{"id":14745,"date":"2011-07-05T03:00:03","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T03:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=14745"},"modified":"2011-07-05T03:01:10","modified_gmt":"2011-07-05T03:01:10","slug":"puerto-rico-afro-caribbean-and-taino-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=14745","title":{"rendered":"Puerto Rico: Afro-Caribbean and Ta\u00edno Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Puerto Rico: Afro-Caribbean and Ta\u00edno Identity<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Repeating Islands: News and commentary on Caribbean culture, literature, and the arts<\/a>
\n2011-06-26<\/p>\n

Ivette Romero-Cesareo<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of Spanish and Director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
\nMarist College, Poughkeepsie, New York<\/em><\/p>\n

Note from Steven F. Riley:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0[The number of 2010 census repondents from Puerto Rico<\/a>\u00a0identifiying as two or more races (TOMR)\u00a0decreased<\/em> by 22.82% over the last decade. New York<\/a>\u00a0was the only\u00a0other commonwealth\/state with a TOMR decrease; which was 0.73%.]<\/p>\n

The number of Puerto Ricans<\/a> that identify only as black or Native American has increased by about 50 percent in the last decade, according to the latest census figures<\/a>, which have surprised experts. \u201cThe increase suggests a growing sense of racial identity among the various ethnic groups that for a long time have been considered a heterogeneous mosaic in this Commonwealth of United States\u201d writes AOL Noticias<\/em>.<\/p>\n

However, experts consider that it is too early to explain the reason for the change. \u201cThis really breaks with a historical pattern,\u201d says Jorge Duany<\/a>, professor of anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico. With the growth in those who consider themselves black or Native American, there was a decrease in the percentage of the population of Puerto Ricans who only identify as white. This group dropped almost 8 percentage points, to about 76% of the 3.7 million inhabitants of the island. More than 461,000 islanders identified solely as black, an increase of 52%, while close to 20,000 said that they were Native Americans, an increase of almost 49%.<\/p>\n

According to experts, several factors could have influenced the increase in the number of people who identify as black. Duany explains that the choice of <\/strong>Barack Obama<\/strong><\/a> as President of United States could have influenced some who see themselves as black, because the leader dissipated negative stereotypes about race.<\/strong> The increase in the number of blacks also coincided with a push to highlight the black population of Puerto Rico, as the Department of Education included for the first time a high school textbook dealing exclusively with its history. Moreover, there was a base effort aimed at dark-skinned Puerto Ricans through social networks such as Facebook to urge them to identify as \u201cafro-puertorrique\u00f1os\u201d [Afro-Puerto Ricans] in the 2010 census…<\/p>\n

Read the entire post here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Puerto Rico: Afro-Caribbean and Ta\u00edno Identity Repeating Islands: News and commentary on Caribbean culture, literature, and the arts 2011-06-26 Ivette Romero-Cesareo, Professor of Spanish and Director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York Note from Steven F. Riley:\u00a0\u00a0[The number of 2010 census repondents from Puerto Rico\u00a0identifiying as two or more races […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,33,125,6,20],"tags":[6775,5916,2654,6776],"class_list":["post-14745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-census","category-identitydevelopment","category-new-media","category-usa","tag-ivette-romero-cesareo","tag-jorge-duany","tag-puerto-rico","tag-repeating-islands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}