Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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Tag: Puerto Rico

When Trying to Return Home: Stories

2023-03-13

A dazzling debut collection spanning a century of Black American and Afro-Latino life in Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh, Louisiana, Miami, and beyond—and an evocative meditation on belonging, the meaning of home, and how we secure freedom on our own terms
Beyond blanqueamiento: black affirmation in contemporary Puerto Rico

2021-10-29

Using ethnographic data gathered during nearly two decades, the article illustrate that many Puerto Ricans have chosen not to engage in blanqueamiento, instead affirming their blackness, marrying within their communities, and valuing their own cultural practices and beliefs.
Hence, even if mixed-race identity is assumed to be the organizing principle, it is anti-Blackness and the systemic striving to achieve whiteness that operates as the driving force of Puerto Rican society.

2020-06-26

Puerto Rico, a colony of the United States since 1898―and a colony of Spain for 400 years before ―was very much subjected, by the empires and local criollo elites, to eugenicist ideas. “Race” science, in the first-half of the twentieth century, allowed criollo elites to create new racializing parameters while inserting “progressive” measures of social…
Shilling for U.S. Empire: The Legacies of Scientific Racism in Puerto Rico

2020-06-26

Marein’s article disregards this long history of U.S. imperialism through anthropometrics to argue that after the U.S. “annexation” of Puerto Rico, the lives of Puerto Ricans improved substantially. The author uses anthropometrics to construct his argument without understanding and questioning the long history of scientific racism in the archipelago or in his own methodology.
My family was thoroughly racialized long before we moved out of Puerto Rico.

2020-06-15

My family was thoroughly racialized long before we moved out of Puerto Rico. I suppose when one grows up in a Black family designated as such by history, economics, society, and experiences of racism, along with the embodied trauma it produces, as much as by one’s cultural practices, one is likely, in the context of…
‘Racialization works differently here in Puerto Rico, do not bring your U.S.-centric ideas about race here!’

2020-06-13

In Puerto Rico, much like in the rest of Latin America, anti-Black racism is embedded in the very denial of its existence by the state and society.
Why Some Black Puerto Ricans Choose ‘White’ on the Census

2020-02-10

The island has a long history of encouraging residents to identify as white, but there are growing efforts to raise awareness about racism.
But in Puerto Rico and other parts of Latin America where racial mixing was common, there are numerous ways to identify racially, with different names for different combinations of skin tones, hair textures, and facial features, such as “negra,” “trigueña,” or “morena.”

2019-09-22

In the United States, racial segregation enforced strict political and social barriers between Blacks and whites long after slavery. (“One drop” of African blood designated you as “Black,” no matter what your complexion or ethnicity.) But in Puerto Rico and other parts of Latin America where racial mixing was common, there are numerous ways to…
This Afro-Latina Started a Magazine in Puerto Rico to Celebrate Black Beauty

2019-09-22

REVISTA ÉTNICA shines a spotlight on Afro-Latino culture on the island.
Pondering My Black, Biracial and Multiracial Identity Post Hurricane Maria

2018-05-30

But I have to be honest. Living in Puerto Rico and Hurricane Maria changed me, and they continue to influence how I see myself and others.

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Tag: Puerto Rico