions

(Comisión de Derechos Civiles, 1998); and Black culture and history are still

conspicuously absent from the majority of school textbooks and classrooms (Santos-

Febres, 2005; Falú Merino, 2004). Taking this into consideration, constructing a language

in which to effectively talk about race publicly becomes a pressing concern.

7

Race Talk in Puerto Rico: A Historical Perspective

Attempting to speak about race and racism on the Island is not a new thing among scholars and academics. In 1937, for example, the noted intellectual, Tomás Blanco wrote a pioneering essay on the subject entitled El Prejuicio Racial en Puerto Rico (“Racial

Prejudice in Puerto Rico”). Blanco, in effect, sought to challenge several of the ideas put forth by a fellow intellectual of his time, Antonio S. Pedreira. A few years earlier,

Pedreira had written the seminal work and treatise on Puerto Rican identity: Insularismo.

In this work, Pedreira described Puerto Rico as essentially Hispanic in origin and though detailing the history of mestizaje (racial mixing) that took place on the Island, treated

African heritage as a troublesome and culturally pernicious element, often referencing some of the principal tenets of western European racist thought and depicting African peoples and their descendants as unruly or savage in nature (Flores, 1980).

In the hope of putting forth an alternate and seemingly more progressive view of race in Puerto Rico and of initiating a dialogue on racism on the Island, Tomás Blanco

(1985) attempted to draw a comparison between the racial prejudice in Puerto Rico and the history of anti-Black discrimination in the U.S., specifically in the South. U.S. racial history, in Blanco’s (1985) mind, would serve as a type of ideological lens through which

Islanders could view and garner an understanding of what racial prejudice actually was.

Blanco (1985) centered his argument on four key aspects of Puerto Rican social life and history: language, economy, religion and mestizaje. In the author’s mind the evidence for the lack of Puerto Rican racial prejudice or racism was more than evident.

For example, when it comes to language, the manner in which white or light skinned

Islanders refer to Black Puerto Ricans was considered by Blanco (1985) to be more euphemistic than offensive or harmful. The lack of a Spanish equivalent to the term

8

“Nigger,” for example, meant the absence of a virulent anti-Black sentiment on the

Island. Following this logic, any comment or verbal attack unleashed by a white Islander against his/her Black counterpart was the exclusive product of the relationship between the people involved and had nothing to do with the social image of Black Islanders in the country. The author states:

Cierto que entre nosotros se oyen las expresiones despectivas ‘negro catedrático’ y ‘grifo parejero’ con alguna frecuencia; pero se refieren usualmente a casos específicos en que, el que habla expresa su opinión particular contra determinada persona de la clase de color, las mas veces por razones personalísimas. (Blanco, 1985: 106)

It is true that you can hear expressions like “academic negro” or “uppity black” with some frequency among us; but these usually refer to specific cases in which the speaker is expressing his opinion about a particular person of color for very personal reasons. (Blanco, 1985: 106)

Blanco (1985) does not offer a detailed analysis explaining the origins, meaning and/or uses of these expressions. He simply assumes that the reader knows what a “grifo parejero” [“uppity black”] or “negro catedrático” [“academic negro”] would look like.

The absence of such an analysis on account of an assumed redundancy fosters the impression that Blanco (1985), consciously or unconsciously, writes his text taking for granted certain “racial truths” that supposedly are part of the Island’s national character or idiosyncrasy.

Turning to the realm of economics, the author argues that racial prejudice has not become deeply entrenched in the Puerto Rican psyche because slavery was not the total economic system it was in the Southern United States. In fact, Blanco (1985) boasts about the low numbers of slaves in Puerto Rico, the “affable” character of slave laws and the alleged peaceful and uninterrupted process of abolition. The author, however, forgets that slavery was not abolished in the Island until 1873 (Diaz Soler, 1970; Nistal-Moret,

9

2000), nine years later than in the U.S. This at the very least implies a national

dependency on slavery and points toward the vitality of the institution itself, as well as

towards the racist ideology that justified and validated its presence. The fact of the matter is that Blanco’s argument, based on the poor or great economic efficiency of Puerto

Rican slavery, to explain the strength of racial prejudice in the country glosses over the fact that a white supremacist ideology must be firmly in place in order to even consider enslaving a particular group of people. The amoral and atrocious character of such an economic institution demands a deep seated belief in the lack of humanity of Black people that permeates through, and eventually manages to entrench itself in the collective

Island consciousness.

Blanco (1985), however, completely sidesteps this type of analysis and in his zest to prove how social life in Puerto Rico is more harmonious than in the States continues making arguments that, if not historically erroneous, are illogical and perhaps stupid. An example is the author’s belief that Catholicism on the Island—a principal tool of Spanish colonization—demanded the unification of race under one God whereas American

Protestantism fostered the separation of races. The author explains: “En general, puede decirse que el catolicismo insiste intransigentemente en la unidad—catolicidad— dogmática, mientras que el protestantismo, nacido del libre examen, estimula las diferencias de credo” [“In general terms, it could be said that Catholicism insists in dogmatic unity, whereas Protestantism, born out of free thought, fosters differences in creed”] (Blanco, 1985: 113). This results in the establishment of both Black and white churches in the U.S. where everyone prays to a different “colored” Christ whereas in

Blanco’s (1985) Puerto Rico, Blacks and whites pray to one image of God. This, in

10

Blanco’s (1985) view, instead of signaling to the dogmatic imposition at the hands of the

upper class, symbolizes the happy and joyous cohabitation of races under one

supernatural power.

By this point it becomes markedly evident that the author’s critical character has

been slowly supplanted by his necessity to differentiate the Puerto Rican national

character from the American. His essay then sounds less and less like an analysis of the

racial problem in Puerto Rico and more like a simple pretext to an ideological affront

against the imperial power. Slowly but surely the Black vs. white dynamic in Puerto Rico

takes a backseat and what remains is the ideological battle between Island whites and white Americans. El Prejuicio Racial en Puerto Rico thus becomes in effect a text to prove the whiteness of the Island elite under the gaze of the U.S.

This becomes painfully evident once Blanco broaches the topic of “mestizaje” in

Puerto Rico. Speaking of the atrocities committed against African Americans in the U.S.,

Blanco (1985: 122) states:

En Puerto Rico es desconocido el linchamiento, las leyes no marcan distinciones de color y cada cual se casa o se apestilla con quien su impulso genérico le dicte. Esto último contribuyo a la desaparición del indio, pues progresivamente se diluyo su sangre en el mestizaje. Idéntico fenómeno viene sucediendo con la sangre africana. Hay quien alega que nuestra gente de color es de facciones mas finas, correctas (desde el punto de vista caucásico) que la de Estados Unidos porque viene de linajes africanos más finos…La razón de la diferencia actual estriba de que ya en Puerto Rico casi no tenemos negros completamente puros; salvo en algunos núcleos limitados de la región costanera.

Lynching is unknown in Puerto Rico. Laws here do not make any distinctions based on color and everybody is free to “hook up” with whoever they feel compelled to do so. This last thing contributed to the Indian’s disappearance since Indian blood was gradually diluted through racial mixing. An identical phenomenon is occurring with African blood. There are those who argue that our people of color have more refined and correct facial features (from a Caucasian point of view) than those of the U.S. because they come from more refined African lineages…The reason for that difference stems from the fact that no longer do we

11

have totally pure Blacks in Puerto Rico; with the exception of some marginal nucleus in the coast.

Whiteness does not vary or undergo any change in the author’s view of

“mestizaje.” Whiteness is not diluted in Black or Taino blood. On the contrary, whiteness annihilates non-white blood. It overcomes it and dominates it until it marginalizes its most pure and “pernicious” expressions. For Blanco (1985), mestizaje was and is the measure Island whites took to deal or handle the “Black problem” on the Island.

Lynching has not been necessary in Puerto Rico; whites have not had to persecute their

Black counterparts because in the author’s mind there are not any real Blacks in Puerto

Rico. Blanco refuses to see color or at least refuses to admit that he sees it. He instead views whiteness as the fundamental base of Island culture, which in and of itself impedes him from accepting the central role that African cultures have played on the Island

(Gonzalez, 1989; Santos-Febres, 2005). For the author, Island whiteness must be invariable and secure. Moreover, from his point of view, it has been much better guarded and administered than in the U.S. considering that Blackness on the Island has

“disappeared” in a civilized and peaceful manner.

Here one can see the initial effects of Blanco’s (1985) betrayal. In the midst of his dispute with the colonial power, he completely abandons his role as an intellectual and his work loses any glimpse of scientific or scholarly analysis. The author simply absolves

Island whites of their ideological and social crimes against Black Islanders by blaming only white Americans for the racism they share. It comes as no surprise then that towards the end of his essay, Black Puerto Ricans end up being the ones responsible for the little prejudice that might exist on the Island. Blanco (1985: 126) writes:

Es casi siempre a estas ñoñerias, más o menos afectadas, más o menos ridículas, a lo que corrientemente llamamos en Puerto Rico prejuicio racial (lo cual no quita

12

para que ello redunde en dañosa acritud y verdadero sufrimiento); y es curioso que no sea poco común el que las exhiban más marcadamente personas con ciertas dudas sobre la propia caucasidad.

Most of the time we are referring to these more or less ridiculous nimieties when we speak of racial prejudice in Puerto Rico (which doesn’t deny the actual harm and pain which they can cause); and it’s curious that it is not uncommon that these nimieties are used by those with certain doubts about their whiteness.

Racism, then, for Blanco (1985) is a “Black thing.” It is the exclusive property of

“uppity Blacks” that want to act like white Islanders. In this sense, racism is the side effect of a faulty mestizaje; of a Blackness that could not be broken completely. It is the exception to the rule; that region on the margins of Island society.

Puerto Rican Identity as White Oriented

Barring several noteworthy exceptions (Falú Merino, 2004; Gonzalez, 1989;

Sanchez, 2004; Santos-Febres, 2005; Zenón Cruz, 1974), Puerto Ricanness is viewed as essentially white Hispanic. Islanders for the most part are brought together under Spanish oriented cultural rituals and practices that are commonly identified as traditionally or typically Puerto Rican (Díaz-Quiñones, 1993). The ideas about racial formation in Puerto

Rico that were put forth by Blanco remain very much alive today and are activated and enforced through the educational system (Falú Merino, 2004). The fact of the matter is that the vision of the “Puerto Rican racial mix” is not that much different in character to the racist rhetoric of the Revolutionary Social Front. Puerto Rican whiteness is at the center of both discourses and more importantly it is situated atop the racial hierarchy in both versions of history. Whereas Blanco (1985) indicts the U.S. for its virulent intolerance and anti-Black discrimination, the Revolutionary Social Front accuses

American society of forcing Islanders to accept the principle tenets of multiculturalism.

Ultimately both perspectives defend the cultural independence of Puerto Rico by

13

emphasizing how Puerto Rican whiteness is very much a solidified, alive and dominating identity on the Island.

Furthermore, past and recent scholarship on the subject of race and racism in

Puerto Rico has for most part approached racial discrimination as an interpersonal issue; as simply a matter of “feelings” and/or “attitudes” that certain individuals or select groups of people harbor toward dark-skinned and/or Black Islanders (García Cuevas,

1999; Rodríguez Julia, 1983). Consequently, anti-Black thought and action are usually presented as examples of “racial prejudice” rather than as representative of Island

“racism.” This, in essence, has the same limiting effect of Blanco’s work: the ideological, historical and institutional elements of anti-Black discrimination are disregarded and more profound and complex understandings of the “race problem” in Puerto Rico become impossible.

This problem is further exacerbated by popular opinion regarding the workings of race and class on the Island. Contrary to the U.S., where increased education and higher social positioning are seen as indicative of less pernicious racial thought (Bobo et al,,

1998), higher class status in Puerto Rico is usually associated with feelings of racial superiority (Ríos Ávila, 2003). Popular opinion regards high status Puerto Ricans as

“uppity” and therefore more likely to hold negative attitudes about dark-skinned and/or

Black Islanders. Racism in this manner is seen more as a function of class privilege than as a vibrant and independent social force. This view localizes anti-Black thought and praxis and restricts it to a clearly delineated and defined social sector. Moreover, it allows for both individual acts of racial discrimination and more general patterns of racial inequality on the Island to be almost instinctively attributed to class differences, without

14 any consideration to race. As a result, whiteness and Blackness are seldom explored and examined as important social constructs on the Island nor are Black Islanders allotted the resources with which to evaluate the treatment they receive as a product of racial inequality.

Taking this into consideration, this dissertation seeks to explore Islanders’ perceptions of race and racism, specifically how notions of whiteness and Blackness shape their view of themselves and others in an effort to contribute to a more nuanced and workable vision of the racial dynamics in contemporary Puerto Rican society.

CHAPTER 2 METHODS

Introduction

It happens every time. They say “American” and I ask “White or Black?” They

look at me somewhat dumbfounded, say “white” and continue with their story. A few

minutes later, it happens again. They say “American” and I ask them to make a

presumably unnecessary clarification. On the majority of occasions, after five or six

times, they give up and willingly add the words “white” and “Black” into their accounts.

From the data I have gathered interviewing Island Puerto Ricans on their perceptions of

race and racism, Americans seem to always and only be white. Blacks, on the other hand,

are solely and exclusively Black. For them it is simple. I am the one who appears to have

an overwhelming necessity to complicate the issue every time I sit down with one of my

participants for an interview. Interestingly enough, however, the moment they concede to

me and voluntarily distinguish between these two types of Americans, the experiences,

feelings, beliefs and/or opinions they recount in their answers seem to change. All of a

sudden the U.S. landscape is racialized differently in their accounts.

Before, the U.S. appeared to be peopled exclusively by whites and African-

Americans seemed to lack a set or fixed place in the imagination of Island Puerto Ricans.

Their experiences were lacking a specific setting and socio-cultural context. After the adjustment was made, however, not only were African-Americans “placed” in their accounts but the term “American” seemed to be problematized almost immediately. It ceased to be taken as a given in the talk of my research participants.

15 16

The fact is that I have effectively guided, molded and altered the talk of my research subjects in every single interview I conducted. I offered (imposed?) them a language in which to frame their answers and by doing so, the version of reality they created in the interview setting was noticeably affected (Holstein and Gubrium, 1995).

My motivation was presumably selfless, good-hearted and ultimately in the interest of producing good social science: by making respondents talk in these more racially specific terms, I helped them uncover the racial/racist underpinnings in their regular talk. I presumably enabled them to see the manner in which the racial structure permeates every aspect of social life including their manner of speech. However, something potentially damaging may have happened as well. It is possible that by “getting” respondents to talk about their social world in a markedly different way from the one in which they would usually do so, I made their vision of reality more akin to my view and therefore, more alien to them. Consequently, the changes in their talk could very well prove to be enlightening and helpful solely as it pertains to me and the version of reality I am actively creating in the interview setting.

It thus becomes important to consider the way in which social scientists construct reality in conjunction with their research participants under the guise of science. Of particular interest are the power relations that might be at play within the interview context and the way these relations when not checked might end up privileging the researcher’s discourse to the detriment of the people being studied.

You Gave Me Power: Interviewer/ Respondent Dynamics

According to Holstein and Gubrium (1995: 1) we live in an “interview society.”

Denzin (20003: 85) calls it a “society of spectacle.” Both terms indicate the abolition of the private. According to these writers, the interview has become commonplace. People

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are becoming used to publicly beare their soul; to making a heartfelt and earnest

confession in front of a tape recorder or a television camera. The interview seems to have

become a “naturally occurring occasion for articulating experience” (Holstein and

Gubrium, 1995: 18); a welcomed social situation where the biographical is celebrated

(Denzin, 2003).

This change in society has been accompanied by a change in the way many social scientists conceptualize and conduct interviews. Researchers have ceased to visualize interviews as fact finding missions and have desisted from treating respondents as prime receptacles of information (Holstein and Gubrium, 1995). Instead, they are viewing the interview setting as a site of collaborative activity. Holstein and Gubrium (1995: 4) write:

Both parties to the interview are necessarily and unavoidably active. Each is involved in meaning-making work. Meaning is not merely elicited by apt questioning nor simply transported through respondents’ replies; it is actively and communicatively assembled in the interview encounter. Respondents are not so much repositories of knowledge—treasuries of information awaiting excavation— as they are constructors of knowledge in collaboration with interviewers.

The interview is now viewed as a fiction. According to Denzin (2003: 81) “every

interview text selectively and unsystematically reconstructs the world, tells and performs

a story according to its version of truth and narrative logic.” It is a site of simulation.

Interviewer and subject engage in conversation about the larger society involving

elements from each other’s personal lives and end up constructing their own self-standing

and functional version of that society. Interviews are narrative construction sites. They

are not meant to be mirrors. Their purpose is not to create adequate, faithful

representations of society but rather to provide speakers the opportunity to build a world

through their talk that is well suited to house their selves and therefore real in their eyes.

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This different conceptualization of the interview is of great importance, particularly as it relates to the study of marginalized groups. Ideally, by approaching the interview as capable of producing new and different knowledge (Holstein and Gubrium, 1995), racial/ethnic minorities and women, for example, can gain access to a space where they can formulate a vision of society that is different from the one actively re-presented by mainstream media outlets, academia, politicians and the like (Delgado and Stefanic,

2001; Frankenberg, 1994).

The “fictional nature” of the interview, however, does not imply that the larger society does not permeate the interview setting. The prevalent social arrangements do not stay outside (Wetherell, 2004). They too mold and shape the fictional world of the interview. Holstein and Gubrium (1995: 14) write: “The social milieu in which communication takes place [during interviews] modifies not only what a person dares to say but even what he thinks he chooses to say.” Consequently, while both speakers are supposed to “actively” and cooperatively engage in the meaning-making process that does not mean that their interaction is no longer marked by the social position each one occupies vis-à-vis the other or that their finished narrative product represents their interests, concerns and desires equally. The power dynamics in the society outside find re-presentation in the society created inside the interview setting.

Denzin (2003) puts it succinctly: “Behind every interviewer lurks the power of the

state” (2003: 81). For all that interviews may have become commonplace; for all that

they no longer are an exclusive experience of a particular social class or group; for all

that people willingly enter that space and partake in conversation, researchers are the

ones who control and determine the way in which interactions take place and they are the

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ones with the power to report back to the larger society. Therefore, to assume that the

power differential between the participant and the interviewer can be eradicated by

simply inciting free-flowing, spontaneous talk from the interviewee is ludicrous.

Similarly, presupposing that by solely recognizing the “constructive nature” of the

interview without acknowledging and controlling for the effect the power imbalance

might have on the construction process, does not truly “activate” the interview subject.

No “activation” is possible if the power dynamics shaping the interview remain hidden.

Researchers then must play close attention to reflexivity.

Personal Issues with Reflexivity

In each interview I attempted to construct a world with my participants. I have, with varying levels of success, crafted a vision of Puerto Rican Island society as racist.

This vision varied from conversation to conversation. In some interviews, an outwardly discriminatory and extremely anti-Black society emerged whereas in others, the image of a moderately conflicted but ultimately fair and just social world was set in place.

Throughout the research process, the racial, class, gender and sexual identity of participants changed. The physical setting of the talk changed as well. The only two constants were my proposed need and desire to construct a racist world through

interviewing, and my whiteness.

Of the two, the most important and influential in my research has been the latter.

My whiteness has in fact served as a passport for every interview. On the one hand, it has

permitted me to both quietly echo white Puerto Ricans’ most anti-Black sentiments thus

making them comfortable in speaking with me and also to verbally challenge some of

those same beliefs without fear of considerable backlash. Here, my privileged racial

identity—the feeling of sameness it generates between white respondents and me—

20 enables the research agenda because no matter what I think about race I’m still white and therefore not threatening in their eyes (Frankenberg, 1994). On the other hand, my whiteness has allowed me to express solidarity with Black Puerto Ricans by “allowing” them the space (fictional and spurious) to talk more openly about racial matters with a white Islander. Here, my privileged racial identity—the feeling of difference it generates between Black respondents and me—enables the research agenda because what I think and say about race in the interview makes me somewhat less threatening in their eyes.

Consequently, I have no problem acknowledging and being attentive to the fact that a different and separate reality was constructed in each interview. Why would I?

Ultimately every single social world crafted within each individual setting I entered has me at its center. My encounters with white Puerto Ricans provided me with the opportunity to re-present myself as less racist than them and therefore superior. Similarly, my conversations with Black Puerto Ricans showcased my high levels of empathy, understanding and racial progressiveness, which again made me different from and overwhelmingly better than all other members of my race. My research thus runs the risk of becoming a scientific and scholarly self-presentation (Riessman, 1993) conducted under the auspices of studying the workings of race in Puerto Rico. As a consequence, my respondents’ accounts would function as mere preambles to my own personal story.

Their narrative presence in our interview-crafted world would always take second place to mine. The problem then is not the creation of alternate social worlds in the interview but rather, the character and composition of those worlds.

Cementing a Self-Reflexive Critique

According to Audrey Kobayashi (2003: 346), “Self-reflexive scholars are above all concerned about the potential for recreating or reinforcing the forms of social exclusion

21 that are at the very heart of both our research and our social acts.” Taking this into consideration then, research that simply acknowledges the power relations implicit in the interchanges that occur between interviewer and respondent, but do nothing to change, correct or ameliorate them, ends up producing the same type of “non-reflexive” findings that would have come up if these differences would have been completely ignored.

McCorkel and Myers (2003) echo this concern by discussing researchers’ unwilling but frequent reliance on “master narratives;” a term they employ to refer to the hegemonic accounts of society’s inner workings. According to the authors, they would recur to these narratives—even though they stood in stoic opposition to their own personal and professional views—when respondents somehow challenged or questioned their identities as researchers. These challenges drove them to assert and defend their privileged position vis-à-vis their respondents, thus directly acting against the counter-hegemonic goals of their own research and ultimately contributing to the dominating discourse or master narrative with their academic work (McCorkel and Myers, 2003).

There appears to be no clear-cut solution. To practice self-reflexive research seems to imply consciously taking part in an inherently flawed act. While simple acknowledgement of the power dynamics is not enough, placing too much focus on oneself as the researcher could possibly marginalize already marginal experiences.

Ironically, as of yet there is no steady science in place to keep the social scientist and the privileged position she/he might represent in check.

Issues with Language

In addition to problems associated with the power dynamics between researcher and subjects, this research was plagued by issues with language. In much the same manner, that “American” in the Island imagination was understood to be white, and

22 therefore, my attempts at clarification made the interchange between myself and many of my respondents truculent and awkward, the lack of public conversation on racial matters in Puerto Rico, left both respondents and myself often searching for the appropriate words with which to effectively and openly talk about race and racism on the Island. For starters, many respondents had trouble conceptualizing and categorizing Islanders according to white and Black classifications. The founding myth of mestizaje (see

Chapter one) was referenced frequently by respondents who argued that there was no such thing as white and/or Black Islanders. According to them, nobody could claim purely white or Black identities; we were all simply Puerto Ricans. When asked instead to focus more on popular images of or stereotypes associated with Blackness and whiteness as opposed to “white” and/or “Black” people, many respondents resorted to a predominantly class-based discourse where positive images were associated with high social status and, social ills and pathologies were seen as directly related with lower-class culture. Thus, again trying to maintain a race-less or at least colorless vision of Island society.

However, once given the opportunity to explain the characteristics and/or qualities associated with the different social classes, respondents consciously or unconsciously made distinct race/class connections in their accounts. Notions of whiteness, though for the most part considered inapplicable or the exception within the Island context, were directly connected to elevated social standing, good manners and appearance and overall human decency and social productivity. Notions of Blackness on the other hand went hand in hand with discussions of poverty (economic, moral or otherwise), crime, danger and marginality. Class analysis then inevitably lead to racial talk.

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The problem, here, of course was that not all respondents were aware of this switch

in their speech. Therefore, as an interviewer, it was difficult to get them to acknowledge

the racialization of Islanders present in their speech without making them feel as if I were

accusing them of racism. The fact is that I often felt in need of a more accurate and

precise language with which to engage my respondents. Many times—too many,

actually—I would sit in silence with them, unsure and nervous about how exactly to

proceed with our race talk. This inability to broach the topic was further exacerbated by

the constant comparisons that respondents and/or myself would make between the Island

racial climate and the U.S. Unable to verbalize what the situation was like in Puerto Rico,

respondents and myself would simply hint at it by pointing out how it was different from

what took place in the United States.

Consequently, I sat through entire interviews convinced that every single one of my respondents had “something” to say about Puerto Rican race relations, they just simply didn’t know how. And I, unfortunately, lacked the precise questions with which to elicit those responses out of them. Therefore, each interview was marked more by what was left unsaid and/or what got lost in the comparisons with the U.S., than by the issues that were actually discussed.

The Sample

Respondent recruitment was done using snowball sampling techniques.

Conversations with any one particular respondent about the project would often lead to them making their own recommendations as to who I should interview. Respondents at times would interrupt the flow of the interview, stating “You know who would love to talk about this? Here let me give you their number.” My study was not seen as fit for just anybody. People for the most part did not feel comfortable in talking about racial issues

24 or they just found it unnecessary and ridiculous altogether. Consequently, respondents would refer to their own alleged inadequacy in talking about racial matters and volunteer friends or acquaintances who they thought could do a “better job” in talking to me.

Interestingly enough, the people that were recommended, spoke about their own perceived inability to offer any type of useful insight and would instead, refer me to somebody else. Thus, the “snowballing” in this particular project took more the form of a shift and avoidance strategy, where respondents would try to unburden themselves of the topic of conversation by placing the responsibility of the talk on others.

This trend led me to view the project as very much a lonely and solitary endeavor.

Feelings of inadequacy and irrelevance starting plaguing me as I too started to view conversations on race and racism as unwarranted or unessential to the study and understanding of contemporary Puerto Rican society. Maybe I was just seeing things.

Maybe my academic training as well as my lived experience in the States had made me racialize my own life on the Island and identify racist workings in Puerto Rican society that were simply not there or were possibly more inane and/or harmless than I thought.

Maybe I had overestimated the impact of racism in Puerto Rico. It was possible that people were just not as fixated on issues of skin color on the Island as they were on the

States. Maybe Blanco (1985) and 60% of my respondents were right: race was not one of the principal dividing lines in Puerto Rican society and racial prejudice was limited to the heads of a few privileged white Islanders and a handful of angry Black Puerto Ricans.

Maybe I was just wrong.

Some of these feelings still plague me some eight months after the interviewing and transcription processes was completed. There are some aspects of this analysis that do not

25

seem to fit within my own conception of Puerto Rican society and people. The mere fact

that I’m writing about “white” and “Black” Puerto Ricans is troubling to me. Such

divisions, because they have been understated and subsumed under the national

discourse, still seem somewhat illusory or fictional. Furthermore, I cannot seem to fully

free myself of U.S. racial constructions and history in reading through and analyzing

materials for this dissertation. U.S. racial thinking and discourse sit heavy upon my head.

I cannot help but constantly compare and contrast what happens on each side of the

ocean. The national character of each country seem indelibly linked to the other for some reason. I am not able to separate them in my head.

There are times, however, when I think I’m not supposed to struggle to attain that separation. As colonial subjects and as prime recipients of U.S. cultural productions for just over a century, every single aspect of Puerto Rican society must be viewed as intricately linked to U.S. society in one way or the other. Race is no exception. The

Puerto Rican racial landscape is in part a product of and a response to the racial landscape in the U.S. White American racial thought infiltrates Puerto Rican society on a daily basis through the different media channels. Regardless of respondents’ particular position on race and racism in Puerto Rico, that position was intimately tied to a much more developed and confident (if not accurate) view of how race is experienced in the United

States. In this sense, stated “racial” knowledge on the Island refers to knowledge on and about the American race problem. Consequently, by asking respondents to talk about race and racism in Puerto Rico, I was in effect asking to take their knowledge about the U.S. and apply it to the Island context.

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All in all, 30 respondents were interviewed for this study with ages ranging from 18 to 40. 90% of respondents however were between 18 and 30 years of age. Thus, the sample is very lopsided in terms of age. There were 17 men and 13 women. Eight respondents identified themselves as Black while ten identified themselves as white.

Three preferred the “Latin@” and/or “Hispanic” monikers as opposed to any color or racial specific identification while the remaining nine identified themselves as somewhere in between the white and Black categories. Of these, one respondent identified himself as copper-colored; another as “Black with a white behind”; three opted for “mulata” or “mulato” and the rest used the term “tan” to refer their skin color.

In terms of education, occupation and social class background, the sample also proves itself to be biased toward college students and middle class individuals. The entire sample had either a college diploma, was currently enrolled in a higher learning institution or had at least one year of undergraduate studies. Four of them already had or were pursuing higher Academic degrees.

About 70% of the sample identified themselves as or made reference to a middle class upbringing or background. Five respondents identified as upper class and three made reference to coming from working class/poor backgrounds. Furthermore, 70% of the sample was educated in private Catholic or Christian high schools, with the remaining

30% having studied at state funded public institutions. Ten respondents had graduated from or were enrolled in a stateside university at the time of the interview and nearly half of the sample had at least some experience in the U.S.

My Story

Throughout the interview process, respondents and I came to share more than the awkward silences, the lack of precise words, and the awkwardness inherent in race

27 discussions. We also shared the same social spaces; the same political and identity concerns. It was thus inevitable that I would feel irremediably drawn to most if not all of their life stories and accounts.

As I sat there listening to, talking and sharing with each of the participants, I could not help but to story my own self into their accounts. Interviews would leave me thinking of where I fit in as a light skinned, self-identified white Puerto Rican male and about how race had shaped and marked my life on the Island vis-à-vis every single one of them. My story then not only served as a backdrop for the interviews. I did not simply pull bits and pieces as needed from my own personal stockpile of “racial” experience, but rather my story was challenged, molded and modified in each interview as it converged with theirs.

My “past” experiences with race came in flux during the interview process and it would be almost impossible to delineate the point where my personal account ends and theirs begin.

At some point then I realized that it was essential that my writing consciously and actively re-create this lived experience on paper. I came to believe that through the piecing together of respondents’ accounts and mine on the text, all our lived experiences would come in flux again to give rise to new meanings and interpretations. Thus, an autoethnography became necessary.

“All about Me”: The Autoethnographic Bind

The line between autoethnography and autobiography is blurry. There is no clear- cut demarcation, no actively policed boundary separating one from the other. The line might very well be a fiction; a keen sociological construct only visible in annual conferences or meetings. It is hard to say whether it actually exists in practice. These two endeavors after all arise from the same source. They both ultimately depend on the

28

effective telling of a life (Flemons and Green, 2002). According to several social

scientists (Bass Jenks, 2002; Denzin, 2003; Flemons and Green, 2002) however,

autoethnography distances itself from autobiography according to the degree in which the

writing surpasses this “simple” act of telling. Cristina Gonzalez (quoted in Flemons and

Green, 2002: 121) explains:

When I’m writing an autoethnography, I am coding. I am keeping a track record of the way I make my decisions…When I make a decision to tell this piece and not that piece, if I’m an ethnographer and I’m doing autoethnography, I can’t hide behind ‘Well, that one just felt right.’ I have to be able to do what Carolyn described earlier about pushing the end of her story, looking at why she did this and why she would not do that.

Based on this statement, autoethnography appears to be a more critical kind of autobiographical writing. It appears to depend on the desire/need of the writer to broach and analytically unpack every single theme or topic in her/his life that she/he opts to write about or not. In this sense, it demands more self-reflection, honesty, intellectuality and vulnerability from the writer. The focus, in a way, shifts from simply writing about those important moments in one’s life that would make a good story, to writing and

“picking at” everything in order to gain a deeper understanding of the self as one willingly offers that insight to others.

Furthermore, autoethnographical writing differentiates itself from autobiographical accounts due to its sociological nature. Whereas in autobiography, the main interest lies in the telling of one particular life and those elements which make it exceptional, autoethnographical accounts focus on the individual tale as a means to explain larger, more expansive and general phenomena. Elaine Bass Jenks (2002: 174) writes:

Autoethnography is connecting the personal to the cultural until the distinctions between the personal and the cultural become blurred. While autoethnographers write about themselves, their goal is to touch a world beyond the self of the writer.

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Autoethnography then seems to be inextricably tied to the Sociological Imagination as explained by C. Wright Mills (2000): one cannot understand the history of a particular

society without understanding the biographies of the members of that society. The

purpose of this writing is to actively place the life story “within larger cultural and social

contexts” (Holman Jones, 2002: 51). Autoethnographical accounts are thus based on two

key assumptions: that it is possible to learn about the general from the particular and that the self is a social phenomenon (Sparkes, 2002: 216). Since “people do not accumulate their life histories in a social vacuum” (Sparkes, 2002: 216), there is keen sociological insight to be gained from the critical handling of people’s life histories. These histories both inhabit and are inhabited by the social world. Therefore, they are not completely

private and/or unique series of events.

There are however at least two major problems with the inclusion of this type of

social inquiry within traditional sociology. First, there are issues with the writing.

Sociologists for the most part do not evaluate the personal, emotional type of writing

typically found in autoethnographies (Sparkes, 2002). Consequently, there may be doubts

as to how exactly one determines the work’s scientific validity? Clearly, one cannot apply

the methods used to evaluate more traditional, orthodox scientific reports to

autoethnographical accounts. So, what standards does one set and does the invention and

application of new standards lessen the scientific acumen of the field?

The second problem is ideological. Traditional social science research is based on

the minimization of the self (Sparkes, 2002). The researcher’s subjectivity is viewed by

the larger sociological community as a huge hindrance on the work. It is viewed as a

contaminant (Sparkes, 2002). The question thus arises: How does one reconcile a

30 research practice that constantly places the self at its center with a larger research tradition based on the continual exclusion of that self? The task seems daunting.

Autoethnographers, however, contend that this practice not only makes valid contributions to the field, but even helps expand the field’s analytical reach. Their main contribution, at least in my view, lies in the way practitioners of autoethnography approach writing. Contrary to the manner in which writing is conceptualized in traditional sociology, where the researcher simply jots down all that she/he has learned in a coherent, organized report where the written word represents the final product, autoethnographers treat writing as a “way of knowing” (Richardson, 1998: 346). From their perspective, writing is itself “a method of discovery and analysis” (Richardson,

1998: 346). Consequently, it demands experimentation. Autoethnographical accounts tend to involve a variety of texts. They break with the traditional formula for the social science report and combine different literary genres including poetry, fiction, personal reflections etc. (Denzin, 2003). This multiplicity of narrative “voices” allows different re- presentations of the data to be present in the same account which then lends itself for different interpretations from the readers. By taking this innovative and pro-active approach to social scientific writing, autoethnographers highlight the importance of the written word in qualitative work. Richardson (1998: 346) explains:

Unlike quantitative work, which can carry its meaning in its tables and summaries, qualitative work depends on people reading it. Just as a piece of literature is not equivalent to its plot summary, qualitative research is not contained in its abstracts. Qualitative research has to be read, not scanned; its meaning is in the reading.

Practitioners of autoethnography thus strive to produce texts that are evocative.

Their writing style and strategies recognize that words have “a material presence in the world” (Denzin, 2003: 79) and therefore have an effect upon people. Consequently, their

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writing strives to be engaging. It seeks to drive people to feel for and react to the written

account. As Sparkes (2002: 219) explains: “On the whole, autoethnographers don’t want

you to sit back as spectators; they want readers to feel, care and desire.” Social science in

this manner is brought closer to literature; closer to art. More importantly, it is made

more accessible and appealing to its subjects without conceding its high level of

intellectuality and critique. On the contrary, the capacity for analysis is heightened

precisely because autoethnography seeks to achieve such a high level of reader

involvement with the text. Instead of enforcing a one way flow of information whereby

social scientists simply report facts to their readers, autoethnographers seek to create “a

highly charged atmosphere and heightened emotional state” (Holman Jones, 2002: 53-54)

for their reading public. By doing this they in fact set the groundwork for a type of

exchange where readers can effectively “try on the subjectivity of another” (Holman

Jones, 2002: 53). In this manner, social science not only informs about social life but

could possibly set the groundwork for empathy to develop among different and disparate

groups.

This notwithstanding, pitfalls abound in autoethnographic writing. The most

common is that written accounts can become self-indulgent (Sparkes, 2002). After all,

autoethnography—like all qualitative research practices—is a type of self-presentation

(Riessman, 1993). Researchers may consciously or unconsciously try to “look good” in their written accounts and the quest for greater personal and social understanding could very well take a back seat to individual show boating. Furthermore, even when the text proves to be self-reflexive rather than self-indulgent, there are consequences to placing the self at the center of the text. Richardson (1998: 347), for example, asks: “How do we

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nurture our own individuality and at the same time lay claim to knowing something?” In

other words, is legitimate social science knowledge possible in autoethnographic

research?

Practitioners of autoethnography as a whole do not appear to be completely sure.

The fact is that the line between self-indulgent and self-reflexive writing is blurry at best.

Also, while it seems logical that a writer can use his/her own experiences in a given culture to more critically look at and clearly understand people’s interactions in that culture (Denzin, 2003), that belongingness and common experience does not necessarily translate into scientific authority. That, however, is not the goal of autoethnography.

Denzin (1998: 326) writes:

A text and an author’s authority can always be challenged. This is so for three reasons. First, stories can always be told (inscribed) in different ways and the others who are spoken for may offer different tellings of their story. Second, all texts are biased productions…Third, the interpretative criteria that an author employs may be questioned, and the logic of the text that is assembled may be called into doubt.

Autoethnographers are not interested in writing the single, definitive text that speaks of everything to every one (Richardson, 1998). Their texts are always “partial” and “incomplete” (Denzin, 2003: 94). Therefore, the research act is always viewed as an in-progress activity; never done or finished. Furthermore, the personal character of the writing makes it emotional and passionate; never objective or detached. However,

“…emotional does not wipe out the public, theoretical and rational” (Sparkes, 2002:

216). Sentiment does not trump intelligence. Consequently, one cannot impede autoethnography from taking its rightful place in the greater social science tradition simply because its practitioners choose to talk about their feelings. Good autoethnographies like good social science research contribute to our understanding of social life in general. Moreover, because of their experimentation with different writing

33 styles and genres, they are more engaging and provocative. Also, due to their “self- centered” nature, they are perhaps the most suited of sociological writings to draw connections between individual experience and social processes (Sparkes, 2002).

I thus came to consider autoethnography a potentially useful and valuable tool for my study of race and racism in Puerto Rico. It is one of the few methodological approaches that allowed me not only to be personally involved with and invested in my research project, but also provided me with the analytical and stylistic resources with which to put my personal and cultural subjectivity to work in understanding myself and others. There was no way I could have approached my topic with the level of detachment required by more traditional methodologies. I simply felt incapable and ultimately unwilling of marking even more boundaries between myself and my study’s participants.

The writing here is meant to come off as emotional and/or passionate and my own experiences with and within Puerto Rican culture are used as a lens through which to view the experiences of my research subjects.

Furthermore, considering the lack of public discourse on race in Puerto Rico (Falú

Merino, 2004)—the refusal of mainstream Island society to openly and critically address racial inequality—it seems that my project, if it was to engage Island readers in a conversation about the workings of race and racism, must find a way to get readers to feel the breadth of racist discrimination on the Island, care for those most deeply affected and desire a solution. A traditional sociological report would not cut it. It simply will not inspire people. However, autoethnographical writing, if done well, can. Sparkes (2002:

221) argues:

This kind of writing can inform, awaken and disturb readers by illustrating their involvement in social processes about which they may not have been consciously

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aware. Once aware, individuals may find the consequences of their involvement (or lack of it) unacceptable and seek to change the situation.

The autoethnographical account, by positioning me at the center of the workings of an un-admittedly racist society, might help make the concept of racial discrimination more accessible and tangible to the reading public, thus making it that much more difficult for them to disregard and discard. The “I” in the text possesses the possibility of transforming itself in the reading. If my account manages to get the reader involved in the story, then that writerly “I” can easily become the readerly “me.” Consequently what once seemed alien and distant becomes increasingly close, personal, worthy of immediate attention and in need of change.

CHAPTER 3 RACISMO LIGHT: DEFINING RACISM IN PUERTO RICO

Race here is inoffensive and light-Carlos (pp.3)

Estudiantes y Yo

In the fall of 2004 I asked my Latin American literature class at the University in

Puerto Rico to write a short story based on true events. Students had to fictionalize a media reported incident between a white Puerto Rican woman and a Black Puerto Rican woman who got into a heated discussion in a local bar. The incident, as reported, ended with the white woman using racial slurs against her Black counterpart and hitting her over the head with a beer bottle. The class’ assignment was to basically draw out the two characters and create a chasm between the two that would explain why such an incident would have occurred and end the story with the attack. At first, students were hesitant to complete the assignment due to the type of creative writing it involved. Many of them didn’t feel capable of creating believable characters and telling a good story. However, once I spent some class time with them going over writing strategies, their hesitation shifted. Students became weary of having to explain why the white woman would use racial slurs to insult her Black counterpart. In their minds, the racist act needed to be explained.

Consequently, the remainder of class was spent collectively drawing up the two characters. In little time we filled up the board with adjectives and personality quirks for the two women. By the end of the period, students seemed to be more calm and confident

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about completing their assignment and I was left somewhat taken aback and dazed in the

middle of the room, with my eyes glued to the chalkboard.

As I scanned over the many traits and qualities assigned to both characters, I

realized that my students’ desire to explain or explain away the racist act lead to the

creation of two polar opposites. On one side of the board, the white woman was

described as rich, materialistic, vain, uppity, arrogant, pretty, loose, immoral and spoiled

while the Black woman was seen as humble, intelligent, plain-looking, quiet, working

class, spiritual and caring. In their minds, the racist act between two Puerto Rican women

was only possible if the two characters were foils of each other in terms of personality and social status. One was a monster because of her extreme social privilege and the other was to be pitied because she was poor and hard-working.

What surprised me about this was that this type of explanation was needed in the first place. In students’ minds whiteness by itself was not seen as possibly harboring any type of disdain or prejudice for Blackness. In their minds, the racial element in the attack, although fit for news coverage, did not make for a believable story. Racial difference was not viewed as being enough of a chasm between the two characters to prompt such an attack. Social class was thus made to stand in for race.

Needless to say, I anxiously waited for the assignment’s due date. In class that day,

I asked several students to go up to the front of the room and read their work. Although students were already accustomed to this practice, a few of them were very much opposed to reading on that particular occasion confessing that they had gone “overboard” with their story. A couple of them even went so far as to make it clear to me that though the story was imbued with many racist insults against Black people, that they themselves

37 did not feel that way. Those that did go up and read were greeted by a type of nervous or tense laughter every time the white woman character lashed out against her victim.

As I stood there listening, and later when I sat down to read my students’ stories, I could not help but feel taken aback again. If there was any uncertainty or ambiguity in their minds regarding the possibility of a racially motivated attack taking place in Puerto

Rico, that uncertainty had dissipated the moment most of them put pen to paper. The precision with which my students penned their racial insults was uncanny. The Black character in the story was submitted to a barrage of comments and jokes that referenced centuries of anti-Black racist mythology. She either stunk or was ugly like a horse or a mule, or she was supposed to be cleaning white people’s houses or birthing hundreds of kids. It was evident that although social class had to be made to stand in for race so students could even fathom a racist attack against a Black person in Puerto Rico, once that class difference was set in place, race could take over in a hurry. And it did.

What is important to focus on now is on the crafting of those two fictionalized characters as key parameters through which to study perceptions of race and racism on the Island. As stated above, Puerto Rican whiteness was not seen as anti-Black at face value. Class had to intercede. However, the racial insults prevalent in the stories show that Blackness on its face can be perceived as somehow reproachable or at the very least susceptible to ridicule and attack. Certain questions then must be asked regarding the construction of whiteness and Blackness within the Island setting. Specifically, what elements does a white Puerto Rican have to have in order for her/him to be believable as a racist and what characteristics does the Black Puerto Rican have to possess for people to care about what is said or done to him/her?

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What’s in a Word?

When I asked the participants in this study about how they defined “racism,” they gave me a variety of unspecific responses. The term was used to describe prejudice and discrimination on account of a myriad of personal and group characteristics. For example, gender oppression and class elitism were both subsumed under the category of racism along with the much more trivial and benign differentiations made between people according to a person’s particular study habits (whether he/she was a “nerd” or not) and team alliance (whether a person was a Yankee or a Red Sox fan). Racism was also seen as working both ways: whites could be racist against Blacks and vice versa. At times it was understood to be democratic: everybody is racist against everybody. On other occasions, the term appeared to have chameleon like qualities. When a particular action

(say, the use of the term “nigger” to refer to Black people both in the States and on the

Island) was discussed in the hypothetical, racism was very much present. However, the minute the hypothetical became context specific (say, the way a particular respondent and his friends call Black a passersby on the street “nigger”), racism suddenly disappeared and the comment was made simply in good clean fun.

Furthermore, in every respondent’s view, racism was always a bigger issue or more prevalent or more damaging or more direct or more historical or more violent in the

States than on the Island. No matter how aware and critical a particular respondent was about the workings of racism in Island life, it was always worse in the states. Racism in

Puerto Rico then seems to always be viewed using American race relations as a type of ideological filter or lens (Sanchez, 1997; Santos-Febres, 2005). Consequently, racism on the Island is habitually treated as what it is not rather than as what it is.

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In spite of this, all of the respondents admitted that racist discrimination did occur in Puerto Rico. As could be expected, the level of seriousness given to the subject varied according to respondents’ racial identification and social positioning: the whiter and more upwardly mobile respondents found themselves to be, the less they perceived racism as an issue for them and ultimately for everybody else on the Island. Those that did view racial discrimination as a grave social problem in Puerto Rico were for the most part uncertain as the exact roots of the problem. Even though respondents offered examples of both institutional and interpersonal acts of discrimination, they often vacillated when asked to identify possible structural impediments for Black Islanders and instead, opted to conceptualize racism as existing solely in the minds of individuals. It was at this point that many comparisons with the U.S. racial structure were made so as to highlight the more open, tolerant and diverse character of Puerto Rican society.

In respondents’ minds, the absence of de jure racial segregation and white on

Black physical violence in Puerto Rico eliminated any possibility of a clearly defined and

pervasive anti-Black ideology existing on the Island that both enforced and was

reinforced by the prevailing social structure. While the lack of powerful public Black

figures was often evoked, that absence was seldom if ever connected to a systematic

exclusion of Black Islanders from the higher epsilons of the social order. Racism, in this

fashion, was constrained to the inter-personal level of social interaction and the gravity of

the problem was ultimately downplayed.

In spite of this, a point must be made to highlight the effect that lived experience in

the United States had on self identified Black respondents’ degree of awareness regarding

racial/racist workings both in the States and on the Island. In every single case,

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experience in the States translated to a more critical and nuanced view of the racism

present in the many facets of Island life. Their time in an “extremely racist society”

provided respondents with the intellectual tools with which to pick up on, identify and

deal with instances of subtle and blatant racial discrimination in Puerto Rico. These

respondents spoke of their newly found ability to look back on their childhood and

identify the many racist encounters to which they were submitted. Their experience in the

States enabled them to identify racial segregation and inequality in the Puerto Rican

education system, the corporate Island world and government just to name a few.

Moreover, they found themselves to be much more adept at picking up on other people’s

covert racism and seemed generally more conscious of the possible racial/racist overtones of any interpersonal encounter or incident they experienced or might have in the future.

Not surprisingly, respondents with U.S. experience, as a whole, were noticeably more comfortable and confident in discussing the Island racial structure. Also, the comparisons they made between racial discrimination on the Island and racial discrimination in the States were on the average more precise, focused and critical than that of their fellow interviewees. Since Islanders without U.S. experience had no choice but to rely heavily on media portrayals of U.S. society and/or on what their friends and

family members told them, their comparisons were for the most part not very well

thought out and/or ambiguous. U.S. experience provided respondents not only with

concrete and detailed anecdotes of “racial/racist” incidents, but more importantly, in at

least two cases, the experience and the thought processes and conceptualizations it

provoked within them, served as the foundation for a moderate level of theorizing on the

nature of racist oppression both in the States and on the Island.

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Furthermore and perhaps more importantly, the comparisons made by respondents

with U.S. experience, contrary to those made by the overwhelming majority of their

counterparts, did not serve to excuse or gloss over Puerto Rican racism. Whereas, the

majority of respondents brought forth the U.S. example in a conscious or unconscious

effort to diminish or justify racial discrimination in Puerto Rico, those with U.S.

experience offered parts of their life stories in an effort to shed a light over Island society;

in an effort to provoke more fruitful and extended dialogues.

When asked when and where they saw racism present in Island life, respondents alluded to more or less the same social and geographical locations. Racism was found in private family scenarios where the white daughter brings the Black boyfriend home; in the television media due to the marked absence of Black actors, actresses and news correspondents; in the most prestigious and influential governmental spheres which clearly lacked Black lawmakers and in certain public venues such as night clubs and restaurants that actively policed and/or excluded Black patrons. Respondents’ “race

stories” inhabited these particular spaces. It is thus important to analyze each in greater

detail.

“Guess who?”

Carlos, a 29 year old self-identified Black Law student, calls it the classic example of Puerto Rican racism. He states:

I think there is racism [in Puerto Rico]. It can be seen in the classic issue of matrimony. In the arrival of the Black boyfriend to the white girl’s house. Right? That’s a scandal. But of course the white girl’s family always says that they’re not racist. As long as their daughter doesn’t end up in a situation where a Black man is going to fuck her. That’s impossible. That would be the worst. But they say they’re not racist. That’s what I’ve always heard. “We’re not racist.” “The Blacks are equal to whites.” But that all goes the minute one of them tries to marry their daughter. Because that signifies that they have to adopt him. That they have to adopt the

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Black guy along with his whole family, with all their “cafreria” [thuggery] and with the myth that Blacks are promiscuous, adulterous and ungrateful. (pp.1)

Evident in Carlos’ statement is the duplicitous character of Island racism. The

overwhelming majority of respondents made reference to Islanders’ tendency to shield or camouflage their racist beliefs in regular interaction. All eight self identified Black respondents thought that racism on the Island, though very much an everyday reality was difficult to gage and get a handle on because you simply couldn’t tell who was being racist against you. Contrary to the U.S., where according to respondents, “people were racist to your face,” the idea of a “raceless” society pervaded in Puerto Rico until the

Black person was perceived to be overstepping his/her boundaries in some way. In those occasions the racism just popped up out of nowhere.

Pedro, a 29 year old self identified Black Ph.D. student, makes it crystal clear:

“You know, it’s very controversial because the person who’s very racist over there [in the

U.S.] is very racist. Here there’s a racism that’s very hidden. It’s a hypocritical racism.

The white man can greet you on the street and act so nice and then he can turn and tell you ‘I don’t want you in my family.” (pp.6)

Four out of the eight self-identified Black respondents had a story to tell about the pitfalls surrounding interracial dating in Puerto Rico. Tomas, a 29 year old musician, tells of the time when his best friend (also a Black man) and he dated two white sisters who on one occasion invited them to their parents’ house in one of the central Island towns. The story goes as follows:

They invited us to Jayuya and they told us that their father was the only lawyer in the town; that all we had to do was get there and ask for him and everybody would know where he lived and all. So we headed out there and we stopped at a supermarket: “Excuse me, where does so and so live?” And they were like “Ohh, we don’t know who he is.” So we got back in the car and then stopped in a garage: “Where does so and so live?” They were like “Man, I don’t know, I only know

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where his office is at.” And then they go and point to the middle of nowhere and they’re like “I think maybe it’s over there.” So we get back in the car, we stop at another place, in a bar, and like they were looking at us, like sizing us up to see if they would tell us or not when all of a sudden an ambulance pulls up to the place and the driver overheard the conversation and told us “oohh, it’s right by here, I’ll take you cause I have to go right past it”. And you know what? It was right next to the garage where we had stopped at before. So then we get there and the girls are like “That’s weird. How can that be if the owner of the garage is our landlord?” (pp.1)

Here, the whole town appears to be in collusion against Tomas and his friend. The townspeople are somehow terribly invested in keeping the lawyer’s daughters away from the two young Black men looking for them. No questions are asked, no calls are made. It was simply assumed that Tomas and his friend could not really be partners, or friends or even acquaintances of the two sisters. The townspeople clearly perceived them to be overstepping their boundaries and not only wanted them away from the girls but by literally driving them around in circles, wanted them out of town.

Not at any point however, was a single racially pejorative comment made nor did the townspeople made any reference to the two men’s Blackness. The racial element behind their exclusion remained hidden. Consequently, when Tomas and his friend finally had an opportunity to meet their girlfriends and tell them the story, it was simply taken as “weird” and “strange” as opposed to racist and exclusionary. The racism then is seen as existing solely inside the two Black men’s heads.

David, a 22 year old chemical engineering senior, had a similar problem trying to convince his father of the racial element behind the dissolution of his two and half year relationship with his white girlfriend. In his case, the girl’s mother was kind, welcoming and courteous to both David and his family when they visited their home, thus seeming to have no problem with her daughter dating a Black man. However, the minute David left their house, the mother got on the daughter’s ear warning her about the supposed perils of

44 being romantically involved with David. According to him, the mother would accuse her daughter of “worsening the race.” Ultimately, David’s girlfriend could not handle the pressure and they broke up.

Pedro tells a similar story from his childhood and teenage years involving a neighboring white family in his hometown:

Since I was little I had a good relationship with this family and one of their daughters was in my class. And all throughout those years, her mother would say that I was her fifth child. Like she had four children but she loved me as if I was her fifth. That was until high school. My classmate had an older sister and you know, one doesn’t pick love, it simply arrives. So all of a sudden she started having feelings for me…We started talking and there was some chemistry there so we became boyfriend and girlfriend. At that moment my relationship with her family ended. It was the stupid racist reaction of “I don’t want you with that Black guy,” “Why are you with that black guy?” “What the hell’s wrong with you?”…The relationship lasted two years and they never accepted me. (pp.6)

Pedro offers a great perspective from which to look at the racial workings behind his particular story as well as behind all white/ Black interactions on the Island.

According to him, a Black man is fine and well in the eyes of the white person “as long as he’s not my boss or my son in law or my brother in law; as along as you don’t come into my personal circle, I’m going to love you” (pp.6). For Pedro then, “race is not an issue” in Puerto Rico for white people until Black Puerto Ricans are either in positions of power or involved in intimate relationships with them. Contrary to the U.S., where physical proximity is an issue for white Americans (Feagin, 2000), in Pedro’s view, white

Islanders will interact with their Black counterparts in a myriad of social settings without a problem as long as white familial circles are not “invaded” nor do they themselves feel threatened by their Black counterparts’ social standing.

Isabel, a 19 year old self-identified Black college student, speaks about the

“illegality” or “peril” that white and light skinned Puerto Ricans associate with inter-

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racial relationships (romantic or otherwise). According to her, many of her light-skinned

and white friends look at her social world with awe and wonder. Everything is somehow,

odd, curious, strange and/or exotic. She tells of the times in which close white friends

would accompany her to Bomba dances (traditional Afro-Puerto Rican musical genre)

but once there, would refuse to partake in the actual dance out of a seemingly

inexplicable fear:

Dancing Bomba in their eyes was like the “big” thing. And I’ve been dancing Bomba since I was little. So they would come see me in the dances, but I was the only one who could dance. They couldn’t dance. They didn’t dare to try it even though they loved to watch. And they would come and be like “I can’t tell mom that I came because…” (pp.4)

Isabel’s friends conceptualize the Bomba dance as an exclusive Black activity and although they enjoy assisting to the different functions with their Black friend, they cannot admit to their parents that they actually attend these dances. They seem to harbor some type of fear of reprisal. The relationship with Isabel then appears cloaked in illegality. It is somehow too Black; too alien; too foreign an endeavor for them to publicly claim it as their own.

As a result of these experiences and others like it, Isabel tends to envision the position of the Black Puerto Rican in an inter-racial relationship as precarious. In her eyes, Black individuals involved with whites are often kept at arm’s length. Inter-racial relationships (romantic or otherwise) seem to have an expiration date on them. They can only go so far. Blacks are only allowed to get so close. Eventually either the family of the white individual in the relationship or that same individual’s racist beliefs put a strain on the relationship and lead to its dissolution. Isabel’s description of the events that lead to the dissolution of a close friendship with a white classmate is exemplary:

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I had a friendship that I lost because of the comments that she made. Like, my brother would always kid that the Black revolution would come and us Blacks would be at top. So my friend asked him if all the white people would become slaves and my brother told her that the only whites that would be saved were the ones who were Black by association; that if you had Black friends you would be alright. So she heard my brother say that once and she decided that she was Black by association. And I was like, well you’re my friend, if thinking that makes you happy then be happy. But then she started telling me that whites were always going to be on top. That they were going to make us into slaves again because that’s what Black people were good for. And I looked at her mean, real mean. And I was wishing that she was kidding…but she just kept on with it, so we ended the friendship. (pp. 4)

Taken as whole, self-identified Black respondents’ tales of their failed relationships with whites underscore the paradox inherent in the official construction of Puerto Rican national/ethnic identity: exactly how do you reconcile so much resistance in whites to associate with Blacks on an intimate and familial level with the dominant discourse that posits the Puerto Rican people as the result of a tri-racial mix? How is that which according to Blanco (1985), differentiates Puerto Ricans from Americans and makes the

Island much less racist than the U.S., so disagreeable and problematic within white Island circles?

Nearly all self-identified white respondents’ accounts reflected these seemingly contradictory visions of Puerto Rican racial identity. On the one hand, self-identified white respondents would speak favorably of the Puerto Rican essence as the “coming together” of different races of people from different parts of the world, but would then openly admit to having extreme reservations toward the possibility of getting romantically involved with a Black Islander. When pressed on this matter, respondents would find themselves at a loss for words, unable to reconcile their romanticized vision of Puerto Rican cultural and racial history with their refusal to partake in that same tradition.

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Only self-identified Black Islanders were able to break that silence. Asked about the inconsistency between contemporary attitudes toward inter-racial relationships and the official discourse on mestizaje, self-identified Black respondents were quick to criticize and/or dismiss the official discourse as a “fairy tale” or “founding myth” which never had any veracity to it and surely was not relevant in present day Puerto Rico.

Carlos’ comments are exemplary:

That’s the dominant discourse; the cliché. And what the cliché brings are the absurd repetitions of a lie, of a cover up. We have what the government invented. They invented this ideology that we’re the product of three races and that these three races are at the same level and we all have the same heritage. From the Spanish we have the language, from the Blacks we have the food and the strength and the music and from the Tainos we have the patience. That’s the Great Puerto Rican Family. That’s a lie. It’s absurd. (pp.3)

Blackness and Representation

For self identified Black respondents, Island racism also came down to numbers. I would ask where racism was a factor in Island life and they would in turn ask me how many Black Puerto Ricans one saw on TV or in Senate and House seats or in the courts. I would then ask them about the possible effects of this lack of representation and/or visibility in their own lives and they would talk about the lack of viable Black role models, about the importance of seeing a similar face to one’s own being positively showcased on media outlets, and about the need to have somebody to look up to and model one’s kids after. I would then mention a few iconic Black figures in the country’s history and we would embark on a long discussion about how historically important

Black individuals have been either forgotten or misunderstood and dismissed or remembered fondly for their actions but only at the expense of having their Blackness completely sidestepped and ignored (Santos-Febres, 2005).

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On these occasions racism seemed to almost exclusively become an issue of what was visible and what remained hidden in Island life. My conversations then with dark skinned and/or self-identified Black respondents revolved around the invisibility in which

Puerto Rican Blackness was enveloped and the role that certain key institutions and individuals played in creating and maintaining that invisibility.

Black islanders and government

Gregorio, a 27 year old self-identified copper-colored paralegal, for example, envisioned race as intricately tied to access to political power on the Island. In his interview, he focused mainly on the connections between race and traditional notions of physical beauty to explain the overwhelming presence of white faces in the highest governmental strata. For him, politics came down to perception. Whiteness, he explained, was associated with physical beauty, cleanliness, propriety and decency.

Therefore, white political candidates were always seen as more attractive, charming and honest. In his mind, they were able to woo the electorate more easily than Blacks.

Therefore, Black officials were relegated to those municipalities with the highest concentrations of dark skinned people while the rest of the Island was literally and exclusively handled by whites. Gregorio explains:

You know, politics, brother. You know, Black people have no problem in Loiza [predominantly Black coastal town]. But candidates like Fortuño [Resident Commissioner in the U.S.], and Roselló [former Governor] are prettier. You know, pretty. White. They’re like soap opera stars. You know, they’re like royalty. (pp.3)

As the conversation progressed, I asked Gregorio specifically about issues of racial discrimination and about the possibility of ameliorating it through governmental action.

Gregorio, however, seemed to be much more inclined to talk about and deal with discrimination at a much “higher level.” In essence, he was more interested in working to

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end differences based on social class. Consequently, when asked specifically what he

would do as a member of the legal profession to address racism he completely

backtracked from the idea:

In terms of drafting and passing reform, I don’t think so…Because in order to draft an equalitarian reform here it would be impossible due to the perception that people here have about race. It would be impossible to pass a law that guarantees that such percentage of a legislative body will be made up of Blacks. I think that maybe I would have more luck getting a particular percentage for women, because simply put: we’re different. But to say that 3 percent has to be Black would be, it would be almost, it would be very difficult. It would be easier to get the women…Also, you know, maybe people would take advantage [of the race-based legislation] and they’d be like “I’m Black!” (laughs). That would be fucked up. It would be much easier with a woman. (pp.6)

For Gregorio, race was very much a factor as it seemed to help determine who could attain access to political power and who could not. However, it seemed to all but disappear when it came to ensuring and protecting Black Islanders’ legal rights. As evidenced in the above passage, Gregorio does not consider race to be a significant difference between Islanders. The overriding assumption here is that white and Black

Puerto Ricans (or Puerto Rican males, I should say) are more or less the same, so the legislation would be perceived by the public as unfair and even prejudicial. In his mind, people would be more open to gender specific legislation because the differences between men and women appear to him as more blatant or obvious.

However questionable Gregorio’s beliefs about the social workings of both race and gender might be, they pale in comparison to the statement he makes toward the end of the above passage. Gregorio’s claim that such a race-based legislation would lead to people willingly, openly and joyously claiming a Black identity in a country that actively denies its Black heritage (see chapter one), is very much startling and problematic. The idea that people would come to embrace their Blackness (whether they are Black or not)

50 simply because it might get them a “freebie” decontextualizes Blackness as a Puerto

Rican social construction.

Mayra Santos-Febres (2005) highlights the way Blackness and Black people are systematically marginalized from the founding tenets or myths of Puerto Rican national identity and how contemporary Black life is erased from the Island imagination.

According to Santos-Febres (2005), when it comes to the official tales of Island history,

Black heritage is confined to a romantic and watered down version of slavery, to exotic cooking and to great innovations in music. She points to the de-racialization or in effect, the whitening of key Black political and cultural figures in the Island’s past which ultimately strips contemporary Black Puerto Ricans of a select Black legacy. She also underscores governmental institutions’ refusal to support and display contemporary

Black Islanders’ artistic and literary work, opting instead to showcase solely the Black

Puerto Rican of yesteryear in folkloric representations of the Island’s past (Santos-Febres,

2005). From her perspective, Blackness is maintained as marginal, passé, culturally irrelevant, inherently backwards and un-contemporary. This general treatment of

Blackness on the Island in large part explains a good number of Islanders’ refusal to identify as Black in the 2000 census (Santos-Febres, 2005). Santos-Febres (2005) makes it crystal clear:

Pongamos que un país de tanta mezcla racial y étnica como el nuestro, y de tan poca discusión sobre lo que es ser negro o ser blanco, debió aparecer en el censo la categoría “mulato” o “mezclado” o “hibrido” para nombrar a esa población que en realidad es la mayoría, esa gente que no es ni blanca ni negra. Pero entonces, ¿Por qué esa inmensa mayoría no marco el espacio de “other” o dejo el censo sin contestar ante la ausencia de categorías reconocibles? Quizás lo que persiste es la antigua lógica de la gradación de color que valora a la gente a la medida que se acercan al ideal de “la normalidad,” al ideal blanco. Quizás lo que podemos leer en los resultados del censo es que ese porciento de la población que marco “blanco”

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como su definición racial, en realidad lo que estaba haciendo era escogiendo lo que querían ser en vez de lo que en realidad eran. (Santos-Febres, 2005: 125)

Taking the systematic invisibility and irrelevance to which Black life is subjected on the Island as well as the stated refusal of a large part of the population to then claim a

Black identity into consideration, Gregorio’s belief that race-based legislations would lead to everybody claiming Blackness in order to better their socio-economic situation seems nothing less than ludicrous. His comments exemplify many respondents’ inability to connect particular instances of racial discrimination (i.e. the lack of Black access to political power), with larger, more systematic and widespread beliefs, attitudes and actions regarding Puerto Rican Blackness. Furthermore, his tendency to subsume racial oppression and discrimination under class inequality, in fact echoes the public discourses and policies of the majority, if not all, of white Puerto Rican politicians.

Pedro spoke of the seemingly race-less political discourse in Puerto Rico and of politicians’ unwillingness to broach the race issue in his interview. He tells of assisting an

Anti-racism conference on the Island last year, where a panelist spoke about his frustrated attempts to get the candidates for governor to express their plan to better race relations on the Island. He tells us:

In the conference, they told us that they wrote to the candidates and asked them what was their platform or plan of work on racism. The three answers they got back were completely ambiguous and frankly, I was surprised that they didn’t have a set plan with which to deal with that social force [racism], considering this is a time when we’re promoting equality and shared government. It’s very hard and painstaking to think that there wouldn’t be a plan against racism. (pp.4)

The ambiguity with regards to race in Island political discourse thus reflects the ambiguity in people’s everyday talk. Here, Pedro speaks of the frustration and hardship associated with not only the absence of an official anti-racist strategy, but also of the absence of a language in which to effectively talk about race and racism in Puerto Rico.

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Contrary to Gregorio, Pedro considers race to be a major divide on the Island and instead

of lumping it under class, speaks of the ways in which class and race intersect and

combine to make Black Islanders’ life somehow more difficult than those of their white

counterparts. Also, in a stark contrast to Gregorio, Pedro actively takes action against the

government’s refusal to deal with racism.

In a letter he had just sent to the Island Governor, Pedro discussed and criticized the lack of governmental support for Puerto Rican Black arts and well as officials’ historical avoidance of the race issue on the Island. In his letter, he invited the Governor to distinguish himself from his peers and become the first head of state with a clearly defined political agenda for eradicating racial discrimination in Puerto Rico. From

Pedro’s perspective, racism must be brought to the forefront of the Island political and social spectrum so as to finally debunk the myth of mestizaje that governs over Puerto

Rico’s national imagination. According to him, the myth of mestizaje might be fine and well for school plays but not as the overriding ideological tenet backing government.

No Black faces, just blackface on TV

According to Tomas, the only roles fit for Black characters on TV are those designed to provide viewers with some comic relief. From his perspective, Black actors and actresses appear on screen so they can be made to bear the brunt of the joke. Talking specifically about a Black actor in a local variety show, Tomas states: “He’s a little Black guy; old already. They put him there to do stupid stuff. They don’t put an old white guy to do those types of things. The actor has to be Black in order for the show to be funnier”

(pp.4). Blackness, then, while unfit in the intimacy of a family or in the most powerful spheres of government, can come into millions of Islanders’ homes nightly to make them laugh. The humor makes it palatable. It makes that which is invasive, marginal and/or

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indecent acceptable and even enjoyable for a limited amount of time. Blackness, though

culturally and socially inadaptable and inassimilable is readily consumed by Island

society as entertainment.

This depiction of Blackness on screen further stigmatizes Black Puerto Ricans as strange, weird and/or exotic. Moreover, by making Black skin a customary target for humor; it creates and maintains a notion of Blackness as that which can constantly be acted upon, but which has no agency of its own. Television Blackness has no response for white jokes. It simply provokes the humor through its presence and takes the brunt of the racial gag. Furthermore, the limited amount of roles for Black actors and actresses impedes the Black Island population from being adequately and accurately represented in the Island national imagination. The presence of one or two Black actors and actresses in any given show contributes to the historical negation of Island Blackness. It helps maintain a vision of a non-Black and Spanish oriented and based Puerto Rico.

Perhaps even more damaging, the lack of Black faces in television implies that the complexity of contemporary Black Puerto Rican life is seldom if ever showcased. Black

Islanders tune in to find little if any representation of them on screen. Kattia, a 28 year old self identified Black secretary and graduate student, speaks of the consequences associated with this lack of representation and the effects that white images (both Puerto

Rican and American) can have on viewers, specifically on her seven year old daughter.

Kattia explains:

Just the other day she said “pretty girls are for having fun, the intelligent ones are for helping out on the job.” What happens is that she has a little friend who’s white with beautiful blue eyes and she sees that her friend has had a bunch of boyfriends in the class and she hasn’t. So she says “she’s pretty, I’m not” and that creates conflict within, which is then increased by watching Brittney and Cristina all the time on TV. Then on top of that everybody gives her Barbies; she has so many

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Barbie dolls, you know. Perhaps every now and then she gets one Puerto Rican doll, one Black one. Some family member who knows that I’m pro Blackness might give her a Black Barbie. But that’s about it. And it’s just that these beauty issues are super complicated. Now, she says that she doesn’t like her nose because it’s too big. How am I supposed to react to that when that’s what’s she’s seeing on TV? It’s super problematic. I just tell her “you’re gorgeous”…Eventually she’ll dismiss all that. (pp.3)

Here, Kattia fears the anti-Black ideas that her daughter receives from the different media channels and the consumer market. In her statement, one can see how visions of

Blackness only enter her daughter’s life as negative forces which cause in her self-doubt and insecurities associated with her physical appearance and attractiveness. Kattia’s question of how she can counteract those ideas is a poignant and even tragic one considering that she, as a Black Islander, has few if any resources from which to pull, to offer her daughter more positive depictions of Blackness. The government’s and key cultural institutions’ refusal to disseminate both visual and written material on contemporary Black communities (Santos-Febres, 2005), including but not limited to the lack of Black-centered lessons in school, leave Kattia and others alone and unprotected in the face of such white-oriented and anti-Black programming. According to Kattia, they are forced to look elsewhere:

If there would at least be a model for a successful Black Puerto Rican woman, then I would be cool but how many are there? Mayra Santos? I don’t know. The reality is that Tori Amos, who’s American, has been more influential for me than Giselle [Puerto Rican pop singer] who’s Puerto Rican. Fiona Apple is more influential for me than Olga Tañón [Puerto Rican pop singer]. (pp.5)

No Blacks allowed

For David and Carlos, it’s hard to explain. It is a lagging feeling of not fitting in; of looking around and feeling almost completely alien to those among them. The minute they walk in, all eyes seem to be on them. Their talk, mannerisms, dress, everything seems to come under an intense yet subtle and unstated scrutiny. Needless to say, they

55 feel policed. It suddenly becomes apparent to them that at some point they crossed a line; overstepped a particular boundary without realizing it. The others, then, are just waiting for them to leave. They are not wanted. According to David and Carlos, you can see it in the way they look and talk to you—if they in fact get as close so as to look you in the eyes and engage you in conversation. It’s hard to explain. But it’s like they’re the only dark-skinned faces in the room and they’re almost positive that they weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.

The consensus among the eight self-identified Black respondents was that there were definitely “white only” venues in Puerto Rico. Every single respondent had at least one brief anecdote of how at one point or another they happened to be present in a store, club, bar, party, restaurant or special function in which, they as Black individuals were shunned, mistreated, or simply ignored. For Kattia and Carlos it was restaurants. For

Tomas and David it was popular bars and nightclubs. For Stanley it was hotels. For Isabel it was ballet class. It was clear: there were simply certain venues that were off limits to them; physical and social spaces they entered with caution and trepidation, almost positive that “something” would happen.

This informal racial profiling and policing took many shapes and forms: from the overall hostile attitude that Carlos and David describe; to nasty stares and looks from white patrons; to incredibly slow and bad service by the work staff at a restaurant; to having a store clerk follow you around the store wary of all the items you either touch or pick up; to being singled out by the bouncer at a club or bar and literally taken out of line for supposedly failing to comply with the official dress code, while less elegantly dressed white individuals enter without a problem. Regardless of the particular methods, Black

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respondents were always perceived to be encroaching upon white space and were

invariably put under watch.

For David this unofficial vigilance meant having to think twice about reuniting

with his high school friends. A graduate of one the most prestigious private high schools

in the country, David would come back from his stateside university during Christmas

break anxious to meet up with old acquaintances. However, the venue of choice for his

predominantly white and privileged counterparts was a notoriously unwelcoming place

for dark-skinned Islanders. David explains:

A lot of my old friends hang out there on Wednesdays—that ‘s the place where everybody goes on Wednesday. And at first, I would go and it was strange because people would look at me like “what is this guy doing here?”; like the guys that I studied with were like “whatever, this is David, he’s a friend.” But the people who didn’t know me they would look at me weird like what is this guy doing here, what is this cafre doing here, this caco doing here. It was like if you didn’t have long hair, if you weren’t a clown, you didn’t have a reason to be there. And at first I felt that and it’s funny cause now I go and the group of people that’s there seems more diverse. Now I go, and yes, there’s the people that were always there—people from the upper class, lighter skinned people—but now there’s a little of everything as well. People from lower classes, dark-skinned people. But at the beginning when I started to frequent that place it was weird and I went basically because my friends went. I wanted to see them. But it wasn’t’ one of my favorite places because I felt weird. I didn’t feel comfortable. (pp. 3)

When asked if he at any time shared these thoughts and feelings with any of his acquaintances, David said that he did in fact attempt to talk about it on a few occasions but the reaction was mixed. According to him, some quickly disregarded his comments and told him that he was just imagining things, whereas others listened closely, gave some thought to his position and ultimately validated his experience. Asked if there was a racial difference between those who understood him and those who dismissed his claims,

David said:

The ones who understood were people who were in my situation. They were the ones that would go “come on, let’s see if what he’s saying is true.” More light-

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skinned kids, well, there are times when they simply don’t care. They just said “fuck it” and “whatever.” (pp.4)

This white dismissal of anti-Black racial discrimination on the Island is rampant.

Self-identified Black and/or dark skinned respondents frequently complained of the lack of understanding on racial matters exhibited by white and light-skinned acquaintances.

Their complaints, comments, claims and outright protests were met by either white indifference or counter-claims of having a chip on their shoulder; of being a “blackie with a hang up.” Anti-Black racism was viewed by many light-skinned and white Islanders as a fabrication; as residing solely in Black people’s heads. This belief was even internalized by one Black respondent who often referenced the image of the “angry Black” to ridicule or poke fun at dark skinned Islanders who saw racism everywhere.

When asked if the country needed an official discourse on race and racism; if the issue of racial discrimination in Puerto Rico demanded at least some level of public attention and debate, Carlos was adamant in his refusal. According to him, the political status of Puerto Rico—the question of who we were as a nation—was too much of an ideological burden to then go out and add another one. In Carlos’ view, race and racism, though never handled appropriately in Puerto Rico’s history, were better left unspoken and untreated in the public. Based on these beliefs, Carlos then found it pertinent to criticize Black Islanders who had shown themselves to be openly critical of racist structures in Island life:

[Q. Wouldn’t there be some benefits to making racism as public issue?] That would be acting like a “blackie with a hang-up.” A Black who blames the white oppressive system for all his failures. And there are Blacks with hang-ups all over the Island. And they create that counter discourse. I have a friend who works for a publishing company and she has that discourse. Her mother and her sister also think that way. They view themselves as Blacks that overcame; that bettered themselves. They read, they write etc. Their entire lives revolve around that belief. (pp. 6-7)

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In Carlos’ mind, identifying and speaking against anti-Black practices in Puerto

Rico on a regular basis and then crafting an oppositional Black identity, is taking the whole race issue way too far. While he is critical of the way that white Islanders act toward him and other Black individuals, he believes that paying too much attention to discrimination can be dangerous. Those who do so become consumed by the “race issue” and look and sound ridiculous to him. They’re either too angry or have a hang-up. Like in his friend’s case, race comes to define their entire lives.

Consequently, Black Islanders find themselves in a double bind. On the one hand,

because Puerto Rico lacks a public and official discourse on race, racist acts are often

difficult to identify, which leaves many Black Islanders clueless as to the actual factors

affecting their life. While on the other, Black claims of discrimination when voiced are

met with resistance and ridicule from both whites and Blacks alike, which serve to further

stigmatize, alienate and marginalize the Black speaker.

Racist discrimination, for the most part cloaked under class prejudice, is able to be

practiced widely and without reproach in Puerto Rico using a wide and vast array of

seemingly non-racial or race neutral codes. As it specifically pertains to the issue of

access to public venues, racial discrimination is often enacted through the language of

dress. In the following statement, David tries to explain the unspoken and subtle racial

dynamic that he believes might be behind the types of dress codes implemented in certain

night clubs across the Island and the effects they have on a segment of the clientele.

There are places that are made [for whites]. You know, I understand you may want to have a bar or a lounge and you may want to have a classy atmosphere but there are times that if you don’t belong to a particular group, it’s hard to get into those places. I understand that you might have a dress code to get into your place.I don’t have a problem with that because if I had a place, I would like to keep it looking nice. I would like for people to come dressed in a particular manner. But there are

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times that one feels that the way club owners do things; that when you make it to the door of the club if you’re not part of a certain group, you’re not going to get in. (pp.5)

Here, David’s critique is not centered on socio-economic standing. His critique is not based on the amount of money a person might have to pay in order to gain access to the club. His talk of “groups” then must be taken to refer to the racial makeup of the clientele that attains ready access to these venues. His critique then rests on the treatment of Blackness as contradictory to a “classy atmosphere” and the active exclusion of Black club goers through the use of alleged dress codes.

Tomas speaks of similar experiences to that of David’s. When asked about specific social locations where racism was prevalent in Puerto Rico, Tomas immediately mentioned nightclubs and bars. According to Tomas, club owners “want their consumers to be white for X or Y reason. They prefer to have a bunch of white people drinking than

Blacks. I’ve been in lines for night clubs where they’ve come directly over to me to take me out of line alleging that the party that night was for club members only and I knew that the majority of people on line weren’t members” (pp.1).

Effects of White-Only Spaces: White Island Consciousness

Taking into consideration the active policing and exclusion that dark-skinned and

Black Puerto Ricans face on a regular basis, and the white-only bonding that these discriminatory practices attempt to preserve and maintain, it must be asked what type of effect these practices have on light skinned and white Puerto Ricans. How does the social and physical distance they try to keep between themselves and their Black counterparts contribute to the making of a white-defined or white-centered consciousness? What if any discernable ideological constructs make up this consciousness?

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Although the majority self-identified white respondents did in fact identify social scenarios and locations where anti-Black racism was a factor hindering many Black

Puerto Ricans’ lives, many still could not or were not willing to make the connection between these instances of discrimination against Black Islanders and advantages or privileges conferred upon them simply because of their lighter skin color. Respondents, though in many instances able to discuss how race made life worse for other people could not openly talk about how race could possibly make life better for them. The racist discrimination then, continued to be viewed as somehow apart from their lives and therefore, not their problem. Whether ingrained in an alien and ambiguous “society” or in

“other people’s heads,” anti-Black racism had absolutely nothing to do with the majority of light skinned and self-identified white respondents. Within this conceptualization, their own admissions of racist “slips” in thought and/or action did not directly contribute to

Island wide racism, it simply mirrored it in those occasions and never really on purpose.

Respondents then saw themselves as simple witnesses and reporters of the phenomenon rather than active participants. White admissions of racism, for the most part, lacked an acknowledgement of personal guilt and/or responsibility.

Seeping though this inability or refusal to assume personal responsibility was the full fledged belief in an individual’s ability to overcome. Racism, though undoubtedly a problem, could be surpassed by Black Islanders. All that was needed was a little determination and extra work on their part and they too could enjoy the privileges of those most fortunate in society. When asked if there were any advantages related to being

white in Puerto Rico, Raul, an 18 year old self identified white male college freshman,

stated: “I wouldn’t know what to tell you. I haven’t experienced [any advantage] as of

61 yet. At least until now, at my age, it’s the same [for whites and Blacks]. I think that if a person of color works and educates himself, he can get to the same level [as whites]”

(pp.6).

As made evident in this statement, society’s racial ordering is clear in Raul’s mind.

There is no question as to what racial group is on top. However, his insistence on Black education and work implies that the white over Black racial structure is in place simply because whites have worked harder over time to earn that position. In Raul’s mind, they’ve earned it. Furthermore, from Raul’s perspective, Black Islanders do not face any resistance at all from their white counterparts. They simply have to “come up” and “get” to their level. White Island racism, in this fashion, gets diluted by notions of meritocracy.

Social positioning is seen by Raul and most other self-identified white respondents as an achieved status while racism is relegated to the arena of individual beliefs that have some impact on a person’s life chances but never so much so as to actually determine them.

It is important to note that this vision of an “open society” where Black Islanders face no resistance from whites as it pertains to employment, education etc., is not shaken by the examples of racial discrimination that respondents themselves offer. Sure, white

Islanders may frown upon inter-racial relationships; they may even have adverse feelings toward the possibility of having a Black employer; Black Islanders can even be actively shunned and/or excluded from different social venues by their white counterparts, but for the majority of non-Black respondents at no point in time did these isolated instances combine to create a vision of white repression of Black Puerto Ricans.

All in all, everybody, regardless of skin color or racial heritage was seen as having more or less an equal chance to succeed in Puerto Rican society. Consequently, if it so

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happened that the majority of dark skinned Islanders were lagging behind whites

economically, something ultimately had to be wrong with them or they simply weren’t

doing their part. Regardless of the particular reason, none of what happened to Blacks

ever reflected badly on whites.

Only three white respondents offered a different or conflicting viewpoint. Among

these, Ernesto and Paola stand out. For Paola, a 26 year old restaurant hostess, there are

several clear cut advantages for light skinned and/or white Puerto Ricans irrespective of

class status: “[Whites have a better chance of] getting hired for a job, of looking like they

have more money, of getting accepted in social circles that they don’t really belong to, but if you’re white you already have one foot in the door and the rest you can buy”

(pp.6). Paola’s conceptualization of Island whiteness is noteworthy not only because she is able to acknowledge the positive impact of white skin on a person’s life chances but also because she can go from the hypothetical to the concrete and personal. Paola continues: “People treat you different [when you’re white]. For example, they wouldn’t have hired me in this restaurant if I wasn’t white. They fired the one before me because she was a Black Dominican and the patrons complained that she looked ‘cafre’ and they fired her. So they hired me and they love me. I may not be rich but I’m white” (pp.9)

From Paola’s perspective, white skin on the Island represents social and cultural capital. It is a mark of status. It sets you apart. In Paola’s mind, white skin enables individuals to pass for upper class, to acquire certain jobs that require individuals to convey a more “proper,” “refined” and “distinguished” appearance. Thus, contrary to

Raul’s earlier comments, here we se whiteness act upon individuals, shape and influence

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social life. In Paola’s statement, whiteness comes to have actual social and psychological

consequences. She makes it crystal clear:

Sometimes, even though I’m not rich, I feel compelled to give thanks for being white; for being able to mix among “blanquitos” [privileged whites] and nobody finds out what kind of car I have or who my parents are. [I feel like I should give thanks] because I feel like [whiteness] opens doors for me…And being white makes me somehow in society’s eyes or in my eyes, better. (pp. 9)

Ernesto echoes Paola’s beliefs, stating: “I think that if they give every person who is about to be born into this world the chance to pick their race, nobody is going to pick

Black” (pp.9). By compounding Paola’s and Ernesto’s statements, one is able to pick out

and distinguish a somewhat delineated white Island consciousness. In these two

comments, the notion of a monolithic national and/or ethnic identity is completely

destroyed or at least suspended as an individual and to a point collective identification

through race becomes salient. Paola’s impulse to give thanks for her whiteness combined

with Ernesto’s expressed belief that everybody would rather be white than Black,

showcase not only a burgeoning sense of racial pride but an open acknowledgement of

social privilege based on race. This acknowledgement implies acceptance of and

investment in an exclusively white Puerto Rican experience that stands in stark

opposition from that of the Black population.

Ironically, part of that exclusivity is a fear that surrounds whiteness on account of

its social desirability. When asked if there were any possible disadvantages associated

with being white in Puerto Rico, Ernesto candidly answered:

You can be called a “blanquito” [“whitey”, “rich boy”] You can be a victim of a crime directed toward “blanquitos” because you maybe have more money. You can even be as broke as the next person but because you’re white, you look down at other people and they get mad at you and might want to stick you up. (pp.9)

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White privilege in Puerto Rico, according to Ernesto, is a prized possession; one that random Black others are more than willing to take away. Here, notions of Black criminality (see chapter five) and white superiority combine to make the Island an unsafe space for privileged white Islanders. They are both a numeric and symbolic minority and therefore see themselves as targeted by the majority of the population. Self-identified white and upwardly mobile respondents speak from a seemingly vulnerable and/or endangered social position. The streets are not safe for them. Certain neighborhoods and public venues are prohibited. Those territories are marked Black and respondents felt that you would have to be crazy to go in them and try to interact with “those” people.

Consequently, they move about the Island in tight knit social circles, weary of not overstepping their boundaries. White Island consciousness is thus marked by extreme social isolation. Ernesto describes this isolation in a vivid and sincere manner:

One gets involved in certain social circles that really don’t include people that you would classify as cafre or Black or from the masses. You get involved in a world that drags you along and you don’t even notice and you end up spending the majority of your life with people from the middle and upper classes and you indirectly segregate yourself from other people without even wanting to. And I think that I don’t interact with those people [cafres, Blacks] because I maybe don’t have their same interests or my friends aren’t the same as theirs…but I don’t look at them different, or at least I try not to look at them different. I just simply don’t interact with them on a daily basis because I’m involved in a different world. (pp.5)

It becomes clear the white Island consciousness implies a sense of racial superiority that has to be kept in check. According to Ernesto, whites have to police their thoughts; they have to remind themselves that Black Islanders are not inferior to them. It takes effort to try to view everybody as the same.

Teresa, a 19 year old self-identified white college student, discusses these notions of white superiority and critically reflects on how those pernicious and oppressive beliefs alienate her from her race. She explains:

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I haven’t really felt completely blessed to be white…The white Puerto Rican gets these notions of I don’t know what, that they start believing that their better than anybody else and maybe I’m making generalizations but there’s a lot of them that are like that. Because I see it in my own house, you understand? I see it in my own house and honestly in those moments I wouldn’t want to consider myself white. It would really embarrass me. (pp. 8)

In her interview, Teresa demonstrated a level of critique not comparable to any of her fellow white respondents. Contrary to them, she not only recognizes and criticizes anti-Black racism and discrimination but is also able to identify how those actions and beliefs influence and shape white Island consciousness and lived experience. In Teresa’s discourse, anti-Black racism is a constituent element of white identity. In a way, she views all white Islanders as harboring the possibility for racist thought and action.

Furthermore, her admission of feeling personal embarrassment on account of the actions of other whites, implies a recognition of personal responsibility in racism that is absent from all other self-identified white respondents. Put succinctly, Teresa makes whiteness strange (Dyer, 1997). It is no longer taken as normal or right or natural, rather it becomes

problematized in her discourse. Contrary to my Latin American literature class, Teresa is

able to view whiteness as offensive and oppressive on its face.

Black Spaces: The Importance of Family

Faced not only with daily incidents of racial discrimination which limit their social

and physical mobility but also with a seemingly Island-wide refusal to acknowledge and

understand the existence and prevalence of that discrimination, Black Islanders are left

with very few social spaces to claim as their own and find support. The question must

then be asked: exactly where do Black Islanders pull resources from when attempting to

confront and battle the discrimination, mistreatment and stereotyping they are often

subjected to?

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The story goes like this: Stanley (19 year old self identified Black college student) and his friend were in the pool of one of the Island’s most exclusive hotels. They were staying there over the weekend for his father’s work convention. As they were enjoying their afternoon, a hotel official approached them to ask for proper guest identification and room number. Stanley gave the official his room key and the man then asked for their names as well as the name of the guest to which the room was registered. Stanley provided the information and the official left momentarily to verify. He then came back and told Stanley and his friend that those names did not appear on the computer, that they were supposed to have the pertinent reservation papers on them at all times. At that point

Stanley looked around the pool and saw all white faces and started questioning the official’s motivations in approaching them. After considering the possible racial element at play, Stanley proceeded to get out of the pool, gather his belongings, disregard the official and go to his room. Once there, the father listened to Stanley’s story, validated the racial discrimination his son suspected and went ahead with a formal complaint against the hotel and subsequent legal action.

Within an Island context bent on diminishing and marginalizing the Black element in society, past and present; that offers no viable representation of dark-skinned Islanders through media channels; that relegates Black professionals and politicians to lower level positions, family becomes one of the few venues where Black Puerto Ricans can find validation of their experience. Basically all self-identified Black respondents spoke about the important role that family members played in either teaching them to deal with racist discrimination or instilling in them pride in their race or in simply providing them with a constant source of support. Stanley explains:

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I truly feel very proud of my parents, specially of how they raised me because they felt it [racial discrimination] before me and they took the opportunity to educate me…For example, when I wanted to grow my hair long and have dreadlocks, my father told me you can do it, but first you have to educate yourself and know what to say when people look at you, when they talk to you, when they try to discriminate against you…If you’re going to do it [get dreadlocks] you have to learn to defend yourself because if not, any ignorant person around can destroy you. And that’s what I did: I asked questions, read books, talked a lot with him and that helped me a lot. (pp. 5-6)

Both Isabel and Kattia speak in a similar way about their mother and father, respectively. It was Isabel’s mother who complained and put pressure on her daughter’s high school administration to investigate, confront and ultimately dismiss a white teacher who impeded Isabel from occupying her rightful spot in an Honors Literature class. And it was Kattia’s father who after having lived in the states during the Civil Rights and

Black Power movements instilled in Kattia a tacit pride in her race: “That to me was super important. Since I was little he would tell me ‘you’re Black, you’re Black.’ And since then my race hasn’t been an issue for me in my life” (pp. 3).

Interviews with self-identified Black respondents attest to the unique location of family as fertile ground for analysis and conversation on race and racism. Contrary to the majority of social spaces in Puerto Rico, issues of race and racism when brought up by self identified Black respondents within their familial contexts were not met by silence.

No accusations were leveled. There was no mention of “hang-ups” nor were claims of discrimination dismissed or disregarded as products of respondents’ paranoia or of their vivid imaginations. On the contrary, issues were unpacked and dissected in an effort to attain an understanding of the racist workings behind any given situation and ultimately to determine the ideal course of action to take.

It is here then that scholars and researchers interested in studying the workings of race and racism in Puerto Rico must look. The blueprint for a viable and effective

68 language on Island race relations may very well lie in Black homes, where strategies for combating daily discrimination are discussed daily around the dinner table.

CHAPTER 4 RACIAL IMAGERY: BLANQUIT@S

I think that at least my mom has been a woman who’s always tried to eliminate that barrier between blanquitos and cafres. She’s always told me that you have to be real clear as to how you’re going to treat people so as to not appear like a blanquito…When you act like a blanquito it’s because you’re offending another person and my mom has always told me that you don’t really want to do that. I mean, why would you want to do that when all you would be doing would be creating resentment in that other person, and maybe even envy and all those other sentiments that aren’t positive. You would be putting yourself as a superior person when that really doesn’t exist. We’re all the same.- Ernesto (pp.6).

We’re the cream of the crop

The pinnacle of such white purity.

The prodigal sons

Lusted after by any nurse’s daughter.

The guests of honor at the fancy dinners

In “good” girls’ houses.

We’re Christians,

Our rosaries cling from

Our car’s rearview mirror.

They bop to the underground music

Blasting from our monstrous stereo equipment

Bought and paid for by our desires

To look like, imitate

But never admit any resemblance

To any thug.

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We’re the privileged children,

We drink all through high school

Because if we fuck anything up

Daddy’s a lawyer and you know,

He wants me to be a good human being

A prestigious citizen,

Well-praised and laurelled

With all the panties from my romantic conquests

On display

In my bedroom.

We’re the most sensible,

Debating sociological theories

Behind the gates

Under the glare of the rent-a-cop car

Policing our neighborhood.

We’re the standard,

The brave young men,

Promiscuous in our perennial sloth

With green liquor

And a palm full of hallucinogens eager

To be our drug of choice

During the slumber of our consciousness.

We’re the great band of idiots,

Committed with the bureaucratic ladder

That rank orders our ignorance.

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“Blanquito de Caparra”

It became a joke almost immediately. They literally ate the poem up. They loved it and I simply couldn’t understand why. It was originally conceptualized as a scathing critique; a poetic satire of sorts to be read and performed in public so as to raise awareness about the workings of racial and class discrimination in Puerto Rico. I was expecting to ruffle some feathers. The idea was to offer a critical and unapologetic look at mine and others’ privileged upbringing. The point was to call us out on our prejudices; on our most insidious beliefs based on centuries old racist rhetoric and imagery. Most crowds, however, thought it was funny. Some audience members would even come up to me and tell me about how the poem brought back memories; how it made them think of how silly they were and still might be; how it gave them a chuckle when they first heard it. When they would approach me for autographs, a few even asked me to make it out to

“a fellow blanquito.” It was ridiculous. Needless to say, I would leave the book store, or café, or class room upset and frustrated. It simply didn’t make any sense: my honest and sincere attempt to unmask, attack and deconstruct white privilege in Puerto Rico was interpreted by the very people it was based on as some sort of off-beat, tongue in cheek ode to them. Somewhere between the original writing and subsequent stagings of the piece, the subversive element was lost. It somehow became fashionable.

Originally, I had expected a reaction similar to that of my white American

University classmates when exposed to Peggy McIntosh’s “White privilege exercise”

(1988). After all, the idea for the piece arose when I first read McIntosh’ article during my sophomore year in college. Her treatment of American whiteness as experienced through extreme social privilege enabled me to question my status not as a Puerto Rican

72 kid in the States but rather as a white male on the Island. Before reading that piece, I lacked the intellectual tools, and self-awareness to analyze, question and trace my upbringing on the Island through the lens of racial inequality. Before I read that article, I had already learned to view myself as “of color” or “other” in States, but still saw myself as simply “Puerto Rican” at home. That article forced me to think about how racial difference had mediated my experience both on and off the Island and lead me to question exactly how whiteness was constructed within the Puerto Rican context.

These ideas and desires, however, did not translate very well in the poem. The crowd simply saw a privileged white boy on stage moving his hands, rhyming and making funny remarks. Contrary to the effect that McIntosh’s (1988) list of items had, people in the audience were not forced to segregate according to skin color. They were not forced to deal with how their race shaped and molded their life for the better at others’ expense. There was not a commotion. Nobody protested or argued. People, for the most part clapped at the end of the performance and some of them even bought a book. I even won an award for it.

Privileged Whites in Puerto Rico

Blanquit@ (“whitey”; “white boy”; “white girl”), as it is used in Puerto Rico, is an insult. For the most part it refers to members of the upper and upper middle class on the

Island. A blanquit@ is cocky, presumptuous. His/her extreme social privilege makes him/her arrogant, riddled with feelings of self importance. The term then is mostly used by people of lower social status to poke fun at, ridicule or simply stigmatize a privileged person they find to be disagreeable. It is for the most part a class-laden term; usually synonymous with “rich boy” or “rich girl.”

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All respondents coincided on this definition. There are however important

variations to the term as it is used, depending on whom you ask. For some, the blanquit@

is a tragic figure; he/she is physically clumsy, intellectually slow and prone to

alcoholism. Others find him/her duplicitous, being the face of public morality and family

values but at the same time, notorious for his/her string of extramarital affairs. He/she

inhabits a strictly delineated Island social world. He/she is only found in high class

restaurants and other exclusive venues surrounded by high class people. She/he is

materialistic; frequently seen as devoid of a strong spiritual center. As a teenager she/he

attends only the most prestigious Island schools and for the most part goes to college

abroad (mostly in the East Coast of the United States).Chances are she/he belongs to a

family of devout Catholics; a blanquit@ is not seen as the type to be found wailing

his/her arms about in a Pentecostal church.

Furthermore, the blanquit@ is seen by some as existing within a type of social

bubble that has shielded him/her from the harsher realities of Island life. He/she considers

themselves to be either racially pure or the direct descendant of Spanish nobility. He/she

is a racist. A blanquit@ would never marry a Black woman or man nor let their daughter

marry a Black man. In fact, his/her encounters with Black individuals are few and far

between; limited mostly to his interactions with the work staff in his/her house.

A blanquit@ believes in protecting the family name; in keeping up appearances.

Therefore, she/he is always dressed to the tee, seen driving around in the fanciest cars, residing in the high priced gated communities and filling his/her house with the most technologically advanced gadgets imaginable. Moreover, he/she is frequently made to be

74 the representative of the country as his/her kind, and his/her kind only occupies the seats of the senate and the house, the Supreme Court and the Island governorship.

But most importantly, the blanquit@ in the Island imagination is almost exclusively white.

High School

We were politically conscious, no doubt. The three of us sported some type of innovative goatee or simply walked around school looking particularly unkempt. We listened to late sixties Cuban and Puerto Rican protest music. We read about and often quoted key Latin American revolutionaries. We identified with leftist ideology and action. We talked about and discussed issues related with the future of the country: how bad those in power were screwing the people; what type of social policies should be set in place in order for the Island to work fairly and properly for everybody; how Americans continued to keep the Puerto Ricans down; how it would be like if the Island finally gained its independence. We were nerds, it was undisputable.

The three of us stood out from the majority of our classmates (or at least we thought we did), because we enjoyed being critical of our government’s policies; because we were aware of the inequalities between different groups in society; because we ultimately cared about the fate of the country. Thus, we tended to look down or ridicule and poke fun at those classmates that showed themselves to be mostly concerned with material possessions or who were politically and socially apathetic or whose own socio- economic privilege impeded them from visualizing and understanding a more complex and problematic social reality. We referred to those kids as “blanquitos.”

Now, the reality is that we ourselves were not much different from those classmates we looked down upon. After all, the three of us were enrolled in one of the most

75 prestigious and expensive high schools in Puerto Rico. Our parents were all professionals. Each of our families could afford (with lesser or greater difficulties) to have us study there. In a sense, we were privileged just the same.

At the time, however, what we chose to focus on for the most part was on our character. We believed that our personal beliefs, our values, our dissent and critique differentiated us from our social class. From our perspective, the difference between the majority of our classmates and us resided in our heads and that difference outweighed any possible similarities between our bank accounts. That difference took precedence over all socio-economic indicators. It simply mattered more. Class inequality then was frequently glossed over in our rhetoric by focusing on our moral and intellectual mettle and we were aware of that to an extent. What never crossed our mind was the issue of color and/or race.

The majority of students in our school were light skinned and economically privileged. Race in this regard was never an issue between us because we were dealing with people of more or less the same skin tone. That, however, did not mean that race wasn’t talked about in the school. On the contrary, there was a distinct yet subtle and encoded racial discourse in place throughout our entire time there. You see, part of our high school’s prestige was that contrary to the majority of private schools in the metropolitan area of the country, we put religious faith ahead of economics and thus, the administration offered scholarships for kids of less privileged backgrounds to join the ranks of the upwardly mobile. These kids were known as “los muchachos de proyecto” or

“the scholarship project kids” and the racial discourse in the school seemed to always be centered on them.

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The idea was that students did not know who was part of the scholarship project and who was not. It was not mentioned during the orientation program when we first came in nor was it brought up at the beginning of each school year in a class assembly or meeting. It simply wasn’t talked about. However, it was not hard to figure out. One for the most part only had to pay attention to how each of us got to school every morning, whether on foot, by car or bus. You could simply look at each others’ sneakers or backpacks or watches or chains and probably have enough evidence to make an educated guess. Further discoveries could lie in conversation. One could ask about the neighborhood each one of us grew up in, the types of public venues or hang outs we visited, the school where most of our “outside” friends or girlfriends were from and you more or less knew.

These, of course, were all class markers. However, the fact of the matter was that you didn’t need to look at a student’s watch or notice the type of car his parents had in order to figure out if he was on scholarship or not. One could simply look at him.

Chances were that if he was darker skinned than the rest of us, he was one of the

“scholarship project kids.”

I remember witnessing conversations between my mother and fellow students’ parents centering on the poor taste or bad manners or depending on the situation, the problematic presence of some of the “project kids” and their families. I remember sitting in classrooms with teachers who in an effort to discipline an unruly scholarship student would yell “sientate en el asiento, negro” and often noticing that the seat he was ordered to sit in was in fact yellow or green or red. I remember being deftly afraid of one of the

“project kids” in particular my very first year. I remember that he posed a physical threat

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that I simply could not handle; was not ready for. And I knew it wasn’t because he was

“poor” or “socially disadvantaged.” That is not what scared me. You see, the school director’s speeches and sermons would often talk about the dignity in poverty, about the goodness inherent in the struggle to overcome your particular social circumstances. So I wasn’t afraid of him because of class. I was afraid because he was Black. And the director never delivered a single sermon or speech centering on the goodness and/or moral strength inherent in Black people.

It wasn’t until leaving the Island for college and winding up in a classroom full of white American students protesting Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege Exercise” (1988) that I realized that it didn’t matter what type of system of beliefs any of my white classmates had, they were still white in my eyes and still had distinct advantages over me.

It wasn’t until then that I realized that the distinctions my three school friends and I drew between ourselves and the majority of our classmates were completely self-serving and illusory. Difference in our high school was not experienced in the form of varying moral strength or conflicting political ideologies amongst privileged light skinned students. It was experienced in the form of inequality between the overwhelming majority of us, the

“blanquitos,” and them, “the project kids.”

In other words, the bubble did not burst until I myself was made to bear the effects of racial inequality and marginality in my college setting. Up until that point, my racial and class privilege had remained unchecked regardless of the amount of hair I had on my face or the number of Che Guevara shirts hanging in my closet.

Components of Privilege

Three important themes arose in the interviews when discussing the image of the blanquit@: Americanization, good families and discrimination. One or more of the three

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were referenced in one way or another by respondents, regardless of their racial and class

identification. For the seven respondents who felt themselves somehow marked or

associated with the term, the “blanquit@” label was seen as prejudicial and

discriminatory. They viewed it as an unfair stereotype; product of simple misperceptions.

Respondents who either because of their racial classification or their class position

thought of the term as totally inapplicable to their experience also understood it to be

discriminatory and even racist against their privileged white counterparts.

In the occasions in which Americanization was brought up during the interview, those who were somehow marked by the term saw it as an asset. It helped to differentiate them from the mass of Puerto Rican peoples. It signified socio economic progress.

Conversely, respondents who did not identify with the “blanquit@” moniker gave

Americanization a negative spin in their accounts. Americanization here was treated as a type of false consciousness; an illusion that privileged white Islanders bought into because of their desire to be like white Americans.

Contrary to the debate over Americanization, the concept of “good families” was brought up almost exclusively by self-identified privileged white respondents and there was no controversy surrounding it. Blanquit@s came from “good” families. Period. The character of their family was seen as somehow markedly different and better than that of anybody else on the Island. None of the seven respondents however was able to explain or clarify exactly what that “goodness” entailed nor where did it arise from. Respondents would simply characterize their family and those of people in their social circles as

“good”; thus making more of a class distinction than anything else.

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Finally, while no respondent was able to offer a concrete and viable example of

Black on white discrimination on the Island, all seven self identified privileged white

respondents viewed discrimination as an issue for them. They all viewed themselves as

labeled, stigmatized and/or mistreated by the use of the “blanquit@” moniker.

Due to their salience in the interviews, these three themes are worthy of analysis and will serve to better understand the make up the iconic white boy and girl character in the Island imagination.

“I Like to Live in America”

When asked what made the blanquit@ character act self-important or arrogant, respondents made a case for the figure’s heightened Americanization. The blanquit@ strives to be like white Americans. Therefore, in the eyes of non-blanquit@ identified respondents, he/she trades in his/her spiritual and moral base, for the commercial goods and social comforts that accompany an American way of life. The concept of

Americanization can then be understood to be where socio-economic progress intersects with spiritual or at times nationalistic and ethnic decay. In respondents’ minds the blanquit@ gives up “what he/she is” for the benefits of American society; often to the point of appearing ridiculous and absurd. Inés explains:

people buy jackets, clothes that you don’t use in a tropical Island where you wear more comfortable, looser, fresher attire. Also, the purchasing of brand name clothes and the lack of support for the clothes made here. Just the fact of being Americanized…of not accepting your race or your culture. They want to find out the most they can about the United States and they adore the U.S. flag and they don’t even know their own history. (pp.1)

This desire to appear or be “what they are not” is a main characteristic of the blanquit@ persona. In the blanquit@ mindset, everything associated with Puerto Rico is somehow less than or not good enough. Feeling alienated from that perceived

80 inefficiency or mediocrity, he/she must look elsewhere. As Benny, a 22 year old self identified white bank loan official painstakingly explains:

I am considering myself a Puerto Rican who is changing; who is no longer average or typical. A Puerto Rican who thinks unfortunately that on account of his tastes and his things can no longer live here. Because unless I have a rich father that gives me his company, I am not going to have the life that I want to have due to Americanization…I am a Puerto Rican who thinks that my ideal cannot be attained in Puerto Rico. He has to go out. A Puerto Rican traitor, if you want to call it that, but not because of being an asshole or a son of a bitch but rather because I was forced out of here…A Puerto Rican who is sad, and frustrated and disappointed with the average Puerto Rican. (pp.10)

Out of all the respondents, Benny appeared to have the most complex feelings towards Americanization. Initially, he blamed Americanization for the loss of Puerto

Rican people’s desire to work hard and make progress on their own. According to him, it had made Puerto Ricans lazy. In his mind, the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States, had accustomed people to having “good things thrown at them” and annihilated any sense of self-worth through work. Benny states in his interview:

[I see the Puerto Rican as] lazy, very fucking lazy. He is used to the fact that because of our government, everything will be given to him and for me I don’t think it’s been lost, there’s still some around, but the people I see are used to a government that makes it easy for them to acquire things without having to work hard for them. That’s why the laziness comes. I don’t think is their fault personally, it’s just that we’re living under an Americanized system. (pp.1)

In Benny’s view, the country was experiencing a moral and spiritual crisis. He saw it as literally being taken over by a mass of uneducated and unworthy people. According to him, these were people of the lower classes, who on account of the country’s increased

Americanization wanted to have all the things that both white Americans and the Puerto

Rican upper class had, but could not afford it so they would constantly look for the easiest and fastest way to attain that which most closely resembled what the others had.

Here, Americanization stops being something that has a blanket effect upon the entire

81 population, and rather becomes contingent upon class status. Islanders of the more privileged classes had the resources with which to adapt to Americanization successfully and reap the benefits while the mass of people lacked the cultural and economic capital to assimilate the information in a positive and constructive manner. Benny explains:

In my view, the Americanization has created the cafre (low life, hoodlum). I say cafre not in the bad sense. From my perspective a cafre is the low income person, who based on what he sees in the U.S. or in us here who have already been Americanized; based on what they see they want to have it…A perfect example of this it’s a BMW. I see a guy in a Tercel; I’ve seen like four already. They have the Toyota Tercel and they buy all the parts, stickers, labels of the BMW. They buy the BMW grill, the BMW rims, the BMW lights. They put the little stickers on the back that say .325 and it’s a Toyota Tercel. That to me is the perfect example. I see that guy on the street and I say that guy is a cafre. (pp.1)

The concept of Americanization endures further transformation in Benny’s interview as he starts talking about what he wants to accomplish in his lifetime versus what the typical or average Puerto Rican seeks to attain. For Benny the country has become too small, too crowded and corrupted for his hopes. Americanization has taught him to always look toward bigger and better things and unfortunately those things are seen by him as residing outside of the Island and in the United States. Contrary to the average Puerto Rican, he was educated in one of the more prestigious private schools on the Island, received his Bachelor’s degree from a stateside University and therefore has been taught to never conform; to never be mediocre. He sees this “Americanized” mentality as existing in stark opposition to the average or typical Puerto Rican mindset.

He explains:

that’s the mentality that predominates in these people: ‘I’m going to go work in this place and in ten years I would have saved up enough money to buy a little house in “Mount Whatever” where all the houses look the same. And I’ll throw the little party on Saturdays, invite the family, we’ll buy some Coors Light and that’s the way I go.’ This mentality of this is the most that I can accomplish; this is to where I want to get but that level is still way below anything normal. That mentality of conforming. The Puerto Rican conforms; he never gives the extra mile. (pp.4)

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Americanization here is not only positive in that it is associated with going beyond the usual limits of socio-economic mobility but contrary to his previous statements, it seems to have become exclusive to the more privileged social classes. Americanization here elevates the already upwardly mobile Puerto Rican and further distinguishes him/her from the average. It starts becoming evident here that Benny’s conflict with

Americanization is not that it has negatively affected his life in any way, or that it has stripped him of his national or ethnic identity, but rather that it has put him at odds with the mass of Puerto Rican people that he now perceives to be so alien from him and are ultimately making his life there unbearable. Americanization is in effect driving him away from his country because it has taught him to seek that which is of higher value and class and now mostly everything associated with Puerto Rico seems to be low-brow.

Fernando, a 22 year old self-identified white Law student offers a similar

perspective. Though not as distraught or frustrated as Benny, Fernando speaks of the

alienation he at times feels as a privileged white Puerto Rican man. When asked if there any disadvantages associated to being white or light-skinned in Puerto Rico, he states:

Sometimes they talk to you in English, man. Like I go up to pay in a store and they answer me in English…and if I’m in the resort, forget it. You know, they’re never going to talk in English to a person who’s more typical or average looking. [Q. How does that make you feel?] Well, it’s not that if affects me a lot but at that moment you don’t feel very well. You feel alienated, like a foreigner in your own country. They don’t see that you’re Puerto Rican and that’s a way to alienate you from what you really are. (pp.6)

It thus appears that much like Benny, Fernando is often made to feel like he doesn’t belong on the Island. However, contrary to Benny, Fernando is not interested in looking elsewhere. He does not seem bent on blaming the most marginalized sectors in Island

society for the social turmoil in his country. Instead, he seems much more interested and

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invested in proving to others that he is in fact a part of them in some way, regardless of

how illusory or romantic that idea might be.

However, this sentiment quickly faded as Fernando and I conversed about Puerto

Rico’s reputation in the U.S. In his mind, it was important to always “represent” your

country in a dignified manner; to carry Puerto Rico’s name with honor and hold it up

high. Thus, when he experienced a racist encounter with a white American teenager in a

golf camp he attended in the north, Fernando was bent on not only shutting the boy up

but also proving him wrong. It was on him to demonstrate the value and worth of Puerto

Rican peoples. Unfortunately, as evidenced in the following statement, Fernando ends up excusing the kid’s racist beliefs by directly blaming U.S. Puerto Ricans for white

Americans’ negative view of Islanders:

I don’t remember the exact comments but they were very negative comments about our way of being—the Puerto Rican stereotype. You know, how Puerto Ricans act in New York. So they [white Americans] have the New York Puerto Rican stereotypes, which obviously doesn’t apply to us [Islanders]…And it’s frustrating that a few Puerto Ricans give a bad name to your entire motherland; to all your people. (pp.5)

Fernando’s ethnic or national pride is compromised. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he has accepted and internalized white America’s distorted view of Puerto

Rican peoples. Therefore, he is much more willing and capable to accuse his fellow

Puerto Ricans for some type of ideological treason than let white Americans carry the

blame of their own racism. Doing the opposite would involve coming to grips with the

reality of the U.S. as a colonizing and oppressive force as opposed to the vision of

America as a generous caretaker of sorts. Ultimately, Fernando’s accusations against his

U.S. Puerto Rican counterparts symbolize the value he places on white America

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continuing to sign off on his national identity. The “good name” that he considers

essential to maintain is externally determined and defined.

White Consciousness and Political Ideology

Luis Rafael Sanchez (1997) associates notions of Island whiteness with pro-

American and pro-statehood political rhetoric. The desire to be white (or whiter) goes hand in hand with the desire to become an equal part of the U.S. empire. It is important for annexation purposes to market and showcase the supposedly white racial composition of the overwhelming majority of Puerto Rican peoples. It is crucial to prove to white

Americans that Islanders can efficiently and successfully assimilate to white culture; that we can come to form part of the white American ranks.

Gregorio, a 27 year old self identified copper-colored paralegal, echoes Sanchez’s

(1997) claims. When asked about particular qualities that may be associated with whiteness on the Island, Gregorio immediately linked the racial with the political: “You know, it’s like when people say that it’s going to snow if we become a state, then they might think that in such case it would be better to be white” (pp.3).

Both, Fernando and Benny’s statements, lend credence to this belief. The two respondents differentiate themselves from lower class Puerto Ricans (whether on the

States or on the Island) on the basis of their almost natural predisposition for a successful and rewarding Americanization process. Similarly, their quarrel with their country and/or

country men and women, was caused by lower class Puerto Ricans’ supposedly negative

and shameful conduct in the face of the U.S. society and their potential to ruin Benny’s

and Fernando’s hopes for Americanization.

Consequently, both Benny’s and Fernando’s notions of what it means to be white

in Puerto Rico are developed with the white American onlooker or overseer in mind.

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Whiteness in the Island thus appears to be at least partially contingent on establishing

some level of similarity or connectedness with white America. In Benny’s and

Fernando’s case, that similarity is primarily based on education and class status. Their

socio economic privilege has granted them a level of access to exclusive white American

social circles (i.e. universities, summer camps etc), thus setting them apart from the

majority of the Island population and enabling them to enjoy the “spoils” of privileged white American life. As a result, any resistance they might face, such as the incident in the golf camp that Fernando describes, is challenged not by attacking the racist ideology of the white American onlooker but rather by differentiating themselves from the mass of

“uncultured,” “uneducated” and ultimately “shady” Islanders. In a sense, they try to separate their whiteness from the Puerto Rican context.

“We All Come from Good Families Here”

Much of that talk on race in Puerto Rico seems to revolve around people’s particular upbringing; on whether or not that person was raised to be a good citizen and an upstanding human being. Individual racism was thus seen by respondents as a symptom of a bad or otherwise deficient upbringing. Consequently, comments like “my parents raised me not to treat anybody differently” or “I was taught that we were all

Puerto Ricans irrespective of color” were frequently offered as examples of both, a good upbringing and a non-racist mentality.

There was, however, some variation on the concept of the “good family” as it related to the Blanquit@ figure. In the seven blanquito-identified respondents’ interviews a “good” family seemed less related to high moral values and ultraistic beliefs as it was wedded to social status, family prestige, economic mobility and racial purity. Benny, for example, referenced the “good family” image on many occasions as he sought to

86 distinguish the upwardly mobile Puerto Ricans from the mass of uneducated heathens who were either cheapening the image of Islanders or purposely ruining the country.

When discussing the popularity of imitation designer hand bags among Island women, and how those items could and could not function as markers for who was a “cafre” and who was not, Benny made interesting use of the “good family” image:

There’s people who are in fact from high society that don’t have the money or maybe they’re cheap and they buy these things [imitation purses] and there’s also the people who don’t have the resources, who are known as low class, who also buy theses things. They buy the Louis Vuitton purse, that everybody knows is not Louis Vuitton. For me that’s cafre…[However, there are also] the young women who graduated from good schools or who come from good families. And obviously, not all of them have the money because their fathers are not going to buy them ten Fendi bags. So they have two or three imitation purses. But, for some reason, I wouldn’t categorize those people as cafres. You know, the majority of people are going to think that the purses are real. The ones who don’t have the resources, that it’s obvious—because, let’s accept it, you can notice who has money and who does not. The ones who don’t are cafres. (pp.2)

It becomes apparent in Benny’s statement that the quality of an individual’s family is directly related to the amount of money they appear to have and/or the social class they seem to represent. There is no talk of particular values or life philosophies or specific parenting and child rearing techniques. In Benny’s statement, the “good” is purely socio- economic. It quickly becomes racial however as Benny talks about his own family and the type of racial beliefs they hold and communicate to him.

Speaking of the “racial” conversations he would have with his grandmother when growing up, Benny tells us:

For example, when I was little I was a huge Michael Jordan fan and like I never felt that I would have a problem with a Black person, with anybody or any race whatsoever. So I would always talk like normal about Blacks: how much I adored Jordan; how I was such a big fan of him, that kind of stuff. So my grandmother would sometimes tell me “Benny, settle down. Don’t like them too much.” You know, things like that. So I would always bother her by saying that I was going to bring a Black girl home and she would go “Nooo, don’t say that. God Forbid. Don’t you know that you’re so pretty and so handsome and so white?” (pp.3)

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The fact is that Benny has no problem publicly calling her grandmother racist. He

even labels many of his friends’ families racist. Whether it was because they didn’t want

their children to date Black people or because they actually referred to Blacks as

“niggers” or whether they engaged in racist joke telling, Benny saw them as active

participants in racist thought and action, yet never once stopped referring to them as

“good.” The racism did not seem to get in the way of the family’s integrity or character.

On the contrary, judging from Benny’s statements, it was an integral part of it. The casual

and matter of fact tone in which he discusses his grandmother’s racist fears coupled with

the ardent disdain he showed for darker and lower classed people in the previous section, gives the impression that for Benny, racism and “good families” go hand in hand.

The fact is that the concept of “goodness” in privileged Puerto Rican families is both based and depends on a type of racial policing. Evident in Benny’s grandmother’s statement is a sense of racial purity that is somehow threatened by Benny’s fondness of

Black American icons, and therefore Benny must be reminded not of the family’s high economic status but of the cultural capital of whiteness. He must be reminded not of his financial wealth, but of his racial superiority or privilege which in Benny’s grandmother’s eyes would be lost if he were to “bring a Black girl home.”

The racism then that Benny identifies in his family is in effect what preserves and

maintains the familial unit’s essential “goodness” and he knows it. Re-reading his

statements closely, it becomes clear that Benny sees himself as not harboring the level of

anti-Black prejudices that his grandmother possesses, and in fact thinks that she was

over-reacting by worrying over his admiration for a famous African American athlete.

But, on the other hand, Benny is very clear on the fact that he is not supposed to bring a

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Black girl home. He only kids about it so as to get a rise from his grandmother. However,

those jokes are only funny as long as there is the tacit understanding that the grandson would never do such a thing. An action of that sort would amount to betrayal and would in their minds, provoke the family’s fall from grace.

The Psychological and Social Costs of Being a Blanquit@

The vast majority of respondents viewed the Blanquit@ moniker as very much a part of national racist terminology. The term was used to discriminate; to poke fun at; to marginalize and mark off a particular individual as different. Several respondents even went so far as to state that the term was no different in its racist nature than “cafre” or

“caco.” It was both hateful and harmful.

Interestingly enough, however, when I pressed respondents on this issue asking them specific ways in which “Blanquit@s” (and white Islanders in general) could be discriminated against in our society, the majority found themselves at a loss for words.

For the most part, not a single incident, act or event of Black on white discrimination could be offered.

In spite of this lack of concrete and viable examples of alleged Black on white racism, several respondents spoke of the social and psychological effects of being light skinned and growing up within a privileged environment. For example, both Carla and

Gabriela, two 19 year old college students, identified themselves as Hispanics and/or

Latinas, purposely avoiding more racially specific denominations. According to them, there was no such thing as “real” white people in Puerto Rico because everyone was more or less mixed. However, as the interview progressed, both identified themselves as

“blanquitas” because of their upbringing, education and social status. They, much like

Benny and Fernando, viewed themselves as markedly different and in a sense better than

89 the majority of the Island population. In their words, they had trouble “connecting” with most Islanders because they had different interests from the rest. Here, again, images of a low-brow Puerto Rican culture surfaced and the two respondents expressed their trouble in either fitting in with their country men and women, or in trying to avoid them altogether. Also, they, like the rest of the respondents, considered the “blanquit@” label to be racist and talked about their own frustrations with being labeled as such.

According to Carla, “since the majority [of Puerto Ricans] aren’t white, they fuck you up for being white” (pp.11). In her mind, the minute people take note of how you dress or find out where you studied; you’re going to be submitted to a barrage of stereotypes ranging from the type of stores you frequent, to the designer purses you supposedly sport, to the types of jobs you’re going to get. All these stereotypes, however, point to extreme social privilege. Furthermore, at no point in time is their humanity questioned nor is their skin color related to some type of pathology or imminent danger as is the case for Black Islanders (see Chapter 5).

According to Gabriela, however, this is only the tip of the iceberg. From her perspective, being taken as a “blanquita” implies being actively marginalized from different social groups and having your life experience completely disregarded. She explains: “They don’t take me into consideration. Like, if we’re having a conversation, my opinion is not thought of as valid because I haven’t lived through anything, because

I’m considered a blanquita” (pp.14). Carla adds to Gabriela’s description, stating that when you walk out on the street, “you’re a strange bird. People laugh at you” (pp. 11).

It is important to note that the resistance and marginalization that Carla and

Gabriela talk about was only experienced when they entered social and physical spaces

90 that were outside of the more exclusive and prestigious venues people of their class status usually frequent. Thus, it was only when trying to step outside of their immediate social circle and take part in less privileged and/or more racially diverse environments that their social standing and personal character came into question. The alleged discrimination then is not by any means widespread and could in fact be conceptualized as more of a collective resistance to the social and racial privilege the two respondents embody.

Furthermore, according to both respondents, this anti-blanquit@ discrimination is easy to overcome. When asked in what ways can this alleged stereotyping and discrimination be combated, Carla stated that you simply had to be yourself around people and that they would eventually start viewing you different and treating you with respect. It was at this point that the two respondents began differentiating themselves from other “blanquit@s” using a similar rationale to the one me and my friends exploited during our time in high school.

In their view, Carla and Gabriela, were different from the typical or average

“blanquita” because they were not overly concerned with the designer fashion world nor were they as frivolous to be interested solely in the superficial characteristics of the people they came in contact with. Furthermore, they were not caught up in nor they did obsess on the “whole racial thing.” Throughout their interview, they made it a point to refute and negate the existence of pure white and Black people in Puerto Rico. According to them, anybody who made a claim to whiteness was being ridiculous and therefore, they proceeded to call out acquaintances and former high school classmates and even faculty on their anti-Black attitudes.

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In spite of this, however, both respondents referenced essentialist notions of whiteness and Blackness (Frankenberg, 1994) in their discourse. Whether given a positive or negative spin, Blackness in their talk appeared to be naturally “rebellious,”

“boisterous,” “unruly” and “passionate.” Whiteness on the other hand, was always more subdued, more maniacal, more mental. And as was the case with Fernando and Benny,

Carla and Gabriela, associated themselves with so-called white characteristics or qualities, and referenced them solely on those occasions when they were differentiating themselves from the mass of Puerto Rican peoples, who directly or indirectly, came to embody so-called Black characteristics or qualities.

It thus becomes apparent that the blanquit@ racializes Puerto Rican culture and identity. Through this process, that which is found to be closest to the Puerto Rican essence is undeniably darker, whether in actual physical appearance or in character. This racialization then makes everything associated with Puerto Rico appear somehow inferior, low-brow and/or in poor taste.

CHAPTER 5 RACIAL IMAGERY: EL NEGRO, EL CAFRE Y LOS DOMINICANOS

A Different Kind of Black

Back home from college over the summer and my mom was having a small family

gathering at her house. First to arrive was Georgie, my mother’s second cousin on her

father’s side. Since she was still scrambling around in the house, trying to get the food

and drinks ready for the rest of the family, I had to tend to Georgie. In her words, I was

supposed to “entertain” him, to engage him in conversation and “shower him with

kindness.” My mother has always been big on “entertaining” people. She has always

placed a high premium on effective conversational skills, personal courtesy and good

manners. Therefore, she’s always been on my case whether trying to get me to talk more

to people; to look them in the eye; to offer them something to drink if they’re visiting us;

to not ask for something to drink if we’re visiting them; to look, act and genuinely be

interested in what they’re saying; and most importantly, to always showcase my class

because the family name was always at stake.

And so, Georgie and I sat face to face in the living room with the coffee table between us, silently and painstakingly trying to swing in our chairs. All the basic and obligatory topics that could be covered on that occasion had been exhausted in a seemingly pleasant though markedly uneasy banter. I had already asked about his sons and wife and why they hadn’t been able to join us that day and how that was a shame. I had suffered through his brief interrogation of my personal interests, studies, career goals,

social life etc. We had agreed on the fact that neither sociology nor poetry made any

92 93 money and that maybe I should consider other, more lucrative and allegedly less

“thankless” professions. In spite of the excruciating character of our conversation, I had managed to look interested, smile, offer refills and be gracious enough to uphold the family name in the face of a distant relative. Needless to say, my mother would have been proud.

Unfortunately, my mother was not there to look and act proud of me and ultimately, to excuse me from the conversation. Thus, after fifteen minutes Georgie and I ran into each other’s silence. We sipped our drinks furiously and made fleeting remarks about the weather or the news or how hot it got inside the house. Eventually I cracked.

The pressure of being a good host had gotten to me and I had no choice but to ask him to share some family history. Immediately his face lit up. He smiled joyously and said “of course.”

As he went on and on about how my ancestors were such good and respectable individuals, prominent community members with innumerable ties to well-known

Spanish families and the like, he stumbled on the story about the one brother who married a Black Puerto Rican woman. The moment he said this, his face soured and he felt compelled to explain. It was as if that particular image did not fit within the prestigious and honorable family picture he had been sketching out minutes before. With a tender and reassuring look in his eyes, he said “You know, Mildred was a good woman. Black, but descent. Very refined.”

At that point my conversational skills were forgotten. Instead of looking interested,

I stared at him blankly, having been taken aback by his comment. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t even offer him another refill. I just sat there, quietly taking in and not challenging

94 his racism; feeling ultimately complicit in it; facing the shame and hatred implicit in our family name.

It seemed to me then that as a family we were very well-mannered, polite, and courteous. We were great at “entertaining” people. We were proud and had a right to be proud of our ties to prominent members of Island society. We were so great that even the

Black element in our family was exceptional and exemplary.

Black Who? What?

Blackness in Puerto Rico is either purposely made invisible or blatant in talk. The speaker is never indifferent to the Black other. Respondents’ accounts point to the thought processes involved in determining how they should talk to and/or talk about a dark-skinned Islander. Depending on the situation, skin color is either avoided in conversation or it is actively (and obsessively) evoked. On the one hand, several respondents expressed concern about calling a particular person “Black” because it might hurt their feelings and on the other, every single self-identified Black respondent in the study commented on how their nickname in different social groups growing up would always be “el negro” o “la negra” (blackie). Even more intriguing, one particular respondent commented on how several of her light skinned acquaintances disapprove of her calling herself “Black” and have even chastised her for doing so because they perceive her to be different or better or separate from “real” Black people. This section examines Islanders’ conflicted relationship with Blackness as manifested in their speech and conversation.

Something about The Subject Makes It Hard to Name

According to Gregorio, a 27 year old self identified copper-colored paralegal,

“talking to a person about their skin color is very difficult in this country because he may

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feel like you’re disvaluing him as human being by calling him Black” (pp.6). It is clear in

this statement, that Gregorio does not see any potential for pride in Blackness. Nothing

good can come out of that association. Therefore, in his view it is better to sidestep the

issue of skin color completely so as to not run the risk of hurting anyone’s feelings. This

is specially the case with individuals of mixed racial heritage. Gregorio states: “I don’t

want to get into the head of a guy who feels he is mulatto, who doesn’t feel Black and tell

him, brother, you’re Black” (pp.6). The problem with this of course is that Gregorio is

not able to visualize the mulatto identification as an independent and complex identity on

its own, thus making both the white and Black labels equally wrong or insulting. The fact

is that in Gregorio’s view the mulatto identity is unstable, and that instability is due to its

close proximity with Blackness. Mistaking that individual for white doesn’t concern him.

In his view, nothing even remotely bad can come out of “getting in the head of a guy”

and telling him he’s white. The racial insult is simply not present there.

Graciela, a 22 year old self-identified white college senior, also avoids making direct references to another’s perceived Blackness. When asked about the relationship with her Black best friend, Graciela tells us:

She’s exactly like me. [Q. In what way?] In my view she doesn’t even know the meaning of racism. She doesn’t care. She’s never aware of that. She never talks about it. She…I don’t know. It’s as if she wasn’t Black. (pp. 3-4)

At first sight, the most disturbing aspect about Graciela’s above statement is the negation of her best friend’s Blackness. One might be appalled by the liberty she feels she has in literally seizing and disposing of her best friend’s racial identity. However, subsequent readings lead to even more startling discoveries. According to Graciela, her best friend doesn’t even know what racism is; she is not aware it. One might assume then that in Graciela’s relationship with her friend, she has never found it pertinent to discuss

96 issues of race with her; to find out how her friend might interpret certain situations differently from her; how the friend’s daily experience might differ from Graciela’s on account of her skin color. The friendship then appears to be possible in large part to the negation or presumed invisibility of the racial difference between them. “She’s exactly like me,” meaning “we don’t ever talk about her being Black.” Inter-racial bonding in this case, does not lead to a heightened or more critical awareness in the white person as to racial matters. On the contrary, the inter-racial bonding is only possible if the white person can keep on acting as if the Black other wasn’t Black at all.

Kattia, 28 year old self identified Black secretary and graduate student, offers a similar scenario. When asked how she identifies herself in terms of race, she states:

Black. Since I was little. I don’t have any problems with that. People, however…when I say “because I’m Black,” they go “Oohh, no! Why would you say that?” That happens in any situation, any place that I’m in and I say “I’m Black,”that happens. It’s like “ooohhh, not Black!” You know, as if it were, like, I’m missing the word. As if it were bad. (pp.1)

Much like Graciela, the people Kattia is talking about, demonstrate a vested interest in not having to see their friend or acquaintance as Black. Here, again, outsiders feel in liberty to seize and dispose of the Black other’s racial identity. In Kattia’s case they question her motivations in even publicly identifying herself as such (“Why would you say that?”) and then outright negate her claim (“Ooh, not Black!”). The pertinent question at this juncture is what exactly is the motivation for this negation? Is it abhorrence for having someone they like associated (voluntarily or not) with Blackness because they feel that the person is too good to be put in that category? Or is it because they themselves do not want to be reminded of their relationship with a Black individual? In other words, is the racism present in that negation attempting to separate the “exceptional” Black from the mass or is it trying to excuse the inter-racial contact taking place?

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Blackness in the Puerto Rican Imagination

If one were to base one’s explanation on Gregorio’s comments at the beginning of

the section, anti-Black racism here would be used to differentiate one particular Black

individual from the rest. In this case, Kattia’s acquaintances would in their mind be

shielding her from all the negative elements associated with Blackness. They wouldn’t

want her to look down on herself, or develop any psycho-emotional hang ups so they do

not let her claim a Black identity. In their view, they would be granting her special status

by negating her professed Blackness and making her an unidentified or indescribable

member of their group.

One could also make an argument, however, that because nothing positive is ever

associated with Blackness, that “well-meaning” and “descent” light-skinned and/or white

Islanders wouldn’t like to think of themselves as having anything in common with a

Black individual, regardless of who they may be. Looking at it from this perspective, one

could interpret Graciela’s description of her Black friend “She’s exactly like me,” as not

necessarily meaning “she is not Black” but rather “She can’t be Black.” In other words, if

“I see so much of me in her and I’m definitely not Black, she has to be white as well.”

Ironically, Islanders’ frequent negation of the perceived and/or admitted Blackness

in others is often times accompanied by the explicit and unapologetic labeling and name-

calling of their Black counterparts. Islanders (mostly white) tend to highlight the racial difference between themselves and others in different social situations. They do so mostly by labeling particular members of their social group as “el negro” or “la negra”

(i.e. “blackie”).

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El Negro/La Negra

According to Fernando, a 22 year old self-identified white law student, one of the main differences between the nature of race relations on the Island versus those in the

United States is that you can openly make these types of racial distinctions without opposition. He explains:

Also, in the U.S. you say the word “negro” in English—“Nigger”—and you create this chaos. However, in Puerto Rico in high school if there was one or two of the kids who was really really Black, you would just call him “el negro” and that was it. Problem solved. It simply wasn’t an issue like in the States. (pp.2-3)

An intriguing aspect of this statement is the English translation that Fernando offers for “negro.” In his mind “nigger” and “Black” are synonymous and the big difference between Black people in the United States and Black people in Puerto Rico is that Black

Puerto Ricans don’t throw a fit when you call them “niggers.”

Fernando views the Island racial landscape as more liberal. He feels he has the freedom in the Island to mark off and label his Black counterparts openly and at will.

Whether Fernando is consciously referencing the historical oppression latent in the term

“nigger” and actively applying it to Black Islanders in regular conversation is unknown.

What is evident, however, in his statement is the necessity he feels to immediately label and differentiate himself from the one or two “really really Black” individuals that enter and/or share his same social space: “You would just call him ‘el negro’ and that was it.”

The racial difference between the two has to be publicly acknowledged by the white speaker. It has to be made clear to the Black other that he/she is not white and therefore different or less than or somehow infringing on white space.

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Franco, a 19 year old college student who identifies himself as “a white man with a

Black butt,” spoke of a similar dynamic among his friends in the private and predominantly white high school he attended:

I really can’t tell you of any type of discrimination in school. I can only tell you of how we would joke around amongst ourselves. Like, there was this friend of ours that we would call “blur.” So one of us would go “they turned off the lights, ‘blur’, we can’t see you.” You know, it was things like that, just to have fun not to offend anybody or nothing. And obviously he didn’t get offended either. (pp.5)

For Franco and his friends, the Black kid’s skin color was a source of humor and it made him the constant butt of their jokes. Here, Blackness becomes a platform for bonding and camaraderie between lighter skinned friends. Nothing serious or demeaning is meant by the use of the nickname and Franco not only assumes that anything said would ever bother the Black friend but his use of the word “obviously” indicates that he actually expected his friend to not get upset.

Franco goes on to further excuse and explain the “harmless” nature of the nickname by stressing how everybody at one point or another was made the butt of everyone else’s jokes:

You know, the same thing would happen if somebody very white passed in front of a white wall. You would be like “man, that wall was contagious.” Nothing very serious, you know. Like the use of “look you fucking blackie,” it was all in good fun because a ‘trigueñito’ (dark-skinned kid) could even say it to another ‘trigueñito.’ (pp.5)

In Franco’s mind, there is a democracy in humor. It is perfectly okay to call out

Black schoolmates yelling “look, you fucking blackie” because the really pale white kid gets made fun of too. Moreover, the fact that darker skinned kids would refer to each other using racialized terms, justifies light skinned and white kids’ use of those same terms. The fact of the matter is that Franco speaks of having no single conversation on the subject with any of the Black kids he would joke about. At no time did he wonder or

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ask if the racial jokes were actually taken by his Black counterparts as “all in good fun.”

The working assumption is that Blackness can either be talked about or not, depending

fully on how the non-Black speaker feels at any particular moment. Black skin then is

perceived by others as fair-game.

Isabel, a 19 year old self identified Black sophomore, speaks of her long time bouts

with the “negra” and “negrita” monikers and the resistance she’s encountered when

expressing opposition to her friends’ use of the terms:

My nickname from seventh to twelfth grade was always “negrita” or “negra.” It came to a point…I never got bothered by it because I’ve always been proud of that [her Black heritage] but I don’t like it when they use the diminutive form because I think it’s demeaning. You know, call me “negra.” But they would get mad at me because I was supposedly getting all worked up and on their case. And I’m like, “I’m not getting on your case, I just don’t like to be called that.” That always happened, you know, people’s ignorance. (pp.3)

The minute Isabel speaks up against the name-calling she is accused of getting too touchy and worked up about the subject. Non-Black others see no reason for Isabel to get upset. Her complaint is viewed as totally unwarranted and not justified.

Stanley, 19 year old college self identified Black sophomore, has had very similar experiences to Isabel’s both in high school and college. In high school he was one of only two Black kids in his entire class. At first, both of them were referred to by their classmates as “el negro” or “los negros.” However, since the other kid was darker than

Stanley, the “negro” moniker was lifted from the respondent’s head and Stanley “was able to have his name again” (pp.4). Upon entering college, however, the name-calling became an issue for him once more, as he illustrates in the following statement:

You know nobody calls me “hey, you fucker” when they want me to come over. If they’re calling me it’s “hey, look you Black fucker.” They do it so as to reaffirm that I’m Black. It has to be the “Black fucker.” If they’re referring to me it has to be “Black” something. You know, if you were to call that kid next to me, you wouldn’t go “hey, whitey.” At least that’s what I think. (pp.4)

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The tendency to “color” dark-skinned Islanders in speech is indicative of Islanders’ treatment of Blackness as marginal and therefore weird, noteworthy, pronounced and/or

abnormal. It implies that whiteness in Puerto Rico or at the very least light skin is

conceptualized as the norm. Similar to U.S. constructions of race, where whiteness is

treated as “just” human (Dyer, 1997), in Puerto Rico white skin simply means Puerto

Rican. Dark skinned Islanders then by definition, stand out. Their presence rattles the

image of a racially mixed (meaning whitened) Island landscape, making non-Black

Puerto Ricans somehow uneasy and provoking in them the urge to verbally and publicly

identify them by their color; by their presumed break with normal, typical or average

Puerto Ricanness. The “coloring” act then is one of making unstated racial/ethnic and

maybe even national and cultural boundaries evident through talk.

Cafres

The most frequent and marked differentiation light skinned and/or self identified

white respondents made between themselves and “other” Puerto Ricans, was the one

between the “hard-working and descent people of the Island” and the “cafres” (i.e.

“thugs,” “hoodlums,” “low-lifes”). Concomitantly, one of the most prevalent complaints

dark skinned and/or self identified Black respondents made regarding the treatment

afforded to them by whites, was the vision of them as “cafres,” or “thugs.” An analysis of

the racial/racist connotations of this term is necessary.

Cafres: The Basics

In the Island imagination, a cafre is a low-life; a hoodlum. He has no sense of

proper social etiquette or manners. He is rude, loud, and belligerent. Depending on whom

you ask he has no visible concern for the welfare of others. He is often seen as the culprit

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of a myriad of social improprieties and rule breaks. Needless to say he is uneducated and

poor. According to some, he has no conception of what hard work is nor does he have

any intention of bettering himself and his socio economic situation through legal

channels. For most part he is considered a nuisance. Somebody that you unfortunately

have to put up with on line for the movie theater, next to you in the expressway, or

simply while walking around in the capital. Depending on who you are talking to, he can

either be the exception to the rule of what an average Puerto Rican is like or he

exemplifies what the masses of Islanders truly are: an embarrassment.

The cafre is principally identified by his attire: baggy jeans, cap, sports jersey, gold

chains. He is a mainstay of certain social and geographical locations. Cafres abound on

the red eye from New York to Puerto Rico, where they clap furiously upon landing. They

overflow the discos and nightclubs that feature reggeatón and rap music. In the minds of

a few, they even crowd local television programming which is notorious for its bad taste

and crude humor. Cafres are seen as always harboring the possibility of making a decent person’s life somehow worse. A cafre can either steal your cable, or cut in front of you in line, or disrupt a nice and classy social gathering.

The country can also be lost to cafres. Notions of a culture of poverty, of extreme

social backwardness and of an irremediable Blackness envelop this figure. Either he is

phenotipically Black and therefore dangerous or has a dark past and therefore violent, or

engages in murky and sinister dealings, so one must keep away from him.

All in all, cafres ruin Puerto Ricans’ reputation and “good name.” The cafre is often

the reason “decent” and upwardly mobile Islanders give for white America’s

mistreatment of and prejudice against Puerto Ricans. In other words, the cafre explains

103 away American racism. Almost always American racism, though unfortunate, is understandable in many Puerto Ricans’ minds when one considers the cafres that white

Americans have to put up with in New York City or the cafres that hang out in the clubs and hotels that white tourists frequent when they come to Puerto Rico, or the cafres they see in the movies.

Cafre Looks

As stated above, one of the principal cafre markers is clothing attire. According to all respondents, Puerto Rican people are very much concerned with how people look. In respondents’ view, Islanders tend to be very judgmental and often make assumptions as to a particular person’s or group of people’s character depending on how they dress. The terms “good” and “bad” appearance were thus mentioned in every single interview. This was especially the case when non-Black respondents were asked to consider what type of qualities or personality characteristics were associated with Black individuals. Non-Black respondents would often sidestep the issue of race completely and instead opt to talk about “appearances” in an effort to downplay the effect that race had on Islanders’ lives.

According to them, it all had to do with the manner in which a person, regardless of color, presented him or herself in front of others.

Consequently, self-identified non-Black respondents for example, pointed out the difference in treatment that a dark skinned Islander would receive depending on his/her dress. If the Black Islander was dressed in typical “cafre” or “Hip Hop” fashion (i.e. baggy jeans, oversized t-shirts, caps, gold chains, etc.), then he/she would probably be looked down upon, perceived with distrust and/or actively shunned by society. However, if that person was instead dressed in a more “proper” and/or “elegant” attire (i.e. slacks,

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polo shirts, business suits etc.) then his/her experiences with discrimination would be considerably fewer and far between.

Through these distinctions, respondents were hoping to demonstrate the far more reaching effect that class status had over race on the Island. However, as made evident in

Raul’s comments below, “good appearance” and “good manners” simply serve as coded language that Islanders employ to make racial distinctions among the population without having to sound racist. Asked about difference between white and Black Islanders, the 18 year old self identified white college freshman stated:

Q. Are there qualities and characteristics that are exclusive to white Puerto Ricans?

R. Whites like dressing better and have a better appearance overall than Blacks. There’s also different styles of dress: there’s Blacks who dress like whites, whites that dress like Blacks. But there are differences [between the two races].

Q. What would be considered white dress?

R. White dress would be a polo shirt, jeans, nice shoes. And people of color would be like super big jeans, a super big T-shirt and a baseball cap to the side.

Q. What do you mean when you say “good appearance”?

R. It has to do with the way a person’s dressed but also with how they act.

Q. How would that be?

R. Respectful, kind with people. Courteous…

Q. And you associate “good appearance” more with whites, Blacks or with all Puerto Ricans across the board?

R. I think that I associate it more with whites.

Class only goes so far in Raul’s description of appearances. The mere cataloguing of “Black” and “White” dress along with the equation of clothing attire with a person’s character, evidence the social weight of racial heritage and/or skin color in determining who is to be respected in Puerto Rico and who is to be feared; what population constitutes

105 the idealized faces of Puerto Rican culture and what population needs to be kept in check; what constitutes the decent and noble segment of Puerto Rico and what classifies as the

“cafre” majority or exception.

Class difference simply does not account for the Black/white polarity evident in

Raul’s statement. Whiteness, on its face, evokes positive and pristine images. It invokes trust; safety. For Raul, the image of the white Puerto Rican is comforting, pleasant.

Blackness on the other hand takes on a dissonant and disruptive presence in the environment. Much like in Benny’s statements in the previous chapter, it always comes off as cafre, cheap and in poor taste no matter how it’s dressed.

Cafre as in Criminal

Running parallel to the discourse on the distasteful nature of cafres was that of the danger associated with the cafre figure and the Black male body in general. The moment that an unidentified Black male presence was felt car doors had to be locked, girlfriends held tighter and decent white islanders had to cross over to the other side of the street in order to avoid a stickup or any other type of ill-fated encounter. Personal experience did not appear to be factor shaping these beliefs. None of the respondents who pontificated about the supposed violence inherent in the Black male figure, spoke about an unfortunate incident either they or a loved one were involved in with a Black male on the street. Respondents simply took it as a given. In these accounts, the racist thought behind the aversion to the Black male body was at times acknowledged yet quickly disregarded due to the more significant concerns surrounding personal safety and security. In other words, several white respondents identified racist stereotypes as spearheading their aversion and fear towards their Black male counterparts yet understood it to be a

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necessary evil because “you simply didn’t know when something terrible was going to

happen.”

Of those who spoke about the importance of placing notions of personal safety ahead of anti-racist thought and action, the most eloquent and sincere was Ernesto, a 22 year old self identified white Medical student. In speaking of looking at Black Islanders differently than whites, he states:

I think that in reality there is no reason to look at them differently until you have to deal with security issues. When personal security is at stake….You know, security in terms of avoiding a stickup. I think that many people prefer to play it safe as opposed to experimenting and taking a chance with the person passing by. For example, if you’re walking down an empty and dark street with your girlfriend at midnight and you run into two Black individuals, you prefer avoiding them as opposed to confronting them, although you’re really not confronting them, you would simply be passing them by. But in the face of that uncertainty, you prefer to play it safe and just because you did that you’re already discriminating against them even though you don’t really want to do it. (pp.5)

On the one hand, Ernesto knows that his actions are wrong; that he is in fact discriminating against his Black counterparts. However, he perceives his actions to be wrong in that he knows that acting that way may make the Black man feel bad about himself, and not because the beliefs he holds are ludicrous and prejudicial. On the contrary, in his mind Black males are in reality more prone to crime than whites. That for him is not an issue. What gets to him is that on account of this reality, he has to expect the worse out of every single Black man he encounters and thus, actively shun well- meaning Black males walking down the street. The racism here then is not only made to sound reasonable but it ultimately is the fault of the overwhelming criminal Black element, not of the overly imaginative racist white mind.

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The absurd and ridiculous character of Ernesto’s rationale is made further evident

in the following statement. When asked if there were any advantages associated with

being Black in Puerto Rico, he commented:

Definitely there are no advantages in being Black in Puerto Rico. The only advantage would be that you can count on people’s support to back you up. If you need to kill someone, you can do it more easily and in terms of economics, you could probably have a drug business in your neighborhood because the people there can identify with you. (pp.9)

It thus becomes evident than in Ernesto’s mind, there are certain qualities or characteristics inherent in Black people that make them a natural fit for a life of crime.

There is no possible sociological or economical explanation to even consider. The core essence of Island Blackness is criminal.

Raul shares Ernesto’s vision of the criminal Black man. Much like Ernesto, elements of the urban landscape combine with visions of dangerous Black men to create an unsafe environment for white Islanders. Raul states: “If you’re in your car and you notice that somebody is giving you nasty looks and you look over and it’s a Black guy, you’re like “Damn!”, this guy wants to stick me up or he wants to do something to me…”

(pp.2). However, contrary to Ernesto, the reasons Raul gives for Black Islanders’ criminality have more to do with the prevailing social order than any type of criminal

Black nature. He identifies a pretty much clear cut racial divide along class lines in

Puerto Rico, with white Islanders wielding the majority of economic and political power.

Consequently, according to Raul, the people of the lower class, who are darker skinned for the most part, are envious of what white people have and this may drive them to steal it. Raul explains:

I think there is [envy] in all social classes but in the lower class you see it a lot, you know, they see these people who have bettered themselves and this person comes from the projects and they see this 16 year old kid in a BMW and

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they’re like “Let’s kill him.” Like, I think many of the murders that take place in Puerto Rico have to do with envy. You know, there’s people who haven’t been able to better themselves for whatever reason and they are jealous of those who actually have. (pp.2)

Like Ernesto, Raul readily admits that there is something wrong with this type of thought processes. He even takes it a step further than Ernesto, stating that everybody is equal irrespective of skin color. However, the moment he makes this assertion, he backtracks, stating: “But also, people of color have a low self esteem, you know, maybe because they themselves say ‘Hell, they already look at me bad so I don’t care,’ so they don’t try to better themselves. They’re like ‘I’m like this and I don’t care’” (pp.3).

Consequently, he partakes in the same evasion strategy: An admission of white guilt or of a moral wrong is immediately followed and discounted by something Black Islanders willingly do to themselves. In this fashion, all is forgiven and white racist thought and action can remain unchanged.

For all that Ernesto’s and Raul’s statements on the presumed criminality of Black

Islanders are troublesome and disheartening, Javier’s account of the game he and his friends used to play in high school takes white Islanders’ fear of Blackness to an entirely different level. The respondent, an 18 year old self-identified white college freshman who attended a private Catholic High School on the Island, when asked about the origins of his fear of Black males, answered:

I don’t know. Things I’ve seen, things I’ve read, things I’ve lived. Well, not lived but things I’ve seen in television, things I’ve been taught. Not that my parents have taught me these things, but things I’ve learned in different places, things that my friends say. [Q. Like what?] They would say if an ugly black comes up to you in an alley, that type of thing. For example, a very common game in my high school was the ugly black. You would say ugly black. Very strong. When an ugly black jumps up at you what you going to tell him? Or if an ugly black comes to stick you up? Or an ugly black approaches you and asks you for money? Or if one of these ugly blacks in San Juan comes to ask you for a cigarette? These kinds of things that your friends say. (pp.4)

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Javier corrects himself twice in the previous statement. Asked about where he learned that Black people were dangerous, he initially refers to lived experience only to quickly take it back and then when acknowledging that people may have taught him to think that way, he immediately feels pressed to clarify that his parents weren’t the ones who transmitted this racist knowledge onto him. Thus, much like in Ernesto and Raul’s case, Javier’s racist comments are interlaced with notions of racism as a moral wrong. He could neither bring himself to lie about his lived experience thus voluntarily reducing the validity of his comments, nor could he leave the interviewer with the impression that he was taught to be racist in his home. Like the other two respondents, he appears to be very much invested in maintaining the image of a rational, moral and well-meaning individual.

Consequently, racism is always described by these three respondents as either an external force that they somehow picked up along the way, or as the only rational decision in the face of Black Islanders’ bad attitude and nefarious actions.

The importance of this trend notwithstanding, the most startling and intriguing aspect of Javier’s statements has to do with the ugly Black game he played in high school.

Here the Black male character transcends the category of “dangerous” or “criminal” to become a type of boogey man. The ugly Black makes the dark skinned male Islander seem ghastly and inhuman. The game literally takes white fear of Black Islanders and develops a ghost story designed to freak out and test the mettle of young white Islanders during recess: “What would you do?”

According to Javier, the point of the game was to come up with the most creative answer possible; to give a detailed description of how you would handle or dispose of the ugly Black. The game then seeks to jolt the white racist imagination. It provides a

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hypothetical “fix” for the white racist mind. In the game, contrary to real life, the white

actor actually confronts the ugly Black. In the game, white Islanders are not forced to

cross the street. They fight it out.

It must be remembered that the white actor’s reaction is the only fictional element

employed in the game. It is evident in Raul and Ernesto’s earlier statements that the real

life Black male Islander is actively perceived to be threatening. He really is dangerous.

He truly does want to hurt you. From the white Islander perspective, that part of the game

is not make believe. Actually, it is hard to make a distinction between the opening line of

the game (“What would you do if an ugly black comes up to you in the street?”) and

Ernesto’s real-life accounts of a Black man walking towards him on the street (“you’re walking down an empty and dark street with your girlfriend at midnight and you run into

two Black individuals”). In fact, the only marked difference between respondents’ real

life accounts and the ugly Black game, is that in the game white Islanders have no real

fear of Blacks and are therefore capable of hurting them.

Dominicans in the Island Imagination

While Puerto Rican Blackness can at times be diminished, excused and/or made

invisible, and at others, highlighted, underscored and made painfully evident,

Dominicanness in the Island Imagination invariably means, signifies and/or is made to

stand in for Black. As Kattia puts it: “Here, Black is Dominican. That’s it” (pp. 4). It

represents the only constant, fixed and irremediable source of Blackness on the Island.

Often, when questioned about the existence of racism in Puerto Rico, respondents would

talk about the treatment of Dominican migrants as either the main or sole instance of

racial discrimination on the Island. The Dominican experience, enveloped in illegality,

then becomes the principal depository for Islanders’ most extreme and insidious anti-

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Black beliefs and attitudes. In a way, anti-Black racism becomes justified or even morally

and socially acceptable when it is directed at Dominicans. Viewed as ethnic, national and

social outsiders, many Islanders do not feel that they have to police and/or qualify their

comments about Dominican migrants as they do when talking to or about Black Puerto

Ricans.

Luis Rafael Sanchez (2004) writes about the casual and acceptable form anti-

Dominican racism and xenophobia undertake on the Island. He specifically speaks about how otherwise well-meaning, intelligent and sensible individuals partake in blatant racist talk and joke telling about Dominicans without giving a thought as to the moral and/or

social implications of their actions. From the author’s viewpoint, what Islanders are

failing to realize is how so-called Dominican jokes on the Island are in effect Puerto

Rican jokes in the U.S. They fail to see the international continuum of racist ideology and

discrimination.

Pedro, 29 year old self identified Black PhD student, concurs with Sanchez’s

(2004) view and offers his own theoretical interpretation of anti-Dominican humor on the

Island. He states:

Dominican jokes are the order of the day. The Dominican here is viewed like the other; he is viewed as the Black. He is viewed as the bad guy and the joke telling is constant and even natural. It’s the same over there [in the Dominican Republic] with the jokes about Haitian people. But here it’s a joke about the Dominican as the dumb Black man. And we don’t analyze their situation, because the Dominican who comes here arrives in a “yola” (makeshift raft) and does so because of the terrible conditions over there. So they don’t have the technological advancements and means that we have over here so when they come here, there’s a clash. [But people don’t see that] and say that it’s because they’re Black. But if a gringo comes here who’s never seen a beach and they get all exited and wild, it’s the same clash. But they [Islanders] see him as the giant of the north and they see the other one [Dominican migrant] as the poor Black that doesn’t know anything. These jokes then reflect the collective thought of people who are discriminating. (pp.7)

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In the above statement, Pedro uncovers and attacks the anti-immigrant and anti-

Black character of Dominican jokes. He then proceeds to make the connections between

the jokes told in Puerto Rico about Dominicans and those told in the Dominican Republic against Haitians, thus highlighting the continuum of racism across different national and social contexts and hinting on how the power imbalance in the particular context is reflected in the joke. The issue of power imbalance and power structure is quickly brought to the surface as Pedro compares Islanders’ reactions to Dominicans’ attempts at adaptation with those of white Americans. In Pedro’s mind, Puerto Rican’s colonial condition impedes anti-American mockery at the same time that it permits and enables anti-Dominican humor.

Furthermore, while certain anti-Black Puerto Rican comments might be considered distasteful if disseminated through the different media outlets, many radio show hosts and callers engage in anti-Dominican humor on a regular basis. Gretchen, a 19 year old self identified dark-skinned college student explains:

You hear it on the radio. People call the talk shows on the radio to complain that Dominicans come to the Island to take our jobs away. And that’ not true because the jobs that Dominicans do are the jobs that nobody here wants to do. Not a single person here wants to deal with the type of pressures associated with those jobs. (pp.2-3)

According to Sanchez (2004) the overt and widespread character of anti-Dominican

racism and discrimination unearths and places a spotlight on Puerto Rico’s covert anti-

Black prejudice. In the author’s view, Islanders’ extreme disdain and hatred for

Dominicans—focused for the most part on their Blackness—is the most visible and

obvious manifestation of the Island’s deep-seated racial problem.

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One of the most troublesome aspects of the equation of Dominicanness with

Blackness is that the Black element on the Island becomes further stigmatized as not only negative and/or inferior, but is also construed to be foreign, illegal and invasive.

Blackness, as a corrosive element, infiltrates and attacks Puerto Rican society from the outside. Similar to how African-Americans are viewed by mainstream U.S. society

(Zuckerman, 2004; Dubois, 1999), Black Puerto Ricans are seen as not a constitutive element of the Island’s cultural fabric but rather as a problem; as an external threat that must be somehow dealt with, whether through assimilation or termination.

CHAPTER 6 U.S. RACISM WITH A TAN

A lot of the racism here has to do with the racism over there. People imitate behaviors and they adopt the United States as a model. And still in the U.S., although slavery ended many years ago, the Black man is still viewed as the lowest possible form of being. And there’s millions of people in the U.S., but the Black man is always seen as the most downtrodden. That still hasn’t changed. Constitution or not, it doesn’t change. And here in Puerto Rico, the one who is a racist extremist is exactly the same as the Southern American. -Isabel (pp.7)

Blanquito in Blackface

I remember the smell of the burning cork in the ashtray, the residues of a black paste-like substance in the bowl. I remember us getting ushered into one of the bedrooms so we could change: white t-shirt, backwards cap. I was the oldest. It was the summer between fifth and sixth grade. I remember my uncle’s ex wife scooping the black paste from the bowl and lathering it on thick across each of our faces. It was important that we remain more or less in sync during the surprise performance.

She passed out leaflets with the song. It was supposed to be a joke. Funny. Cute.

The family, she said, would get a kick out of it.

It was my mother’s surprise birthday party at my uncle’s house. The family was gathered in the backyard engaged in their drinks and conversations. My cousins and I came out through the sliding doors in the living room lead by my uncle’s ex wife. The conversation ended abruptly. All eyes were on us. She had asked me to bring my boom box so she could walk around with it over her shoulder like the “hoodlums” did on the

114 115 street. I don’t really remember if she had given us chains to put on or not but for some reason I remember something heavy on or around my neck.

It was hot underneath the paste. My youngest cousin was already wiping it off with his thumb. We were all lined up in front of the party guests, staring at them blankly. All of a sudden she gave us the signal. Eyes fixed on the leaflet, we started rapping.

The family laughed and clapped in the yard. Everybody seemed to have enjoyed our performance. My mother told me to run in and get washed up so she could hug me properly and give me a kiss. By that point, my youngest cousin couldn’t take it anymore and he started wiping off the paste from his face with both hands and leaving his prints all over the outside and inside of the house. My uncle’s ex wife was right: The family definitely got a kick out of it. She was praised for her song-writing and rapping skills.

My mother left happy that night, thanking my uncle and his wife for a great party. I had to go back in the house after saying bye to everybody to get my boom box. I walked out with it toward the car, debating whether I should prop it up on my shoulder like my uncle’s ex wife had done. It looked really cool. As I opened the car door I noticed that I still had some paste in the back of my ears.

White Americans in the Island Imagination

Most, if not all, are cold, introverted and boring. They can be arrogant and ethnocentric. Many respondents highlighted white Americans’ presumed ignorance as it relates to world affairs. Those hailing from the north are usually blond, blue-eyed and rich. Those hailing from the south are for the most part white trash, rednecks or hillbillies. All of them, however, can be extremely racist. At best, they find Puerto Ricans exotic. At worst, they can come after you in a red pickup truck with a confederate flag and a shotgun. On the average, they are not able to locate Puerto Rico on a map and are

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very much prone to asking stupid questions regarding Islanders’ citizenship status, the

distance between Puerto Rico and Spain by car and the pitfalls of living in a pre-

industrial Island society. They are not cultured. They have no interest in other people’s religions, traditions or points of view. Everything in their life revolves around material possessions and technological advancement. They can’t dance. They don’t know how to party or have fun. They’re too uptight. Their families are dysfunctional. They are unable to show emotion. They are the complete opposite of the average or typical Puerto Rican.

They are missing some type of ingredient from their personality that keeps them drab and uninteresting.

They are mega-white, of course; able to trace their ancestors to the most privileged families in Western Europe. They couldn’t tolerate a drop of non-white blood in their gene pool. They hate African Americans to the point that they live in completely

segregated communities, attend different schools, churches and other public venues; to

the point that if an African American enters any one of those spaces they either move out

or they shoot him. They are all white supremacists. They’re the true Americans.

Everyone else is extra.

Gringos are Weird People to Me

Both Javier and Marcelo, two 19 year old light skinned male college students who

had recently completed their first year of studies in a stateside university, admit to having

had rather derogatory views of white Americans even before settling down in the U.S.

These views, according to them, arose mostly from what they read, saw on television

and/or heard from friends. Javier’s comments are exemplary:

I’ve always thought that [white] Americans were very selfish, all for their country, which of course is understandable because one always has love for your country but…I’ve always felt that [white] Americans were very self-minded,

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everything always for them…like they’re always thinking about themselves…always…always…if you’re not like them, you’re not for them. It’s evident in the history, with the problems that they have with Black people, with Latinos, with immigrants and this is something I’ve always felt about Americans…that they’re always for themselves, nothing for everybody else, everything for their country. (pp.2)

Here Javier demonstrates a certain degree of knowledge pertaining to historic white

American attitudes toward People of Color and on account of this he is very critical of

whites. By way of this critique, he is making an acute distinction between himself as a

Puerto Rican and them as white Americans. Also, and perhaps more importantly, he is

seemingly laying down the foundation for a linking of the Puerto Rican experience with

that of other Latin@s as well as with the African American experience. This reaching out

to the Black American community is made evident in the view Marcelo had of Black

Americans before leaving the Island to pursue his undergraduate studies:

From what I heard about Black Americans, mostly from my brother, was that they were more united, that they didn’t care, that they would look at you as if nothing, that they were always super cool with you, that, obviously, well…that, yeah, they were kind of “cafre” [thuggish], that, yeah, they were kind of you know but…[Q.”Cafre” in what way?]…Not that they were “cafre” but that…they were more like us…they were more…they dress how they want…they got their own style…it’s not like Americans. They got their sweat suits, whatever, their headbands, their…they were much more relax [than white Americans]. They were united, they stuck more to themselves and what not, but you would talk to them and it didn’t matter what race you were. They more or less identified with you. (pp.4)

Various elements are at play in this statement. First off, African Americans appear to the light skinned Puerto Rican as some kind of comfort figure. He does not have to be wary of them for they do not have the same attitude that whites are presumed to have toward him. Then there is the racist slip where Black Americans are defined as “cafre”— a comment that when questioned is quickly corrected by equating Black “thuggishness” with a positive Puerto Rican character and an overall uniqueness that makes Blacks decidedly different from whites. This difference is then further highlighted by noting how

118 unified Black people are and how they are not like Americans. This last statement is key for it marks how in the Puerto Rican conception of America, American means white.

Moreover, American whiteness is taken to be markedly different from Puerto Rican whiteness. When questioned about what he would answer if asked about his race, Javier stated:

Umh…I don’t know…umh…Hispanic…Latino. I can’t say white or of color or anything like that. [Q. Why?] Because, well because I don’t think I fall under white ‘cause that’s more the typical American, born and raised in the United States and I can’t say Black because I’m not like colored that way [points to his skin]. So it would be a third category that would be Hispanic or none of the above. (pp.1)

The rationale behind Javier’s rather hesitant and uneasy identification as neither white nor Black warrants some attention. In his mind, the difference between himself as a light skinned Puerto Rican and white Americans is based on the fact that he was not born and raised in the United States, whereas the difference between himself and Black

Americans is based strictly on skin color. Based solely on this comment it is not quite clear from whom he feels the most distant. His subsequent statement however does signal to a more Black oriented identification:

I think that there would be too great a difference between myself and a white American. In other words, I’m going to be more different from the white American than from the Black American because Black Americans have this attitude that because they experience racism, I can identify with them, like say “hey, it’s the same thing with Hispanics and Latinos, you know, what you were feeling twenty, thirty years ago and what you still feel, well, I’m feeling it now at its peak against Hispanics, against the Chinese, against Hindu people, all those people. I tend to think that the white guy is going to be a lot more intolerant. (pp.2)

Past and present white discrimination is again cited as one of the principal if not the main difference between Puerto Ricans and white Americans. However, for all the criticism of whites and the positive inter-ethnic solidarity invoked here, this pro-Black

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identification becomes troublesome when one takes into account the respondent’s

admitted lack of actual contact with African American people:

I’ve met like one or two at most [Black Americans] and they’re nice people and very…but it’s been much less than with white Americans, you know…at least in my group of friends, with the group of people that I hang out with is more difficult to find a Black American than a white American. A white American can come in the group and hang out with us. Black Americans very few. (pp.5)

The great majority of the two respondents’ inter ethnic relationships are with white

Americans. Moreover, their beliefs and opinions regarding the nature and tendencies of

Black Americans are shaped by what they receive from white owned media outlets as

well as from individual whites. Consequently, despite an initial identification with Black

Americans, Javier’s and Marcelo’s comments demonstrate very much the same anti-

Black prejudices that white Americans hold. Javier explains: “You always believe that

Black people are the trouble makers…it’s something that has been in society, like in the prisons there are ten Black people for 2 white people, that type of thing. You see that

Blacks are the troublemakers and what not” (pp.6).

Even though Javier referred to the discriminatory treatment afforded to People of

Color in his previous comments concerning his vision of white Americans as selfish, he now appears unable to make the link between the more general notion that there is discrimination and the specific consequences of that discrimination for the Black population. His identification with African Americans can then be taken to have originated from a sense of political correctness or can at the very least be viewed as premature. A key question thus arises: Is Javier’s perception of Black Americans learned in the U.S. or did it migrate with him from the Island?

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Jorge (Sketch)

Jorge is a light skinned Puerto Rican college student from the Island who came to visit some of his childhood friends who are now studying in the University and who happen to be neighbors of mine. After the proper introductions were made, and a couple of domino games were played between us, Jorge excused himself from the group to go to the bathroom. As he was walking to his friends’ apartment, he looked back toward the group—all light-skinned Puerto Rican males—and yelled “I’m gonna throw the Jackson

5 in the pool!” The group immediately burst with laughter, repeating Jorge’s comment between gulps of beer.

Needless to say, both Jorge’s comment and the group’s reaction to it shocked me.

The comment not only came out of the blue (there were no Black Americans present nor was any of the conversation about Black Americans) but it was also innovative. Jorge wasn’t just repeating centuries old racist epithets but was in fact being creative with some of the principle tenets of U.S. white racist ideology: that Blacks are ugly, disgusting, worthless etc. Furthermore, the group of light-skinned Puerto Rican kids that responded

to this comment with such glee did not hesitate in doing so. They did not look at each

other as if bewildered by the joke nor did a bunch of blank faces turn to stare at Jorge,

making him feel awkward or uncomfortable. The joke didn’t need an explanation. They

knew, understood and automatically responded, not only validating the racism

communicated in his humor but also bonding with him through their laughter.

After having witnessed this troubling interchange, I found myself posing a myriad

of internal questions: How does an Island born and bread Puerto Rican develop an anti-

Black ideology that is so similar if not identical to that of American whites? How much

does his own racial status on the Island play into that anti-Black sentiment? What does

121 this say about racism on the Island? And more specifically: What does it say about the interconnections between white American racism and Puerto Rican racist thought?

Racismo Allá/ Prejuicio Acá

For most respondents U.S. racism and Puerto Rican racism are two different animals. As discussed in a chapter three, racial discrimination in the United States was perceived by all respondents as much more of a social problem than on the Island. This, notwithstanding, analysis of respondents’ interviews has uncovered deeply rooted and pervasive anti-Black thought and praxis within the Island context. Furthermore, respondents’ comments have frequently echoed or referenced the racial mythology and history of the United States. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Islanders often merge Puerto Rican racial constructions and Island racial iconography with that of the imperial power, possibly illustrating the pervasiveness of U.S. racial ideology in Puerto

Rico. Whether by employing the term “nigger” to refer to Black Islanders as both

Fernando and Benny did in their interviews (see chapter four), or by equating as Marcelo did African-American “thuggery” with that of the “cafres” in Puerto Rico, U.S. and

Island racial/racist imagery became indistinguishable at times in respondents’ accounts.

By the same token, however, so-called racial issues were frequently downplayed by respondents—specifically by those who identified as white—through the use of a discourse that mostly downplayed the amount or level of “actual Blackness” in dark- skinned and/or Black Puerto Ricans. Paola, a 26 year old self-identified white restaurant hostess, for example, when asked what possible differences existed between Black Puerto

Ricans and African-Americans, stated:

There are many differences. I think that Black Puerto Ricans are much less aware or conscious of their Blackness. Therefore, they tend to not close themselves off

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in their own circle, because I don’t think that they even identify with a particular circle to be able to open it and close it. (pp. 3)

This image of “Black only circles” is important. About 80% of respondents described African-Americans as clannish and/or self-segregating. Although about half of these respondents viewed the alleged self-segregation practiced by African Americans as a result of or response to white American racism, this supposedly “closed” character helped to mark and define Blackness in the Puerto Rican mind set. Consequently, in the absence of that alleged self-segregation, respondents like Paola viewed Black Puerto

Ricans as somehow less Black and even not really Black at all. Racism, like the one found in the U.S., was then seen as improbable and/or ridiculous in Puerto Rico since there were no “actual” Black people on the Island; at least nobody as Black as African

Americans. Asked why she felt that Black Islanders lacked a clearly defined racial consciousness, Paola stated:

I imagine that it’s because people here [in Puerto Rico] are more racially mixed [than in the U.S.]. That makes it harder to draw the line between who is white and who is Black…You can have a neighborhood where it’s whites, Blacks and mulatos living together, whereas in the U.S. by and large you have whites in one neighborhood and Blacks in another. I imagine that it’s because of that. (pp.3)

The irony in Paola’s statement is that whiteness wasn’t diluted nor was white racial consciousness impeded from developing in the same way as Blackness and Black consciousness were diminished through racial mixing and residential integration.

Although she made it a point to stress that only privileged whites (i.e. “blanquit@s”) placed a big emphasis on whiteness, there was no single collective attitude, behavior and/or socio-historical circumstance that made white Puerto Ricans any less white.

Furthermore, what established and maintained the difference between the type of racial prejudice that could exist in Puerto Rico and the outright racism that existed in the states,

123 rested solely on the type or kind of Black people that lived in Puerto Rico, and not on anything related to light-skinned or white Puerto Ricans. Consequently, Puerto Rico was seen by respondents like Paola as less racist than the states simply because Black people were either less in numbers, less in kind or less of an issue on the Island than in the U.S.

African-Americans in the Island Imagination

They always walk or sit or stand around in packs. They’re scary, have stone-like faces and don’t much like talking to anybody that is not part of their group. They’re frightening and have no manners. They won’t open a door for you nor will they thank you if you open a door for them. They are either rappers or killers or wannabe rappers and killers. They’re proud, very proud of their heritage and belong to a tradition of rebels and survivors. They can dance better than anyone. They only wear sports jerseys, baggy pants and backwards caps. They tend to be very foulmouthed. No one ever talks to them.

They’re victims. They have a victim complex. They think every single white person that approaches them is racist. They have suffered through a history of anti-Black racism.

They were once slaves. Now they have quotas and Affirmative Action. They’re “ghetto.”

In a way, they can be compared to “cafres” in Puerto Rico. They’re connected to a seedy underworld. If you say anything wrong, they’ll kill you.

Like Blacks on the Island, they almost exclusively walk down dark and deserted streets. They are dangerous. Many of them have been taught since childhood to hate white Americans. They are racist. They live in complete segregation from whites, attend different schools, churches and other public venues. They are all men; not a single woman among them. They are angry the majority of the time and never smile. They can take you by surprise. You have to be careful. You must always be wary of them.

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The U.S. as a Total Racist Society

The majority of Islanders interviewed for this study “experience” the U.S. thru media channels. Their perceptions of white and Black Americans and of the relations between the two groups are in large part the product of what they see and hear through

American media outlets. When asked about what they thought of white and Black

Americans, respondents would often qualify their answer stating that they only knew that which appeared on the news or on the big screen. The majority admitted to never really having the opportunity to meet and get to know any Americans. The image, however, was more or less the same every time: Separate, hateful and hostile. More often than not

American society was described in respondents’ talk as a type of white/ Black war over rights, land, jobs, money, respect and power. Interestingly enough, this vision held true even for those respondents with actual lived experience in the United States.

Tomas, a 29 year old self-identified Black musician, evokes this image of racial war, when speaking of the high school he attended for two years in Southern Georgia:

When I went to study in Atlanta in 1992, I was in this school in the south of Georgia and when they had class assemblies you could draw a line between the white and Black students; so, you know, that there’s a lot of fucking racism over there. The racism I knew at that point was the one I saw in movies because I myself hadn’t experienced it. (pp.3)

According to Tomas that racial separation is simply not present in Puerto Rico.

Like his fellow respondents, he believes that racism is more hidden, more covert on the

Island. Although in his interview, Tomas referenced how anti-Black discrimination was found in institutional settings; how Blacks Islanders seemed to always get pushed out of certain occupations or only portrayed in certain stereotypical and demeaning ways on media channels, he spoke of racism on the Island as very much an inter-personal,

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individual phenomenon. The notion of country-wide racial hatred and discrimination,

from his perspective, was alien to the Puerto Rican context.

Furthermore, class inequality, in his view, was a much greater hindrance for

Islanders than racial heritage or color. According to him, money permitted dark-skinned and Black Islanders to differentiate themselves from the mass of Black Puerto Ricans and be viewed and treated better by light-skinned and white Islanders. Interestingly enough, however, when pressed more on the inter-connections between class status and race on the Island, Tomas backtracked a bit from his earlier statements and instead of diminishing or completely subsuming the effect of racial discrimination under class inequality, spoke of how class status served to lessen the impact of anti-Black action in Puerto Rico. It wasn’t that Black Islanders of more advantaged socio-economic positions would necessarily experience less discrimination, but rather that racism mattered less when you had money. From his view, higher socio economic status softened the blow of the racist act.

For Tomas, class did not intercede in this way in the U.S. context. Contrary to

Puerto Rico, race “over there” was too much of a divide to be bridged by class status. It was simply too much “in your face.” There was no rest; no possible reprieve for African

Americans.

The Puerto Rican “brand” of racism, however, was not all better. From Tomas’ perspective, the covert and more inter-personal nature of Island racism posits several problems from dark-skinned and Black Puerto Ricans. Tomas states:

The thing is that over there [in the U.S.] because racism is so marked and evident, you’re fighting with a well-defined monster. Here [in Puerto Rico], since it’s hidden, you don’t know [who or what you’re fighting against]. You’re just talking with any person doing business and you don’t know if you’re color is

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raising barriers in his mind. Over there you do know because it is so obvious. (pp. 4)

This feeling of uncertainty regarding the presence of racist thought or action was prevalent throughout all eight interviews with self-identified Black respondents.

Statements such as “you simply can’t tell” or “you never know” populated their accounts when characterizing or classifying their interactions with their white counterparts as racist or not. It dawned on me then that the lack of talk on race and racism on the Island combined with the multitude of filmic, televised and literary images and representations of U.S. racism made available to Puerto Ricans, combine to leave dark-skinned and Black

Puerto Ricans without the necessary intellectual tools to identify and combat racism in their daily lives.

The fact of the matter is that racism on the Island continues to be defined from the outside as an inherently American phenomenon that ultimately bears no resemblance to what happens in Puerto Rico. In this fashion, the extent of racial discrimination within the

Island context can continue to be downplayed by politicians, scholars and Islanders in general without actually researching and analyzing its particular social nature and workings on the Island. Instead, Puerto Ricans see and hear about the Black/white

American racial divide and immediately categorize it as different from the Island racial climate. After all, there was no such thing as Jim Crow on the Island, no such thing as the

Ku Klux Klan and ultimately no such thing as white or Black. The concept of “race” itself becomes alien to the Island population.

It thus appears that U.S. racism in effect provides Islanders with the model for

“actual” and “real” racial discrimination. It provides them with a picture of what anti-

Black hatred looks like and since that picture finds no exact or perfect resemblance in

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Puerto Rico it is automatically returned to the U.S. without self-reflection or critical

thought. This in turns leaves light-skinned and white Islanders’ racial attitudes unchecked

because they will ultimately never be as bad as those of white Americans, and even more

tragic, leaves dark-skinned and Black Islanders without multiple and viable avenues

through which to prove that the racism they experience is not solely in their heads.

Now, this does not mean that U.S. racist thought does not infiltrate the Puerto

Rican context or that certain groups of Islanders do not adopt white American racist

attitudes and/or behaviors and use it against their fellow country men and women. On the contrary, many of the opinions expressed by light-skinned, self-identified white and/or

“blanquito-identified” respondents in chapters three, four and five attest to the prevalence of a type of anti-Black thought and praxis in Puerto Rico that is very much akin and in effect borrows from U.S. racism. White Islanders’ treatment of the Black man as criminal and/or low class, the seemingly wide-spread refusal to openly acknowledge racial difference, and the fear of inter-racial relationship, among others, attest to the correspondence that exists between the U.S. and Island systems’ of racial thought.

Nowhere are these parallels more evident than in respondents with lived U.S. experience.

U.S. Experience as “Racial Learning Program”

According to Tomas, his experience as a teenager in a Georgia high school marked him for life. In his words it taught him how to “detect” and “see” racism. Before living in the U.S., he was not able to pick up on how his skin color might be working against him in daily interactions on the Island. However, once back from his stay in the States, he could not help but envision the Island as a racial mine field of sorts, where every single

128 inter-change, incident or accident harbored the possibility of exploding with racial/racist connotations. He explains:

In Atlanta I learned to see. Over there you would be talking with a white person and that barrier is always there. I mean, think about it: You’re in a school that is literally divided between whites and Blacks. So you learn to figure out if that person is looking at your color as opposed to your character. And, man, that’s every day. So unconsciously you’re determining whether the people you encounter are racist or not. You just get used to it because there’s no other way…So when I come back to Puerto Rico after about a year and half, every time I had an encounter [with a white Islander], I would be thinking: You know, I would see a white person and the whole mental process would start trying to figure out if they were racist or not. So I would start thinking about whether there was in fact racism in Puerto Rico. So since I was so used to detecting these types of things when white people were talking to me I realized that this [racism] happened here too. All the time. (pp. 3)

Asked about how these thought processes affected his relationships with white

Islanders, Tomas stated that the knowledge he gained in Georgia made him more wary of and better prepared to deal with white Puerto Ricans. According to him, it didn’t dissuade him from establishing relationships with white and/or light skinned Islanders, but it made him aware of the qualities and characteristics random white people on the Island could attribute to him because of his color. In a sense it brought him more knowledge of self and enabled him to readily identify and respond to acts of racist discrimination that without his stateside experience would be indecipherable and ultimately more hurtful for him. The ability then to identify and name the discrimination was thus equated by him with the opportunity to combat and/or challenge it.

Here the racism witnessed and experienced in the U.S. furnishes the dark skinned and/or Black Puerto Rican with the intellectual tools necessary to counteract the racism she/he faces on the Island. The U.S. experience then has a type of illuminating effect whereby the hidden racist workings in Island society become visible, obvious. That

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which before was seen as simple suspicion or paranoia is rightfully validated and given a

proper name: racism.

Interestingly enough, U.S. experience had an opposite effect on “blanquito- identified” respondents. Instead of making them more aware and critical of racist workings on the Island, their time in the U.S. lead to the adoption of a number of beliefs, attitudes and terminologies commonly associated with white American racist discourse.

As previously noted, Fernando and Benny’s use of the tern “nigger” evidences that adoption. That, however, is only the tip of the iceberg.

“Blanquito-identified” respondents with U.S. experience appeared more disdainful, more vocal, untrustworthy and prejudicial of Blacks as a whole. They also seemed more irate, and outraged about the supposed moral and ethical deterioration of the Island at the hands of low class Black Puerto Ricans and much more invested than their counterparts in maintaining Puerto Rico’s “good name” in the U.S. Consequently, their “race” speech was less encoded than that of their fellow respondents, frequently becoming blatantly racist and hateful. Also, it must be noted, that self-identified white respondents’ light skin color enabled them to “pass” for white Americans in certain situations. Therefore, the discrimination they were subjected to was noticeably less severe than that of their dark- skinned and Black counterparts. They thus spoke of U.S. racism more as casual observers than actual participants. It is possible that this apparent “detachment” from U.S. racist workings, kept them from engaging in the type of self-reflection and criticism undergone by respondents like Tomas. Ultimately anti-Black stereotypes and other racist misperceptions went unchallenged and unchanged, while traditional Island racist thought became “enriched” with U.S. racism.

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Asked about his experience in the stateside University he attended, Benny states:

I obviously did not experience any racism in terms of color, because I’m white and blue-eyed. So there wasn’t any instance were I was not allowed entrance to club or anything like that. I also speak very good English so they wouldn’t take me for a Latino…In terms of me myself engaging in racist actions, never. Because as you might know, if you’re racist over there, you’re fucked because they [African Americans] will kill you. Overall, my experience in college was very segregated. We [Puerto Rican students from the Island] did not mix with Blacks and the Blacks did not mix with us…We didn’t even mix with other Latino groups because in our view we weren’t Latinos—what we would call “Latinazos.” We were Puerto Ricans from good families. The “Latinazos” were those that were raised in the States. I guess we were racist in that sense because we didn’t want to deal with the “Latinazos”…We saw them as the cafres. (pp. 9)

The racial privilege Benny experienced because of his light skin color is evident in the

above passage. His ability to “pass” for white enabled him to live in the U.S. without

threat or fear of racial discrimination. This in turn allowed his Island-grown racism to

flourish: not only could he live in strict segregation from Black people in the U.S., but he

was also able to pick out and identify a Latino group that could take the ideological place

of “cafres” outside of the Island. Island racial structures were then not only recreated

within the American context but in a sense expanded to cover people across national

borders.

In the end, Benny comes to embody a white racist persona that is not at all different from that of white Americans. Consequently, his racial identity (meaning the privilege and superiority that comes with whiteness) overtakes any cultural, ethnic or national identification. In other words, the fact that he identifies as white comes to say more about him than the fact that he is Puerto Rican. His racism is no different from that of white

Americans. The only difference might lie in that Benny may or may not speak his with a

Spanish accent:

Listen, I was super patriotic. I was like super stereotypical with my beliefs in independence for Puerto Rico, my Che Guevara T-shirts and my protests. It’s just

131 that now there is no turning back. We’re in a hole and what we need are like two cruise ships and we get all the cafres in and we put a bomb in each one and we’ll kill all the cafres that way. Because they don’t want to educate themselves and admit that they’re in the wrong and I’m not going to be able to change them. (pp.10)

CHAPTER 7 MARKETING “AUTHENTIC” PUERTO RICAN BLACKNESS: RACE AND GENDER IN THE MUSIC OF TEGO CALDERÓN

Confesionario

I have to be honest: I rarely if ever play rap music loud in my car. If I ever do the windows must be up and the air conditioner has to be at full blast so as to muffle the sound. It’s not that at 26, I’m so concerned and even paranoid about getting old that I have already started to worry about losing my hearing, but rather that I am overly preoccupied with my appearance. You see, in high school (read: in my private, all boys catholic high school), I used to pride myself on the fact that contrary to the rest of my predominantly white class mates, I did not super prep my stereo system so as to ride in and out from school with a mini concert in my mother’s two door sedan. That, from my perspective at the time (i.e. staunchly unpopular, nerdy schoolboy), was a feeble and vain attempt to look cool; to appear “bad.” Not surprisingly, listening to rap during my adolescence was very much a private, personal and even quiet experience.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that I was not allowed to play it or that I visualized it as something obscene and thus, policed my listening habits. This is not your typical

Hollywood tale about a privileged white boy from the colony coming of age by gradually immersing himself in a forbidden ethnic milieu. There is no rapper that took me in. No dreams of becoming the next rap phenomenon. No Hip-Hop or reggaetón-styled girlfriend. My contact with rap music and the communities that produce it, both on the

Island and abroad, has always been mediated by the market. Thus, my immersion in the

132 133 culture can be measured simply by counting the number of CDs I have and calculating the total amount of money invested. It can be measured by taking a quick inventory in my closet and comparing the number of Puerto Rico shirts with the number of Phat Farm,

Rocawear and Ecko Unlimited boxer shorts, sweat pants and dress shirts. It can be measured. Period.

My relationship with rap music then is one of pure (?) and unbridled consumption.

My knowledge of the music is limited to that which I can read in magazine articles, celebrity news briefs and CD liner notes. It is limited to concerts, posters and favorite songs. Simply put, I’m a fan. However, my conscious appropriation of certain rap elements (i.e. “urban” clothing) and my admitted hesitation to embrace others (i.e. playing the music loud in the car), constantly leaves me in an intellectual and maybe even ethical bind. The fact is that the wannabe race scholar in me recognizes commercial rap music as the commodified expression of marginalized communities of People of Color that have nothing to do with me. Consequently, I cannot help but visualize my convenient and temporary ascription to a rap or “urban” aesthetic as not only problematic but also as insulting to those communities. This vision is further complicated once the music’s lyrical content is brought into play.

El Meollo del Asunto

Though extremely popular in many parts of the world, rap music and some of its most influential exponents continue to be policed by various formal and informal channels. In the U.S., Hip-Hop music in general has been labeled by the media as gangster or criminal, prompting influential political and religious leaders to target and drive campaigns against specific artists through the years (Russell-Brown, 2004). In

2003, the New York Police Department even established a Hip-Hop task force in order to

134 monitor the activities of rappers (Clark, 2003). Similarly, in Puerto Rico, reggaetón artists have felt increased political pressure to “clean up their act” due to the perceived offensive character of their lyrics and videos (Santos-Febres, 2005). In both countries, the outrage has been prompted by rappers’ alleged glorification of street violence— especially as it relates to the drug trade—and the objectification of women in their lyrics.

The “typical” response from representatives of both the U.S. and Island rap communities has been that their music is a reflection of the geographical and social spaces they inhabit.

When probed a bit more, specifically on many rap artists’ crude references to the female anatomy, artists have defended their lyrics arguing that while some women are wholesome and descent, others are whores and they are only talking about the whores

(Kitwana, 1994).

Hidden somewhere in the middle of this polemic is the complex character of a particular musical genre rooted in some of the most downtrodden urban communities in the East Coast of the United States (Rose, 1991). Rap music originated in the late 1970s in New York City during a time marked by extreme political conservatism and economic downfall (Rose, 1991). According to Rose (1991), it began as an apolitical party music played in gatherings in public parks or in individual homes. However, because it arose and developed during such a time, the music garnered a high level of social significance within the communities that birthed it. Rap quickly became one of the premier forms of expression for the youngest members of the inner city communities in New York, which were the hardest hit by the conservative politics and the economic decline during said epoch. Rap then, irrespective of its particular subject matter and stated purpose during its

135 initial stages, must be viewed as an important socio-political innovation. At the very least, it functioned as an outlet to release the angst felt by many disenfranchised youth.

Since then, the music’s popularity and audience have grown exponentially, and the genre itself has expanded over time to make room for many technological, lyrical and thematic innovations (Ogbar, 1999). There is party rap, Afro-centric rap, Feminist rap, mainstream rap and underground rap just to name a few. Even more telling of the genre’s ever expansive reach, has been its ability to cross national borders and mix and mesh with other musical styles and genres, reinventing itself in each setting to reflect the needs and desires of each community that practices it. Taking this into consideration, it would be ludicrous to reduce the music’s lyrical content to sex and violence, and end up negating the potential for social critique and social action the music ultimately harbors. However, it is important to note that a considerable portion of the rap music produced for radio and video airplay does contain startling amounts of sexist talk and images. By the same token, not all rappers’ references to violence serve to draw attention to the more tragic aspects of inner city life. On many occasions, sex and violence are present in rap songs solely because they sell (Kitwana, 1994).

Such is the case of the majority of rap and reggaetón music that is produced, marketed and sold in Puerto Rico. Riddled with references to and images of scantily clad women fulfilling the most outrageous, crude and often violent fantasies of male artists, rap and reggeatón music in Puerto Rico has managed to become the best selling musical genre in the country. The genre’s popularity has reached such high levels, that several of its artists have an international following; often touring through Latin America, the U.S. and many parts of Europe.

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Probably the most notable result of this heightened popularity has been the acceptance many of the genre’s top stars have received in the U.S., specifically within

Hip Hop circles. Notorious for its sexually explicit lyrics, provocative dance moves and infectious beat, Island reggeatón has become “the next big thing” in the U.S. Thus, many

African American rappers have taken to the genre and have either collaborated with

Island artists and/or made reggaetón-styled songs themselves. Of particular significance has been the commercial success and public visibility of Island rappers Daddy Yankee and Don Omar, who have seen their albums reach platinum and gold sales status in the states, respectively.

The acceptance of reggeatón music and artists in Hip Hop circles combined with the commercial success the music has found in the states, make the genre an ideal site for race analysis and debate. It must be remembered, that Hip Hop music as an African

American cultural and commercial product has maintained a conflicting relationship with mainstream white America since its inception. Research points to the precarious position

African American artists often find themselves within the American social and cultural landscape (hooks, 2004; Kitwana, 1994; Russell-Brown, 2004). On the hand, their talent and artistry has brought many of them fame and fortune, but on the other, the marketing to which most rap acts are submitted (i.e. dangerous, criminal image) has further stigmatized and marginalized not only themselves but young Black males in general. All in all, within a highly racially hostile cultural climate, Hip Hop music sticks out as a markedly Black and often conflicting and troublesome cultural production and commercial product.

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Reggeatón, being the musical expression of young, disenfranchised, usually darker skinned Puerto Rican males shares a similar history (Santos-Febres, 2005). Its artists have been targeted and marginalized on account of the same music that has brought them popularity and economic success. However, contrary to Hip Hop in the U.S which serves as one more battlefront in the country’s “race wars,” reggeatón has stood out in Puerto

Rico as one of the few social locations that invites, inspires and downright provokes conversations on race and racism on the Island. Though not always explicitly “racial” in terms of lyrical content, the music’s roots are found in historically racialized and marginal communities. Drawing from Afro Puerto Rican Salsa, African American rap and Jamaican dancehall, regeatón forms part of a decidedly Black musical tradition. It thus stands in direct contrast to the majority of the Island’s mainstream musical and cultural product.

Consequently, the “adoption” of reggeatón by the African American Hip Hop community could very much lead to interesting and possibly transformative readings and interpretations of the racial climate on the Island. Increased contact between African

American and Puerto Rican artists could very much lead to the crafting of more clearly defined and oppositional Black Puerto Rican identities within the genre and make of the music extremely fertile ground for Island-wide conversations on race and racism.

From my viewpoint these readings and interpretations have already begun to occur.

As Puerto Rican rappers attempt to establish a niche within Hip Hop circles, they sketch out similarities between their experience on the Island and that of the African American poor and working classes. As made evident in an interview that Island rapper Daddy

Yankee gave to the stateside publication “The Source,” not only do class parallels

138 become important, but also Puerto Rican racial identifications have to be reformulated to fit within U.S. racial constructs. Daddy Yankee states:

[Q. What is your heritage?] Well, both of my parents are Puerto Rican-born and raised. My mother, God bless her, she is the light of my soul, is Spanish-Latin descent, meaning ‘White Puerto Rican,’ and my father is of African-Spanish descent, meaning “Black Puerto Rican.” So, ya see, I have the best of both worlds.

As this interchange between the two communities progresses and as more Island artists attempt to break though in the American market, race will continue to be one of the premiere topics of conversation; possibly prompting Islanders to steer away from more totalitarian and homogenous constructions of Puerto Rican identity and instead fragmenting Puerto Ricanness by race. It thus becomes important to start analyzing the racial messages and images already inscribed in the music as it stands on the verge of an international commercial explosion. Of particular interest is how images of Puerto Rican

Blackness are negotiated with the stereotypical and degrading images of Puerto Rican women that are so common in the music. More specifically, to what extent is the explicit and progressive racial discourse in Island rap tied into the objectification of women in rap lyrics and what effect does this relationship have on the listening public?

Confesionario (2)

It would be easy for me to say that it is this complexity and conflict that I value in rap and that that is what prompts me to buy it, to wear it, to talk it and to even look like it at times. It would be a comforting thought if I was to believe that I do it out of some profound yet inexplicable feeling of solidarity with the people in these marginal communities. I could, if I really wanted to, even go so far as to explain how I, a well- meaning wannabe race scholar, listen to it out of a pure (?) sociological interest. But this is not the case. The fact of the matter is that I am an outsider to the music, and that I have

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issues with being an outsider. It happens to me that on the one hand I fear being seen in

my car with the stereo blasting and getting pegged as a typical “blanquito”, while on the

other I have few if any problems with sing-songing some of the most misogynist lines

imaginable under my breath. You see, I am a well aware that my selective appropriation

of the music could very well border on racist and classist fetishism so I shy away from

certain outward manifestations of appreciation for rap. I am also very much aware of the

sexist imagery that abounds in the genre. However, I do not fear being taken for a

misogynist.

Consequently, often times I have entertained the idea that I am less a racist than I am a sexist. However, my conscious attention to how these two social forces shape and mold my listening experience leads me to disregard this explanation. I am more inclined to believe that one oppression temporarily alters or at least occults the power difference

set by the other. Let me explain: I am able to consume and enjoy rap music to an extent

as a racial outsider precisely because of the sexism in rap lyrics. While there may be and

are a number of key differences between the world I live in and the world rappers come

from, sexist oppression is not one of them. That element in the music is not alien to me.

On the contrary, it is readily accessible and serves as an important social and cultural

passageway for me to enter the rap realm. It is then quite possible that what I actually

“get out” of the music is a limited and temporary easing of racial tensions by way of a

vindication of sexist thought and action.

Loco, es Calderón

As discussed, Puerto Rican rap artists have faced great pressure from political and

media forces to alter their lyrical content as they are seen by many in Puerto Rican

mainstream society as the sole and exclusive bearers of Island sexism. The majority if not

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all of the genre’s most notable stars have at one point or another been made the focus of moralistic attacks and critiques, presented in large media outlets as the poster boys for bad taste, pornography and sexual aggression. The fact is that considering the high levels of popularity and sales that reggaetón singers have achieved over the years in comparison to artists from other genres, they have until very recently received very little press coverage. You seldom see the same puff pieces on Lito y Polaco (popular rap duo) that you see on Victor Manuel or Michael Stewart (salsa singers). Mainstream media outlets

in Puerto Rico thus appear to have a vested interest in not covering the accomplishments

and the accolades received by reggaetón artists. In this sense, rappers in Puerto Rico for

the most part have been both present and absent from the official discourse on popular

culture.

The arrival of one artist in particular, however, seemed to break that silence. Tego

Calderón, arguably one of the Island’s most successful and beloved reggaetón artists, has

received a level of exposure and media coverage that is unparalleled to that of any of his

fellow rappers. Ever since officially “arriving” on the Island’s rap scene with his 2002

CD El Abayarde, Calderón has set new standards for record sales, concert tours, television appearances and advertising deals. More importantly, the 32-year-old rapper’s popularity has not been limited to traditional rap circles in Puerto Rico. One of

Calderón’s major claims to fame has been his appeal among rap fans and non-rap fans alike, among white and Black Islanders, the young and old, men and women etc. The national media then, willingly or unwillingly, has had to cover him.

What is particularly interesting about Calderón’s success is the fact that it has happened to him. Tego is an anomaly both within and outside Island rap circles. He is

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older than the majority of rappers and upcoming pop stars; sports an Afro (most rappers

have their hair cropped short); is considerably darker-skinned than most other rap artists

and is admittedly not considered good looking by mainstream standards of beauty.

Furthermore, much of his lyrical content is socially and politically motivated in a music

market that is decidedly more geared toward danceable party tracks, whether they are rap

songs or not. That he presently stands as one of Puerto Rico’s most visible and

recognizable music figures is thus quite surprising and surely worthy of analysis.

Confesionario (3)

It is possible that I have simply been swayed by popular opinion. That I own a copy

of Tego’s two CDs to date because I am fearful of being left out of casual conversations

once his name is brought up. Maybe I just keep track of him in the papers because I am a

celebrity news junkie and Tego always seems to make for good stories. Maybe it’s a bit

more complicated than that and I listen to his music because I like the beat and don’t

really pay much attention to the lyrics. However, that does not explain why the custom

greeting in my cell phone reads “Guasa Guasa” or why his official fan website is on my

list of favorites. Maybe is not even a question of taste. It is possible that I am very much

into irony and sarcasm and get a kick out of pulling up to the entrance of my mother’s

gated community playing the music of a man who four years ago wouldn’t have been

able to peer through the gate without getting the police called on him. Maybe I

desperately need to ease that tension somehow. Maybe my white privilege bears upon me in such a fashion that I need an easy out; a way to acknowledge and confront it without having to give that privilege up. I have no choice then but to analyze the racial negotiations that take place between Calderón and myself every time I press play on his

CD.

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Llegó El Negrolo Cocólo

At first, Tego’s Blackness seems inescapable. The cover of his first album has him

on the bright red cover, neck up with his Afro mushrooming out from his head. At that point one is not yet sure of what is actually being purchased. One listen and a privileged white kid from the colony no longer knows what to do with himself. Lines like “pasando el rolo/ volvió el negrolo cocólo/ que los jode comoquiera/ acompañao o solo”

[“flattening you out/ the Black cocólo returns/ that fucks you guys up either way/ with a posse or by myself”] flutter about his head and he is left without the proper words with which to explain how race has suddenly become an issue in his life. Add that to

Calderón’s frequent use of the term “nigga”—which immediately conjures images of gang-themed Hollywood films and rap videos set in crime ridden inner city neighborhoods—and the white kid from the colony cannot be anything but scared (“y si veo tu crew/ cerca de mi neighborhood/ te voy a joder la salud/ you know how we niggas do” [“And if I see your crew/ around my neighborhood/ I’m gonna fuck you up/ you know how we niggas do”]).

Continue administering the dosage, and the kid is completely blown away by visions of an almost overwhelming Black presence and pride on the Island that find no parallel in the images of the Puerto Rico he grew up in. They’re not in the country’s official seal. Not on television. Not in magazine covers. Not in his neighborhood. Yet all of a sudden they materialize in poignant lines such as “Zulu como Chaka” and “lo que yo tengo de blanco/ tú tienes de gangster” [“Zulu like Chaka” and “you have about as much of gangster in you/ as I have of white in me”].

The listening experience becomes downright dangerous once Calderón starts deconstructing the racist myths upon which the white kid’s national identity has been

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based. His entire belief system is confronted and formally challenged when Calderón

spews “Nuestra historia es vergonzosa entre otras cosas./ Cambiaste las cadenas por

esposas” [“Our history is shameful among other things,/ you switched the chains for

handcuffs”]. For a moment, there appear to only be two options for the kid: to whole-

heartedly deal with the messages being communicated in the music or throw the CD

away. The intensity of the rapper’s social critique does not immediately offer any other

solution. On the contrary, it seems to build up more strength as he starts directly

criticizing political figures from the left who according to Calderón, would much rather

deal with pressing “political” issues, than actually face up to the injustices committed

against the Black Island population: “Nunca he visto a Ruben Berrios abogar por los

mios/ Por so en ninguno confio/…/ Todos con Vieques/ ¿Y mi pueblo negro no padece?”

[I’ve never seen Ruben Berrios stand up for my people/ That’s why I don’t trust any of

them/…/Everybody with Vieques/ But my Black people don’t suffer?”]

The experience however starts becoming less torturous and very much pleasing

once the rapper’s race-based posturing is challenged and at times over taken by a strictly

(almost raceless) male posturing in tracks that steer away from the political and social

realms and instead focus on going out and having a good time. White and Black cease to

be an issue the minute proving one’s worth as a man in the face of other men as well as in

the face of women becomes overly important to Calderón. Both his race and the kid’s

take a back seat. He is finally able to enjoy and nod his head to the music of his fellow

man.

Me Sobra lo que te Falta

There is no doubt that Calderón’s musical persona is very much built on traditional notions of masculinity. There is nothing soft about him. Song after song he makes it clear

144 to his rivals (whoever they may be) that he is nobody to mess with: “Jode con Calde y se te acaban las aventuras” [“Fuck with Calde/ and your adventures are over”]. In this regard, Tego Calderón is no different from other popular reggaetón singers like Daddy

Yankee and Don Omar or from African-American Hip-Hop luminaries like 50 Cent and

Jay-Z. However, contrary to his fellow rappers, Calderón’s masculinity depends primarily on his God-given courage. There is no gun talk in Calderón. No elaborate descriptions of killings. There are no lists of deceased rivals. Nobody dies in Tego’s music. Furthermore, there is no mention of physical strength. He does not make any reference to the number of people he may have in his entourage. Nothing. In fact, he is more concerned with letting people know about his intellectual capabilities (“tengo bastante y en la cabeza” [“I have enough meddle in my head”]), than about his physical prowess. His violence thus appears to be purely lyrical. The beat-downs he offers to fellow rappers are meant to stay in the realm of rap as he warns them of the real-life consequences that quarrels between artists can have when taken too seriously. He states:

“las batallas entre cantantes y el odio/ pueden terminar como Tupac y Notorio,/ no es satisfactorio/ más velorio” [battles between rappers and hatred/ can end up like Tupac and Notorious,/ More funerals are not ideal”] Much of his work can thus be taken as moralistic. His rapping style even becomes somewhat preachy as he goes on constructing what a real man is and how he should act.

Not surprisingly then, Calderón’s own claims to masculinity are based on standing for the good; on being real. He states: “yo no le temo a la maldad porque yo soy de verdad” [“I don’t fear evil because I’m for real”]. In this sense, he appears before the listening audience more as a well-meaning action hero than as a gangster or hustler. His

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masculinity then, is cloaked in a subtle yet definite nobility. He makes it clear that he is

only against those who have wronged him or those close to him. Consequently, his lyrical

threats are completely justified. One perceives him not as vicious, but rather as

passionate. And as a passionate and well-meaning individual, he vacillates between

threats of actual physical violence like “si jodes con mi raza/ te saco las patas [“If you fuck with race/ I’ll rip your legs out”] and more metaphorical and romanticized lyrical attacks like “si me tiran piedras,/ yo tiro pa’ tras/ y los mato con humildad” [“If they throw stones/ I’ll hit’em back/ and kill them with humility”].

One may question exactly how such a poetized and romantic conceptualization of manliness can maintain itself in the testosterone charged and graphically violent realm of

Island rap music. More precisely, how is Calderón’s image of a self-made, well-meaning man equally as, if not more believable than the thugged-out images of rappers that characterize the genre? After all, he speaks of holding no ties to any criminal enterprise.

For all intensive purposes, he does not brag about having a criminal past and actually speaks of having held a series of odd jobs; of having legally and genuinely struggled to get to where he is today. Doesn’t this image seem outdated?

It is and the artist readily admits it in lines like: “pa’ la nueva era,/ un poco de vieja escuela” [“for the new era/ a small old school dosage”]. He even refers to himself as

“granpa.” Tego is there to school other rappers and the listening audience not only on how to rap but given much of his lyrical content on how to live a better life (“coge consejo de Tego pa’que llegue a viejo” [“Take Tego’s advice so you can make it to old

age”]).

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The “granpa” moniker is interesting considering that Tego at 32 years of age, is older than most rappers, yet he only recently broke into the Island rap scene. In this sense, he is both a veteran and rookie, both young and old. This dynamic is important when examining how ideas of gender and masculinity are communicated in his music.

The fact is that Calderón is using a musical genre that is directly associated with people in their teens and early twenties to communicate more traditional, less flashy notions of masculinity. In analyzing this image, one realizes that his posturing is reminiscent of the classical salsa singers of the 60s and 70s. This is no coincidence. Much of Calderón’s distinctive style and wide ranging appeal is attributable to the blending of rap and salsa rhythms in his music and his frequent referencing of old school salsa idols, especially

Ismael Rivera. A thorough listening of his material shows an artist who is much more interested in presenting himself as the descendant of Ismael Rivera and other famous

“soneros” than of any rapper, past or present.

Tego’s frequent use of salsa music as a cultural and musical reference point, his professed knowledge of the genre along with the music’s status as one of the Island’s premier popular expressions—its proven allegiance to the street—gives Calderón something that his fellow rappers do not have: tradition. Salsa music, in the eyes, of an older public, ties him down to the street, gives him a permanent place and therefore makes him more credible; more authentic. He does not need any guns for the same reason that Ismael Rivera did not need any guns: his people love and respect him. No one is going to harm him in the streets because the streets are his. This perceived authenticity then permits him to be more romantic, more metaphorical in his threats. It enables him to craft himself as a loner; confident and dependant only on his will and heart.

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Calderón then is authentic in regards to music (“no me copio,/ salí con un flow muy propio” [“I don’t copy anyone’s style/ I have my own flow”]). He is racially and ethnically authentic (“Tego Calderón,/ el negro de Borinquen bella” [“Tego Calderon,/ the Black man from Puerto Rico the beautiful”]). And perhaps more importantly, he has authenticity in the streets (“Fiel a la brega más que a la Vega,/ salí de aquí no de donde quiera” [“More loyal to the hustle than to the Vega/ I came from here not just from any other place”]).

Las Gatas Gozan Más con el Canchanchán

Authenticity, however, only takes him so far and Tego as an atypical reggaetón artist does make some concessions in his lyrical content to better fit in within the genre.

This is precisely where the women begin to suffer. Tego’s references to women and women’s bodies are laden with sexism. Like many of his fellow rappers he is only interested in sex not love (“ando en busca de enganche/ no de romance” [“I’m looking for a hook up/ not for love”]). If he ever were to settle down with one woman, she would have to accommodate his gigolo life style (“necesito una gata que no me pelee cuando llegue tarde” [“I need a girl that doesn’t fight when I get home late”]). More demeaning however, is the interchangeable character of women and women’s bodies in his music.

Song after song, women are either let go and replaced or under the threat of being let go and replaced (“no respeta tu gata, hazle las maletas” [“If she doesn’t respect you, send her packing”]). The importance of their presence and company is reduced to sex or more precisely to their acting out of the rapper’s sexual desires (“vamos a hacerlo como nunca/ dejate llevar/ no me hagas preguntas” [“we’re gonna do it like never before/ let yourself go/ don’t ask me anything”]).

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It could be argued that Tego’s treatment of women in his music, though not any more startling than that of his fellow rappers, becomes more problematic once one considers the fact the he already had the listener respecting and admiring his unique and

‘noble’ image of masculinity. The sexism, because it is packaged in a more attractive manner, is that much more insidious. The listener shows less resistance to it and it is able to seep in his/her head with much more ease. Thus, Tego’s visions of masculinity serve two important purposes. On the one hand, they overshadow his Blackness, making the music more agreeable to white Puerto Ricans. And on the other, they make sexist thought and action more acceptable to otherwise non-receptive ears. The end result is that the artist ends up conceding the veracity and vitality of the social criticism inherent in his music—especially in regards to race and racism—by reinforcing traditional notions of male/female oppression. Ultimately, a person like myself can feel “down with his race” without actually having to deal with his race (or mine).

The Impact of Reggaetón and the Future of Racial Discourse

The commercial success of reggaetón music—its continued acceptance in mainstream U.S. musical outlets—can very possibly impact the way race and racism are thought and talked about in Puerto Rico. As discussed, increased contact between Island artists and African-American rappers can lead to important reformulations of traditional

Puerto Rican racial identities. A good number of the negotiations Island rappers must make in order to find acceptance and commercial success in the U.S. are racial in nature.

Artists seeking to crossover to the U.S. market will come to form part of a genre that is viewed by the American public as inextricably and irreducibly Black. Therefore they will have to find ways to relate their experience as marginal figures within Island society to those typically undergone by the youngest and most marginal segments of the African-

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American population. The racial identities they craft then as both Puerto Rican artists and individuals will not only affect the way they as Puerto Ricans are perceived in U.S. society but will also affect the way Puerto Ricans view themselves in relation to Island rappers. Increased attention to this genre by both Island and U.S. media channels would then make it possible for critical dialogues on race, racism and Puerto Ricans to take place on both sides of the Atlantic; possibly setting the groundwork for open and extensive explorations of how race is experienced in Puerto Rico.

This, of course, seems idealistic, especially when one considers the sexist character of the majority of reggeatón music and how it is that aspect of the genre in particular that is garnering so much attention in the U.S. It is true that reggeatón as a woman-hating cultural and commercial product holds no possibilities for social change. In fact, reggaetón, if marketed as an exotic, sensual and explicitly sexual genre, instead of providing a social space for critical dialogues on race in Puerto Rico, serves up Puerto

Rican women as simple objects of desire for the mainstream American public. There would be no cultural shock whatsoever. Puerto Rican males would be able to gloss over national, cultural and racial/ethnic differences and bond with African American and white males at the expense of Island women. All possibility for change would be lost.

It thus becomes clear that the genre warrants our attention and critique. Analysis of the work of Island rappers are of critical importance at this juncture. The gender and racial messages Island artists are sending and will continue to send in their lyrics will undoubtedly play an active part in shaping the Island social climate in the coming years.

It is up to us, as social scientists, to decide whether we are going to be an active and influential part as well.

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Conclusion: Coming to Grips with the Problem

Toward the end of his book Racism without Racists (2003), Eduardo Bonilla-Silva theorizes that considering the increasingly encoded character of white racism in the U.S.

— the pervasiveness of a color blind ideology that purports equality for all Americans regardless of their racial/ethnic background while simultaneously ignoring extreme racial inequality in all facets of social life—this country could very well be headed towards what he terms the Latinization of race relations. According to Bonilla-Silva (2003), as the social impact of race continues to be downplayed and/or disregarded by the American media, government and the public; as racial discussions become less frequent and more taboo; as white privilege is left unchecked, American racism could very well mirror the unspoken and insidious character of the racist thought and praxis found in many parts of

Latin America. If Bonilla-Silva’s theorizing is in fact accurate, then a study on the way race and racism are perceived and talked about in Puerto Rico is nothing less than timely.

One could assume that an exploration into any aspect of the workings of race and racism in a particular socio-cultural context (such as Puerto Rico) where racism is perceived as completely alien to that society, would definitely give the U.S. race scholar a glimpse of what is to come in the realm of race relations in America. This dissertation, in part, attempts to offer colleagues and readers that exact glimpse.

The problem, however, is that the characteristic that makes Puerto Rican race relations so intriguing to study is the same one that seems to impede an adequate and complex discussion on the topic. Perhaps the most appropriate and therefore daunting question posed in this work was asked in the first chapter: how does one talk openly and critically about a subject that as of yet does not have a socially accepted and proven language to employ in the dialogue? As discussed, both my talk and respondents’

151 testimonials were plagued by frequent and anguishing moments of silence where we would find ourselves searching for the precise words with which to describe how race was working in our lives as Puerto Ricans. Consequently, this work has been compromised since the beginning in the sense that it could only serve as an exploration into the little that could be articulated about race and racism by both respondents and me.

Perhaps it is this lack of articulation what respondents and I have most in common.

Forget ethnic and/or national identity or shared history or culture or status as colonial subjects. As it pertains to this work it is our inability to talk about race as acutely raced individuals that unites us and distinguishes us as a set group of people.

Articulation in Black and White

In the midst of these silences, however, certain key elements of Puerto Rican racial/racist thought and praxis have come to light in this work. Though for the most part highly encoded and even cryptic in their social nature, meanings and messages about race—specifically about the social desirability and undesirability of whiteness and

Blackness respectively— have been found to be actively communicated in respondents’ talk. As discussed, conversations about differences based on social class invariably led to comments about race which posited images of whiteness and Blackness at opposing ends of the social spectrum. These comments served to not only racialize the speaker and those around him/her, but also served to racialize Puerto Rican identity in general.

Conversations with self identified white and Blanquito-identified respondents, for example, uncovered a view of a low class, low brow and ultimately murky and darkened

Puerto Rico that seemed to embarrass respondents and thus impeded them from connecting with the rest of the Island population and whole heartedly identifying as

Puerto Rican.

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Furthermore, and possibly more important, conversations with all ten self-identified whites respondents exhibited a clearly demarcated though somewhat embattled Island white consciousness. Respondents like Ernesto, Paola and Teresa spoke of the privilege inherent in being or passing for white on the Island (see chapter three). Island notions of whiteness in these conversations very much mirrored the notions of U.S. whiteness discussed and “unpacked” in Peggy McIntosh’s (1988) “White Privilege Exercise.”

Whiteness on the Island is replete with unacknowledged perks and privileges that must be protected whether by shying away from “racial mixing” or by crossing the street when faced with a Black passerby.

Blackness, on the other hand, presented itself as a destabilizing and problematic social force or presence. Simply put, it made light skinned and/or self-identified white respondents nervous. They did not know how to appropriately and respectfully talk to or about Black people. For the most part their interactions with dark skinned and/or Black

Islanders were not with the actual people themselves, but with a type of composite of the

Black body informed by myths and stereotypes. As discussed in chapter five, there was no discernable difference between Ernesto’s sensational tales of running into Black men on the street and Javier’s “ugly Black” game. Here, the alleged lived experience is almost completely indistinguishable from the rhetorical and fantastic. Taking this into consideration, one could argue that in the light skinned and/or self-identified white Puerto

Rican mind, Black Islanders do not really exist outside of whites’ image of them; outside of the simulation (Baudrillard, 1994).

Blackness and Black Islanders, then come to occupy a space outside of “real” and/or “actual” Puerto Ricanness. Consequently, as this research has shown, Black

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Islanders either stand out or are invisible and therefore ignored. There is no middle

ground. Blackness in the Island imagination stands in direct opposition to Puerto

Ricanness, which impedes Black Puerto Ricans from occupying an acknowledged central

and defining position in both Island discourse and society.

Looking Ahead

In an effort to combat and subvert the social and discursive marginality to which

Black Islanders have been subjected, two important social locations were proposed as key sites for the construction of a public and effective discourse on race and racism: Black

Puerto Rican families and rap and reggaetón music.

As discussed, self-identified Black respondents’ interviews spoke of the importance of their familial unit in providing them not only with the understanding and support necessary to withstand and counteract instances of discrimination, but more importantly, their family members served as key role models and mentors who instilled in respondents

a sense of pride in their racial heritage and identity. It was in the familial space where

respondents were first taught about how Blackness was experienced on the Island and

what their race should mean for them. Here, sincere and honest talk about the race

problem in Puerto Rico is not taboo. There appears to be no ambiguity; no coded

language; no insidious disregard shown for the experiences of Black Islanders.

Furthermore, the conversations that occur in this space are important and ultimately

useful for those of us interested in formally addressing the state of race relations in Puerto

Rico, because they are the direct product of the day to day experience of Black Islanders.

Consequently, they employ a language that has proven to be functional in people’s daily

life. And considering the silence, avoidance and misrepresentation that have

characterized the race problem in Puerto Rico throughout its history, we, as social

154 scientists must look at those spaces of Island society where the talk on race has proven to be more sincere, honest, freer of stereotypes and more representative of Black Islanders’ experiences.

Second, reggaetón music as the cultural and commercial product of a marginal racial and class group, is imbued with racial and class messages and meanings. Also, the professional, personal and artistic relationships that Island rappers have begun to form with African American artists coupled with Island acts’ desire to cross over to the U.S. market, places reggaetón music in an ideal place for important explorations as to the future of Puerto Rican race relations. Increased contact with the highly racialized U.S.

Hip Hop music market may very well influence both Island rappers’ artistic persona and their lyrical content. These ideas would then find themselves widely distributed through the Island and abroad. Taking into consideration the level of popularity the genre presently enjoys, it is safe to say that the medium presents itself as quite possibly the premiere channel for the distribution of new racial messages that would challenge the prevailing view of a “raceless” Puerto Rico.

All in all, this dissertation has attempted to shed light on the ways in which notions of whiteness and Blackness influence, shape and to an extent determine Island Puerto

Ricans’ vision of themselves and others, as well as of Puerto Ricanness as a whole.

Though the analysis of this facet of Island race relations has been very much tied to understandings of U.S. racial workings, this dissertation breaks with previous work on race and racism in Puerto Rico in that white American racism is neither portrayed as the

“father figure” of Island Racism nor used as a conceptual scapegoat. Furthermore, contrary to previous work on the topic, racism is examined and discussed from the

155 perspective of what it says about whiteness and white people. This is important for it places the guilt and responsibility of racial discrimination on those that benefit directly from it, thus doing away with the vision of race and racism as simply a “Black thing.” In the end, this work hopes to contribute to a more nuanced and workable vision of racial dynamics in contemporary Puerto Rico that would ultimately lead to a more positive and constructive conception of us as a people.

APPENDIX INTERVIEW GUIDE

Guillermo Rebollo-Gil University of Florida Institutional Review Board

The following areas will be the focus of the study interviews, with sample questions listed below:

1. How do you call yourself in terms of race?

2. What, if any, contact have you had with dark-skinned/black Puerto Ricans?

3. How would you characterize in general your contact with dark-skinned/black

Puerto Ricans?

4. What is your perception/ how do you feel about dark-skinned/black Puerto

Ricans?

5. What qualities do you associate with light skin/whiteness? With dark

skin/blackness?

6. Do you have mostly light-skinned/white friends? Dark-skinned/black friends?

7. On the average, do people initially think you are light-skinned/white or dark-

skinned/black? How does this make you feel?

8. Do you think that there is racism in Puerto Rico? Why? Why not?

9. Have you ever experienced racism? If so, please elaborate on this experience.

10. What does it mean for you to be light-skinned/white in Puerto Rico?

11. Do you think that there are any advantages that come with being light-

skinned/white in Puerto Rico? With being dark-skinned/black?

12. How often do you think about being light-skinned/ white?

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13. In your opinion, is Puerto Rico made up mostly of light-skinned/white people or

dark-skinned/black people?

14. What contact have you had with members of other racial/ethnic groups?

15. How would you characterize that contact?

16. How much is race/ethnicity a factor in determining the kind and amount of

contact you’ve had with members of other racial/ethnic groups?

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Guillermo Rebollo-Gil was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1979. He is the author of the books Veinte (2000), Sonero (2003) and Teoría de Conspiración (2005). At present, he holds a Visiting Instructor position in the Department of Sociology and

Anthropology at University of North Florida in Jacksonville. His main research interests focus on racial/ethnic inequality in the United States with particular emphasis on the effect of “alternate” racial markers (i.e. language, migration history etc.) on non-Black

People of Color; pedagogical strategies for teaching anti-racism in college classrooms; images and representations of race and racism in popular culture; as well as on the intersections of racism, classism, sexism and homophobia.

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