UPLIFTT

United People for Latinos in Film, TV and Theater

By William Garcia
It was August 2009 when I was admitted to the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras and that what was when I first saw the amalgamation of a new breed of Puerto Rican I had never encountered before in my life, the guaynabit@s/blanquit@s. Most impoverished and working-class people in Puerto Rico call them guaynabit@s, guaynabich@s and/or blanquit@s; derivatives from the word blanquito, meaning white Puerto Ricans with money. I remembered that I heard those terms when I had been in the barrio of Sabana Seca in Toa Baja and somebody started saying “En poco le rompo la cara al guaynabito pendejo ese…” and also heard, “Ese es un blanquito de la YUPI…” I wondered what could a guyanabit@ or a blanquit@ be? Most of the guaynabit@s or blanquit@s were dressed in different styles: some were dressed like hipsters, others dressed like yuppies, followed by west coast-looking surfers while others dressed in European fashions. Most of them were the whitest Puerto Ricans I had ever seen in all my life and had no problem in taking pride in their whiteness.
Many of them spoke English very well but unlike New York Puerto Ricans they spoke like white Americans with the ‘bro’, ‘totally’ and ‘dude’ colloquialisms. They uttered the words, ‘like’ and ‘loca’, in the same sentence every time they spoke. I was impressed by the way they were speaking in Spanglish with an Anglo-American twist because it was these people who were supposed to hate Nuyorican Spanglish and be patriotic ‘Spanish Only’ Puerto Ricans. They behaved very similarly to U.S hipsters who talked about hipsters but never admitted they were the very hipsters they criticized. These blanquit@s were the same way, always criticizing upper-class people without looking in the mirror.
There I was with an old New York Yankees fitted baseball cap, a long white t-shirt, and my crusty Nike sneakers. My black skin covered in tattoos wanted to disappear in thin-air like Chevy Chase in the movie Invisible Man. It was obvious that they enjoyed a good chunk of white supremacy and privilege and didn’t mix with Puerto Ricans of darker hues even if Puerto Rican nationalism stressed that we were all mixed. One could tell that most of the professors at UPR-Rio Piedras came from the same blanquit@/guyanabit@ stock, which probably did not think much of me either, even though they never gave me an unfair grade and even to this day I am grateful for that.  It might have been because they had the privilege of being color-blind. Most of those professors also refrained from talking about blackness, stateside Puerto Ricans or anything that questioned their privileged gatekeeping, prophetic intellectual identity and above all; archetypical Puerto Rican identity. I would spend five more years defending the Puerto Rican diaspora and contemporary blackness in those classrooms which was usually rebutted by a simple silent treatment by the professor and the students.
It was surprising for me to see white privileged Puerto Ricans play plena, bomba, and salsa music considering that those are Afro-diasporic derived musical inheritances of black resistance.[1]This usurpation of black culture caused me frustration because I knew that black Puerto Rican culture was more than listening to salsa while getting drunk off of Medalla Lights on the Juan Ponce de Leon Blvd. I noticed that what acclaimed Afro-Puerto Rican scholar, writer and researcher, Isar Godreau argued was right: that there is a selective celebration of blackness in Puerto Rico. A selective blackness that was folklorized and distanced that does not require critically assessing inner-workings that contribute racial inequity and injustice.[2] In these academic spaces most black Puerto Ricans seemed more interested in being accepted as Puerto Rican first before being black and never spoke about racism and white supremacy, always reinforcing racial harmony.
Felipe Luciano’s publication A New Deal Between Stateside and Island Puerto Ricans: The View From a New York Rican (2012) predicted the problems with the ongoing smug institutional racism in Puerto Rico. He comments:
We’ve noticed that your professional class has been coming in droves to America, many with their bourgeois attitudes on class and race, their inability or unwillingness to deal with Black people and their occupation of top level positions in our cities based on their educational attainment. In the main they’ve done well, but, now, they’ve got to take a back seat. They’re hurting us.[3]
Nowhere is Luciano’s comments truer than experiencing it oneself in racist institutional spaces surrounded by blanquit@s/guaynabit@s. Only, in spaces that certainly contribute to glaring racial inequities in higher education and lack of black racial advancement, one has to find out exactly who are these blanquit@s/guaynabit@s that Feliciano mentions and how they came to be.
One of the most well documented and researched works on gated communities in Guaynabo City is Carlos Suarez-Carrasquillo’s dissertation Marketing and Gated Communities: A Case study of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico (2014), which examines the emergence of surveillance and luxury gated communities and its relationship to race and class. He posits,
Homogeneity can be accounted, for in these communities in the Puerto Rican context is dominated by income, and not surprisingly, the spheres of power that belongs for the most part to white Puerto Ricans. A clear example is how the term guaynabito has been gaining more prominence in popular conversations. This in my opinion certainly an offspring of the term blanquito which is how whiteness has been defined in the Puerto Rican context that not only includes race but income as well.[4]
Shockingly, however, over the past ten years white middle-class Puerto Rican migration to the United States is on the rise and continues to change the Puerto Rican landscape. The massive population decrease in Puerto Rico and the alarming reconfigurations of Puerto Rican destinations to mainly Florida, the Midwest amongst other regions requires an examination through an Afrolati@ lens and epistemology if we are to condemn black racism and continue anti-racist organizations that began in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1970s. The term Afrolatin@ was reared in the United States with a transnational cross-fertilization between the United States and Latin American and the Caribbean. This movement stresses anti-black racism within the Latin@ communities themselves who stress a propensity to uphold mestizaje while upholding blackness at the bottom of the racial hierarchy.
What implication do these blanquit@s and guaynabit@s have in the way that transnational Puerto Ricanness is constructed? How does the Puerto Rican construction of whiteness and white supremacy reflect on the massive population decrease in recent years? Are these blanquit@s/guaynabit@s going to be in solidarity with marginalized folks in the U.S upon their arrival, or will they assimilate to U.S notions of whiteness?
The lack of sustained academic attention of this new wave of Puerto Ricans is worrisome from an Afro-latin@ epistemology. Puerto Rican racial politics is in deep connection with the whitewashing of Latinos in the United States in order to give them honorary whiteness. Despairingly, the significant academic and cultural politics of the Nuyorican movement, and Afrlolatin@ movements amongst other community initiatives by important figures like Tato Laviera, Miguel Pinero, Mariposa Rodriguez, Pedro Pietri followed by foregrounding works of scholars like Juan Flores, Miriam Jimenez, Jossiana Arroyo, amongst others, are under scrutiny by many Ivory towers in Puerto Rico and the United States. This reminds us that we have a strong base and our presence cannot be ignored, especially in mainland territory. The Afrolatin@ and Latinegr@s movements are in the rise and would benefit from analyzing the constructions of Puerto Rican whiteness and recent migrations. The crux of my argument suggests that with the increase of white Puerto Rican migration in mostly white American spaces intersected with the already racist culture and customs of Puerto Rican culture, Puerto Rican blanquit@s/guaynabit@s in the United States and the island will continue to efface the Afro-diasporic linkages of black cultural and political heritage of Puerto Rican culture supported by their dissociation with blackness.
According to the lauded Puerto Rican scholar, Juan Flores, more than just economic remittances result as a circular migration between countries of origin and the United States. Flores coined the term “cultural remittances” as the process that results from the cultural exchanges, interactions, and experiences Puerto Ricans have in the ebb and flows of migrations resulting in a fluid re-construction of Puerto Rican identity. Flores has investigated on how Puerto Rican migration from below, meaning; marginalized classes from the U.S and Puerto Rico have influenced Puerto Rican culture with the introduction of converged musical forms such as New York salsa and hip-hop amongst political movements. I predict that due to white Puerto Rican migrations toward predominantly white spaces will create cultural remittances that will rapidly increase the already racist establishment in Puerto Rico and the mainland. White U.S supremacy and racism can also become part of “cultural remittances” affecting Puerto Rico. Conversely, the racist baggage Puerto Ricans bring with them is also worrisome. Simply writing of blackness in Puerto Rico and the United States gives Puerto Rican academics the impression that race only has to do with blackness and nothing to do with whiteness making it fundamental to further investigate how whiteness affects the process of Puerto Rican migration, the construction of a new state-side Puerto Rican and development of racial politics.
White supremacy has increased exponentially in Puerto Rico since the island has experienced economic recession, severe population decrease and talks about statehood further alienating the Puerto Ricans Caribbean heritage. The same way social media creates groups of resistance through global hip-hop movements so has social and corporate media propagated the construction of guaynabitonness in Puerto Rico. Many scholars refuse to write about blanquit@s/guaynabit@s because scholars of them are in fact blanquit@s/guaynabit@s, an issue, which continues to diminish spaces for black introspection in the academy.

Construction of White Puerto Rican identities in the Island

Isar Goudreau argued at the Second Symposium of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg: Culture, Race and Gender (2014) at The University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras while accompanied by Miriam Jimenez: “Taino culture is explained thoroughly while black history starts in slavery without mentioning powerful African nations and cultures prior to resistance, capture and slavery.” Indeed, very seldom do Puerto Ricans in general ask the question: How did plena and bomba come to emerge? Was there a black consciousness taking place that created these Puerto Rican elements? Does blackness have to always be examined with a national lens or is African diaspora really credible? Do black Puerto Rican figures like Arturo Schomburg, Tego Calderón, and Mayra Santos-Febres have a black consciousness? How has it been obliterated and swept under the rug by a ruling white middle and upper-class by calling one a vende patria or a Boricua de embuste whenever one claims an existential right to have our reason to exist and recognized as black bodies. There is a white Puerto Rican history; it is called Puerto Rican history. There is white Puerto Rican poetry it is called Puerto Rican poetry. Puerto Rican culture has been unable to shepherd our people out of the wilderness of racism and inequality. U.S colonialism was resisted while simultaneously privileging whiteness and denying any charges of racism while controlling blackness through a nationalistic agenda.
In her book Locked In and Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City (2013) Zaire Dinzey-Flores, investigates how spatial boundaries are deliberately delineated to enforce and reinforce boundaries of inequality based on social class and race.[5] Gates were erected during the 1970s and 80s, which led to more unequal segregation. Increasing fear of crime led to voluntarily erected gates for the rich and involuntary gates for the poor. The most famous epicenter known to harbor the construction of whiteness and gated communities in Puerto Rico is the city of Guaynabo.
White racialized homogeneity excludes black and low-income people. Guaynabo City was a microcosm and paradigmatic example of the future new waves of white Puerto Ricans that would immigrate to the United States in the 21st century. During the 1970s while the development of gated communities or controles de accesso was on the rise, so were low-income government housing projects. During this time there was a massive return migration from stateside Puerto Ricans usually seeking alternatives to post-industrial economic hardships. It was from these interstices that salsa, reggeaton, and hip-hop germinated, feminist and queer ideas fertilized and flourished into the eventual conduit of poor working-class and Afro-Puerto Rican identities. Institutional racism neglected working-class and black populations and sought to control a Puerto Rican national identity that stressed racial harmony. Puerto Rican became a race in itself that ignored racial hegemonies in the island further exacerbating equality for black people, which increased white privilege.
Institutions like El Instituto de Cultura, Department of Tourism and the University of Puerto Rico amongst other prestigious universities and government agencies are in part responsible for making sure the politics of exclusion within Puerto Rican identity went unmentioned. These universities very seldom teach Black Studies, African Diaspora studies, or Puerto Rican diaspora and migration, which further emphasizes how Puerto Ricanness should be envisioned—another project of white supremacy.
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White middle-class Puerto Ricans would benefit and appropriate the ideological social problems of the 1970s without the benefit of having to engage in self-criticism by scapegoating U.S colonialism as responsible for all the problems in the island, including racism. More compellingly, the crack-cocaine trade was attractive as a counter to poverty within the postindustrial cities of Puerto Rico. Furthermore, during the 1980s many black Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, particularly, young black men, were excluded from both the service and high tech industries that were developing in the island, leading to high unemployment rates among black youth.
The white Puerto Rican middle classes benefitted from these social inequalities and were recruited for well-to-do jobs by family members also colloquially known as palas, which goes unmentioned as a destructive economic element. These inequalities led to emerge of illegal activity as a primary conduit for economic survival amongst poor segments in Puerto Rico. Illicit activities like petty thievery, prostitution and even drug dealing had been a small part of the informal economy of segregated black spaces throughout the twentieth century. Reggaeton, a genre despised by most white middle-class Puerto Ricans would be an important representation of these lifestyles confronted and far removed historically and intellectually from the landscape of Puerto Rican epistemologies. After years of Puerto Ricans’ blatant dissociation with stateside Puerto Ricans for not being “real” Puerto Ricans, has now become a reality for themselves.

Massive Population Decrease 1990s-Present

Puerto Ricans in the island have been an important presence in more recent massive migrations to areas of the U.S. without previously established Puerto Rican communities, which some analysts read as brain drains and as a drastic population decrease. Puerto Rico has been experiencing a massive population decrease in the last fifteen years with a new type of Puerto Rican moving from Puerto Rico to the United States. Although many are poor working-class Puerto Ricans who are seeking a better life, an abundant white Puerto Rican population is also migrating to the United States. Unlike poor working-class Puerto Ricans, many guaynabitos have a strong academic background, enjoy white privilege in the U.S, and continue their studies and thrive among their white constitutes while working-class Puerto Ricans benefit from their whiteness and anti-black attitudes. Many of these white middle-class Puerto Ricans have white counterparts and are creating the new Americans. As Arlene Davila’s states in her book Latino Spin: Public Image and the Whitewashing of Race (2008):
In dispute is whether Latinos will mongrelize America, or become the new group on the route to whiteness, the new Italians or Irish Americans; or whether they will become the new “mainstream”, or perhaps, the new base for the Republican Party[6]
In the last decade various racist videos in YouTube have been uploaded by Puerto Ricans from the island to discuss “Boricuas Vs. Nuyoricans The Truth!” stressing the difference of white and sophisticated islanders in comparison with the ghetto uneducated stateside Puerto Ricans.[7] In her article Boricuas Vs. Nuyoricans–Indeed! (2008) Miriam Jimenz argues:
It is to this white identity that our amateur video-maker pays homage citing census figures and mitochondrial-DNA studies of University of Puerto Rico biologist Juan Carlos Cruz to “buttress” his argument that “real” Puerto Ricans owe their genetic and cultural mestizaje to European and indigenous peoples. And it is this understanding of a de-Africanized mestizaje that many Puerto Ricans cling to when they first arrive to the United States.[8]
The perils and advantages of these attacks underscores that not identifying as white is a clear indication that white Puerto Ricans want to continue to enjoy white privilege in the U.S while also claiming Puerto Rican identity through a racist agenda.  Stateside Puerto Ricans who refuse to acknowledge their whiteness due to defiance to white Anglo supremacy also do a disservice to Puerto Rican equality due to lacking an acknowledgment of white privilege and multi-dimensionalities within Puerto Rican identity. This indoctrination has been ingrained in them since birth with hopes of forgetting powerful African empires, African slavery, black resistance, the aesthetic Caribbean transformations that resulted from it and also the black consciousness that lead to the creation of black culture. Many recently Puerto Rican migrations have settled in locations that tend to be predominantly inhabited by Anglo-Americans. According to Jorge Duany and Felix Matos’ investigation of Puerto Rican migration to Orlando, the media falsely portrays Puerto Ricans from the island as an educated middle-class, white collar, and from the suburbs while they conclude that many come from working-class backgrounds as well. Yet the report states:
In particular, Puerto Rican communities in Orlando differ significantly from their counterparts in other major U.S cities, such as New York, not only in their historical origins and settlement patterns, but also in their mode of economic, political and cultural incorporation. Economically, Puerto Ricans have been more successful in Central Florida than elsewhere, as measured by their income, occupational, residential and cultural incorporation.[9]
Duany’s and Matos’ 2000 census analysis in Florida also underscores:
More than two thirds classified themselves as white, the highest proportion of all states. Inversely a smaller proportion of Puerto Ricans identified themselves as black or some other race. According to the census, Island-born Puerto Ricans are more likely to describe themselves as white and less likely to describe themselves as black than mainland-born Puerto Ricans.[10]
These investigations are helpful but do not address white privilege and discrimination. Also, there is a possibility that due to living in the U.S south, a region known to be extremely racist, Puerto Ricans may identify as white as a protective measure. This also shows that although not all Puerto Ricans are identifying as white in the United States and prefer the option of ‘Puerto Rican’ or ‘other’ in the census, it tells us that discussion of race is still an unspoken issue in Puerto Rican culture. No longer can we allow racism and white supremacy in the Latino and black communities.
In September 2014, director and activist Cesar Vargas published an article: “The privilege of White Hispanic II, Facts, Stats and Cognitive Dissonance” arguing that white Latinos enjoy more privileges than Black or Afro-Latinos and more opportunities for upward mobility. He also underscores the white middle class complaining about alleged racism for not being white enough. However, Vargas argues:
Do you know what’s the biggest struggle white Latinos face according to these articles/blogs? Being confused for white and having to prove to other Latinos their Latino-ness. Seriously, if that is your biggest struggle then it would behoove you to reconsider your entire existence and why you think that should supersede any other issue we’re facing today.[11]
The article was an extension of his first version “The Privilege of White Latinos: Leaving Out the Rest” that infuriated many white and black Latin@s when it went viral in the Huffington post. He argues “People talk so much about Latin@s denying their blackness but bring up the term white Latino and you will see an extreme reaction, visceral attack by white Latin@s themselves”. [12] This exemplifies the extent to which white supremacy and racial harmony admonishes any pathway toward racial equality.
Puerto Rican diaspora research needs to focus on white supremacy in the island and the uncritical celebration of “Latin@ middle class” desires that is masked by the continuous mainstreaming of racism in the Latino media, color-blind ideology, and false pan-Latin homogeneous racial makeups. Arlene Davila’s research on the controversial transformations by El Museo del Barrio and other Latin@ institutions discussed in her book Latino Spin (2008) exemplifies how the gains of the Afro-Latin@ movement have begun to faltered due to white Latin@ establishments who are obsessed with “Latininzing” (aka whitewashing) our black identities.
During the 1970s a massive migration of stateside Puerto Ricans returned to Puerto Rico only to be mistreated and referred to as immoral, violent, Afrocentric, lazy, welfare-dependent and drug-addicted felons consumed by American values.[13] Ironically for white Puerto Ricans the script has flipped and now they are the ones who are moving to the United States and “consumed” by American values. In these times, new research agendas should focus on destabilizing any purity with Puerto Rican identity and asking on which side of the struggle with the U.S are they?  Are they for white supremacy or are they for equality and justice for all? Will black Puerto Rican island scholars take off their anti-U.S. Black and Puerto Rican Studies blinders and help us achieve racial justice?

Conclusion

The recent white Puerto Rican migration to the United States is further co-opting Puerto Rican identity and culture into a larger project of whitening that, far from acquiring honorary whiteness, has contributed to the multiple marginalizations of Afro-Puerto Ricans, other Afro-Latin@s and people of color in general.[14] Many middle-class Puerto Ricans are strikingly reminiscent of Puerto Rican identity while embracing romanticized articulations of nationalism. More compellingly, it carries its white consciousness and culture through its racist efforts to diminish seeing the Puerto Rican experience through the black lens. Their lens provide a view that stems from European colonialism that perhaps will not leave its inherent influence that now has further spilled to the stateside eradicating strenuous years of counter-culture stemming from the Nuyorican movement to the Afrolatin@ movement.
Afro-Puerto Rican scholar and writer Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro published a short article suggesting that Puerto Rico should follow African studies in the United States amongst other countries.[15] Many Afro-Puerto Rican scholars refuse to deconstruct white supremacy and white privilege. While return Puerto Rican migrants in the 70s were treated harshly, our national identity loyalties obligate us to give white Puerto Ricans a break and a right to be as racist as they want to be simply because we are all colonial subjects. Sympathetically, matters of national belonging and a fear of becoming completely invisible and unaccounted for is the space of liminality that black Puerto Ricans live in.
The options are limited: Black Puerto Ricans in the island either confront white supremacy straight on using their voice and risk being completely obliterated from belonging to a Puerto Rican nationhood, or not take the risk and continue to enjoy a small piece of belonging within a liminal space. It is a space of having a social life in a very limited and marginal space. We need to explore the space of liminalities of national identity in order to understand their fears of confronting an identity that attempts to erase them completely. How do people make the best out of this space of liminality? What does it allow us to do? How can we position ourselves as black bodies in order to have some agency? It goes back to strategic exceptionalisms.  If we are to unite against the U.S it will not be by upholding a flag that represents white supremacy.
As a colonial territory there is little inkling in criticizing our own people while achieving autonomy and belonging. Many black subjects that seek independence in the island are often supported by many white middle-class blanquit@s/guaynabit@s who want the same thing, resulting in leaving race in the back seat for another discussion. As a U.S colony there is fear to erode any hopes of achieving independence; hence the fear of critiquing racism and white supremacy. These multiple positionalities are in contradiction sometimes. I say it is time we continue to explore white supremacy and white privilege in Puerto Rico while understanding our own afro-diasporic and multiplicities of black consciousness. Not just our African heritage, like bomba and plena, but our black Afro-Caribbean and diasporic inheritance as well. We do not owe anything to blanquit@s/ guaynabit@s or any other white racist Puerto Ricans.
Miguel Pinero’s poem, A Lower East Side Poem, stresses he does not want be buried in Puerto Rico and instead prefers to be near the stabbing, shooting, gambling, fighting, and unnatural dying and pleads to have his ashes scattered throughout the Lower East Side. This poetic statement may be interpreted as a cognitive dissonance in Puerto Rico for its unpatriotic tone but I wonder: Where are these recently arrived Puerto Ricans going to want their ashes buried at?
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William Garcia is an Afro-Nuyorican by way of Staten Island. He is an MA candidate in history at the university of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. His research interests are Afro-Latino history, hip hop, and reggaeton in the Caribbean and Puerto Rican transnational migration. He is currently a bilingual elementary school teacher in Austin, TX.

Bibliography

Bonilla Eduardo, Racism Without Racists: Color Blind Racism & Racial Inequality in Contemporary America, (2010) Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Betances, Samuel, The Prejudice of Having no Prejudice in Puerto Rico. 1972. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ081957
Chaves, Linda, Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politic of Hispanic Assimilation, (1991)
Duany, Jorge, Blurred Borders, Transnational Migration Between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States (2014), The University of Carolina Press.
Flores, Juan. From Bomba to Hip-hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity. (2000) New York: Columbia University Press
Flores Juan. “Créolité in the Hood: Diaspora as source and challenge.” Centro Journal, Fall 2004, number 002, City University of New York, Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños.
Flores Juan, The Diaspora Strikes Back: Caribeño Tales of Learning and Turning (2009) by Routledge.
Flores Juan, Jimenez Miriam. The Afrolatin@ Reader: history and Culture in the United States. edited, Duke University Press.
Fountain-Stokes, Larry La, Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora, University of Minnesota Press, 2009
Godreau, Isar  (2006) “Folkloric Others:‘Blanqueamiento’ and the Celebration of Blackness as an Exception in Puerto Rico” in Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness. Deborah Thomas and Kamari Clarke ed. 171-187 Durham: Duke University Press.
Goudreau, Isar Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism and U.S colonialism in Puerto Rico, University of Illinois Press, (2015).
Gonzales, Lydia, la Tercera Raiz: Presencia Africana en Puerto Rico. 1993. Centros de Estudios de La Realidad Puertorriquena de instituto de cultura Puertorriquena.
Kantrowitz, Nathan, Algunas Consecuencias Raciales: diferencias Educativas Y Ocupacionales entre los Puertorriqueños Blancos y No Blancos en los Estados Unidos continentales 1950, Revista de Ciencias Sociales 15(3): 387-97.
Luciano, Felipe, A New Deal between Stateside and Island Puerto Ricans: The View From a New York Rican (2012) Latinegr@s Project, http://montyandme.tumblr.com/post/6469349094/a-new-deal-between-stateside-and-island-puerto
Pabón, Carlos, Nación Postmortem: Ensayos Sobre los Tiempos de Insoportable Ambigüedad, 2006, Ediciones Callejon.
Rodríguez Olleros, Ángel, Canto a la Raza: Composición Sanguínea de estudiantes de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, (1974)Rio Piedras colegio de Farmacia
Vargas, Cesar The privilege of White Latino: Leaving out the Rest (9/92014) Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/casar-vargas/the-privilege-of-white-hi_b_5780940.html
Vargas, Cesar: The privilege of White Hispanic II, Facts, Stats and Cognitive Dissonance, UPLIFTT, http://www.upliftt.com/film/the-privilege-of-white-hispanic-ii-facts-stats-and-cognitive-dissonance/
Wise, Tim, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and white Denial in the Age of Obama (2009) City Light Books.

Notes

[1] See Isar Godreau, “Folkloric Others:‘Blanqueamiento’ and the Celebration of Blackness as an Exception in Puerto Rico” in Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness. Deborah Thomas and Kamari Clarke ed. 171-187(2006) Durham: Duke University Press.
[2] Isar Goudreau, Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism and U.S colonialism in Puerto Rico, University of Illinois Press, (2015).
[3] Luciano, Felipe A New Deal between Stateside and Island Puerto Ricans: The View From a New York Rican (2012)
[4] Carlos Suarez Carrasquillo, Marketing and Gated Communities: A case Study of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico (9-1-2009), University of Massachusetts-Amherst, pp.: 179.
[5] Sookhee, Oh, Locked in, locked Out: Gated communities in a Puerto Rican City (2014), Book Review, published the American Journal of sociology, vol. 120, Nov 1, 2014.
[6] Arlene Davila Latino Spin: Public Image and the Whitewashing of Race (2008), New York University Press: pp. 1.
[7] Boricuas vs. Nuyoricans The Truth! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDvMf_DLrbE
[8] Miriam Jimenz, Nuyiricans Vs. Boricaus Indeed!, Revista, Harvard rEview of Latin America. http://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/book/boricuas-vs-nuyoricans—indeed
[9] Jorge Duany, Felix V Matos Rodriguez, Puerto Ricans in Orlando and Central Florida.
http://www.orlando.org/clientuploads/hsummit/hsummit_prcentralflorida.pdf
[10] Ibid, p. 21.
[11] Cesar Vargas, The privilege of White Hispanic II, Facts, Stats and Cognitive Dissonance (2014)
[12] Cesar Vargas, The privilege of White Latino: Leaving out the Rest (9/92014) Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/casar-vargas/the-privilege-of-white-hi_b_5780940.html
[13] Op Cit, Miriam jimenez.
[14] Op Cit, Arlene Davila, Latino Spin, pp. 18.
[15]  Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Estamos Listos Para Tener Nuestra Propia Facultad de Estudios Africanos en Alguna Universidad en Puerto Rico?, Revista Cruce, Critica socio-Cultural Contemporanea, Universidad Metropolitana, http://revistacruce.com/politica-sociedad/estamos-listos-para-tener-nuestra-propia-facultad-de-estudios-africanos.html

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  • Vequi M Hernández-Kendall · Undergraduate Student Research Assistant at University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus
    Quien eres tu para definir una raza? Y que del racismo y descrimen que yo senti toda la vida precisente por ser blanca y hablar buen ingles en un ambiente latino? Este articulo tiene bias saliende por el culo. So much hate. Hay racismo donde quiera y como quiera. El hecho que la cultura americana haya afectado el estilo del racismo en puerto rico, pues si. Pero lo de blanco viene de España tambien, sin contar todos los otros paises con raices de tez clara que forman parte de nuestra historia, latente o reciente, de inmigracion. Y en fin, ese racismo, o prejuicio mejor digo, anda en multiples direcciones simultaneamente. Del mismo modo, existen bastantes puertorriqueños que no tenemos inclinaciones raciales precisamente porque la alta diversidad cultural, y el mero hecho de nuestra identidad puertorriqueña en un pais con cuidadania USAamericana, proablemente nos expuso a algun tipo de discrimen el algun momento, o nos inculco tolerancia racial, o ambos! To each his/her own i guess. Pero que me vengan a decir gringa o guaynabichita a mi alguno, y mi respuesta sera que su ignorancia me deja sorda a sus palabras- and also, I've already heard it all, so save your breath BRO.
    • Carlos Tato Santiago · Top Commenter · UPR Rio Piedras
      superlike. Te digo, repetimos las estructuras de poder cuando le buscamos 5 patas a la cuestión de nuestra raza. ELLOS se inventan las categorías. ELLOS quieren que nos diferenciemos.
      Reply · Like
      · 4 · Yesterday at 7:27am
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  • Gretchen Sierra Zorita
    I am not going to get into the fine points of the article. I’d just like to offer some background information on the origin of gated neighborhoods. In the first half of the 1980’s, Puerto Rico became an entry point into the US for the Colombian drug cartel. Drug addiction rose dramatically during this period as did crime. All of the sudden daily life, particularly in the metropolitan area, became very unsafe. Everybody personally knew someone who had been murdered, raped, held at gunpoint. House break-ins were common place. Two men put a gun to my mother’s head when she was taking out the trash in front of our home. There was a whole routine for getting into your house when you arrived late at night. The police could not come to everyone’s rescue because the attacks were random and often.

    It was also in the 80’s when ...the National Guard was brought out for the first time to deal with drug points. It was bad. That’s when Puerto Ricans started buying alarm systems and putting barbed wire at the top of their fences. We never owned a gun but many people bought them for protection.

    Eventually people started closing off the neighborhoods (urbanizaciones) as best they could. It was a haphazard process because the neighborhoods were designed to be open with multiple access points. It happened in the more affluent neighborhoods because those were the people who had the money to pay for the street closings and guards. Any neighborhood that was built after this time was automatically gated.

    The closing of the neighborhoods radically changed the way we lived. You could no longer drop by a friend’s house to say hello for a couple of minutes or an afternoon. You had to plan, you had to be announced. This is where Calle 13 got their nicknames. When you come to a gate there is always an entrance for “residentes” and “visitantes”

    Tragically, drug-fueled crime and the closing of the neighborhoods have exacerbated class tensions and distrust. And “us and them” mentality that did not exist began to emerge. The prolongation of a welfare system that has become inter-generational has added to the tensions. There is a sense among working Puerto Ricans that they are carrying the 25% who are unemployed on their backs. They resent that there are families that have lived in the projects for more than one generation without working and a paying minimal amounts for housing. Nepotism and cronyism has eroded people’s confidence in their political leaders’ ability to tackle the issues that have led to the economic and social divide. I could go on and on.

    And then there is arrogance and prejudice which are unfortunate human traits. There will always be people in Guaynabo and elsewhere that will think they are somewhat better because they drive a foreign car and shop in certain shops. There are people who will use derogatory terms like titeres and cocolos and yales not even realizing that these words are mean-spirited. But you cannot assume that every Guaynabito is the same any more than you can assume that a guy with low-riding pants is out to get you.
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    • Mara Cabrera · Universidad Complutense de Madrid
      Did you just "not all guaynabitos" this?
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      · 3 · Yesterday at 1:41pm
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    • Manuel Fernández · San Juan, Puerto Rico
      Mara Cabrera Theres poor people and black people in guaynabo and caserios and non-gated communties. Saying "not all X" doesn't actually .make any point for you, despite what all those hastags would lead you to believe. Feeling indignant towards someone elses comment also does not mean that you're right. I don't know if you were trying to be sarcastic or funny, but I sure hope so because a comment that pointless should at the least be funny.
      Reply · Like
      · 1 · 12 hours ago
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  • Gabriel Alejandro Rodríguez Martínez · Cylon Waste Management at Battlestar: Galactica
    Perfect example of how NOT to tackle the race issue on the island. First you define the white Puerto Rican as if it were something alien, completely deprived of our history, and then you place them as coming from only one place in the island. THEN you grant our culture to the Africans, completely forgetting the Taínos before them. You also assume the two races by the same standards as in the U.S. mainland, when, in fact, the history in our island was much more different. When a white Puerto Rican dances salsa, bomba y plena, it is not whitewashing; it is just our culture. The main indicative of this being a forced view on our history is your anecdote of the UPR professors being "blanquitos/guaynabitos" as you say, but then being surprised they did not fail you for being darker.

    You may have something with the gated communities point, but it is not a matter of money or social stance, it is a manifestation of how security is sold/promoted/packaged in the island. As a former public school teacher of a school with a student rate of 94% low-income households, I witnessed on many occasions how the students boasted that they lived in a gated community.
       
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    • Beatriz Espinosa · EAP PR
      Muy de acuerdo con Vequi, Gretchen y Gabriel. I've noticed that a lot of latinos that are born in the USA come.to PR and try to present this white supremacy/racist point of view but I believe it's becaise they were raised.with that mentality and it''s very different from what really happens in PR. Im not saying saying that ravism hasnt existed in one way or another throughout our history but totso simplify things in the guaynabicho/white category is a very narrow point of view.
      It seems you dedicated your time to study african descent in PR but not the spanish/irish/french/northamerican descent at a deeper Level. FYI tHere is a white type of puertorrican blonde.with blue eyes called jabao thats a type of jibaro or island farmer that has.nothing to do with living in Guaynabo!!!
         
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      • Jen Pagan · Universidad del Sagrado Corazón
        Wow, for a post criticizing racism, this is pretty racist. So now white Puerto Ricans are 'stealing' plena? And you can't be black and a hipster? And if you're white, you're a poser but if you are black, you are somehow 'real'? Ironically, because the author is probably from Staten Island, chances are he got the silent treatment in the UPR classroom because he's not considered a 'real Puerto Rican', so he's perceived as someone who doesn't really know what he's talking about. They didn't give him shit for being black and tatooed, but because he's not 'one of us' (whatever that means).

        PR can be racist, but applying American style racism (identity politics, where your color or your gayness or your X factor comes first and human comes second, and the things you are 'allowed' to do depend on your skin color. That's why middle cl...ass blacks are called oreos, because they're not 'real') doesn't really cut it. I do agree that schools should teach about Africa. But then again, do schools in Cuba or Dominican Republic or Colombia anywhere else teach African history? It's not an unique American /Puerto Rican sin to give Africa the short shift.

        Does PR has racists? By the truckloads. But identity politics racism? Not necessarily.

        And honestly? I think Puerto Rican xenophobia would be more adequate, which does overlap with racism, but isn't the same. You could throw class warfare somewhere in there too.

        Lastly, the author and I are roughly the same color. Do I get shit for my curly hair because straight hair is 'good hair'? Yes. But do I let my color dictate what to watch or not watch? Dictate what I dress? Heck, does even my culture (not just skin color) dictate what I watch and does owning an iPad make be a bad Puerto Rican? Must I live in a little house in el campo and live out the jibaro cliche to be 'real'?

        The author is doing what the UPR profesor did to him: dismiss those who don't follow the script as fakes, posers and hipsters.
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        • William Garcia · 5th Grade Bilingual Teacher at Reilly Elementary School
          http://youtu.be/dw_mRaIHb-M
          Reply · Like
          · 2 · 4 hours ago
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        • Jen Pagan · Universidad del Sagrado Corazón
          Did...did the author just try to rebut everyone's counterpoint with a youtube vid of a (American!) dude from Comedy Central where it basically argues that white people were mean to me so it's ok to be mean to them? Is this a thing that just happened?

          Here's some friendly advice, dude. As look as you keep trying to find meaning to your life outside yourself by joining and leaving tribes until you feel 'at home', you'll never be happy. You probably got it in your head that PR was an Arcadia just for you, then you moved here in 2009 and found out PR is not happy happy utopian paradaise of black people dancing plena all the time; innocent creatures that have never held an iPhone before.

          Sorry for being a complex 21st century metropolis of people descended from Spanish people that had sex with everything that moved, I guess. Damn those Spanish people! Why couldn't they be proper racist like the guys up north??

          Also, stop projecting your childhood drama in your 'scholarly' articles. That's just sad.
          Reply · Like
          · 1 · about an hour ago
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        • Manuel Fernández · San Juan, Puerto Rico
          Jen Pagan you hit the nail on the head, jen. I also don't doubt that some of his rican racial crisis stems from a deflated illusion of what PR really is. I think he would've liked to experience more racism on the island so he wouldn't have to go through so many mental gymnastics to point the finger at guayna-whitey. "Damn those Spanish people! Why couldn't they be proper racist like the guys up north??" That sums of up a lot of the article.

          I already pointed his racial chip-on-the-shoulder in another comment, but he thinks calling him an "acomplejao" is just an invalidation of ones racial experience. Some people though do look for controversy where there isn't one. I think what everyone here agrees on is that there is obviously racism in PR but his analysis comes from an inapplicable perspective.
          Reply · Like
          · about an hour ago
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      1. Puerto Rico has always had a huge problem with identity. It has been a constant struggle since the first “criollos” stopped considering themselves Spanish and called themselves Puertorriqueños. There have been many attempts throughout history to clearly identify what it is to be Puerto Rican: Luis Pales Matos writing “Tun Tun de Pasa Y Griferia” in the 1930s coining the term “Afroantillano” to include black caribbeans as part of Puerto Rican diaspora; the adoption of Cuban writer Luis Carbonell’s saying “Y tu abuela donde esta” to counter the dominating white class’ dissociation with the black race; even the Puerto Rican Parade held in New York every year allowing “mainland” Puerto Ricans to celebrate their heritage. Therefore, we can definitely conclude that Puerto Ricans have been eager and yearning to establish what it means be a Puerto Rican. Yet doing so has proven to be a very complicated feat as our history, alike most of the Western Hemisphere’s, has been so complex.
        Being Puerto Rican entails being Taino (Indigenous), European, African, American, and even Chinese. And along with each, being Puerto Rican also entails embracing the full history, not just the history that happened within the island. There have been so many peoples that have contributed to our rich history and our culture, that denying or obviating any aspect of each history would be denying the true fabric of our existence.
        To be able to start the process of identification, there need to be some radicals that dare speak out their reality, their history, their truth. It will not be the same for every person, and AMEN HALLELUJAH to that! So, even though I am not completely in favor of what the author of this article, William Garcia, has to say, I commend him for starting a dialogue that can conduce to retaking a dialogue of identifying what being a Puerto Rican is. But I must argue against the biased viewpoint of the author in criminalizing and distancing “white” Puerto Ricans from defining the Puerto Rican race. “Y tu abuela donde esta” goes both ways!
        What really defines a Puerto Rican is how diverse we are. I have family in Dominican Republic, US, Middle East, China, Europe and South America. I have family who physically resemble other races: black, white, asian, indigenous. Some are straight, others queer, even transgender. Some live in ghettos, others in Guaynabo, and others like me prefer to go beyond PR and US soil. And you know what… we’re all Puerto Rican.
        Instead of trying to point out our differences and fight over who is more Puerto Rican, I would actually invite all to start viewing our similarities. Don’t forget our history, as it does defines us, but learn to forgive the atrocities committed equally by invaders and locals in the past and accept that these things did change us, and for better or worse, they are part of who we are now-a-days. I’ve had enough of our pointing fingers at others and making ourselves victims. Lets not allow OUR identity to be defined by what others do, rather lets take control of who we are and embrace it. Lets look at the diversity and richness that makes us truly beautiful, and lets aim to represent that 100%.
        That’s all I have to say…
        • Claro q hay racismo en PR. Hay racismo en contra de negros, en contra de blancos, encontro de mestizos, en contra de dominicanos, en contra de gringos, en contra de todos. Igual q en todo el mundo.
      2. This essay does raise valid issues.
        I would enjoy talking about it more that writing about it.
        I migrated before “Guaynabo city” was a thing so the term is new to me.
        In my opinion it is true that there is a significant segment of Puerto Ricans that discriminate against blacks, other Hispanics, women and lgbt. All for ignorant and incorrect reasons.
        I don’t think that race is the main causation of this.
        Race is not a biological definition, its a cultural one.
        If you look at a large part of reggaetton and salsa artists they are considered white in Puerto Rican society.
        If you look at all societies regardless of color there exist discrimination based on ignorant beliefs.
        Most of the time this discrimination aligns more with income level. The problem of capitalism is that is not design to create equality.
        Regarding emulating fashion, Yankees hats and Nike’s are no more Puerto Rican that surfer or hipster clothes. Also they are status symbol. I remember as a kid it was uncool not to have some Jordan’s.
        I’m curious of the statistics that back the demographics of the Puerto Ricans migrating to the us through the years.
        Also when do you considered someone black. Looking at some of my forefathers they were considered black depending on the census. And I count my afro as part of my african heritage.
        The latest consensus in science is that modern humanity came from Africa, which makes any society be based on African culture in their past
        I would like more data backing some of the anecdotes.
        Other books agreeing with ones statement don’t give the reader an objective idea of the findings basing the statement.
        As someone who lived during the growth of gated community I don’t see them motivated by race. The times I was mugged and her about mugging, The mugger was, what would be considered white in Puerto Rico. Keep in mind that this is an anecdote with a small sample size.
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