{"id":59835,"date":"2020-06-26T03:47:10","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T03:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59835"},"modified":"2020-06-26T03:51:08","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T03:51:08","slug":"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-soc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=59835","title":{"rendered":"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."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Puerto Rico<\/a>, a colony of the United States<\/a> since 1898\u2015and a colony of Spain<\/a> for 400 years before \u2015was very much subjected, by the empires and local criollo elites, to eugenicist ideas<\/a>. \u201cRace\u201d science, in the first-half of the twentieth century, allowed criollo<\/a> elites to create new racializing parameters while inserting \u201cprogressive\u201d measures of social hygiene, public health, and eugenics to promote ideas of modernization, progress, and civilization<\/a>. These seemingly progressive ideas were cemented on the figure of \u201cel jibaro\u201d (a white Puerto Rican farmworker) as the mythical symbol of the Puerto Rican nation<\/a> which is constructed as a product of the mixture of Black, indigenous, and Spanish. Discursively constructing Puerto Ricanness as the mixture of three \u201craces\u201d allows for an erasure of racialization processes and the systematic racist structure of Puerto Rican nationalism as an all-inclusive ideology of exclusion. The conflation of these three \u201craces\u201d to create a white\/light-skinned farmworker signify an erasure of the \u201cfactors\u201d\/bodies that were assumed to compose the idea behind Puerto Rican nationalism. Additionally, by seeing these three \u201craces\u201d as a mere factor for the creation of the \u201cjibaro<\/a>\u201d it invisibilized those bodies which\u2014in the criollo elite\u2019s views\u2014did not belong unless they were to \u201cbetter the \u2018race\u201d(an intrinsic eugenic idea rooted in popular belief around certain kinds of racial mixture \u201cpa\u2019 mejorar la raza\u201d). Hence, Blackness and Indigeneity in Puerto Rico are discursively mounted to create a seemingly mixed\u2014dare I say, post-racial\u2014society as long as Black and indigenous bodies mix and assimilate to the \u201cjibaro nation.\u201d This is to say, everything that falls outside of the national symbol of the \u201cjibaro\u201d\u2014which strives for a lighter skin\u2014becomes systematically pathologized. 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

R. S\u00e1nchez-Rivera, \u201cShilling for U.S. Empire: The Legacies of Scientific Racism in Puerto Rico<\/a>,\u201d The Abusable Past<\/em>, June 22, 2020. https:\/\/www.radicalhistoryreview.org\/abusablepast\/shilling-for-u-s-empire-the-legacies-of-scientific-racism-in-puerto-rico\/<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Puerto Rico, a colony of the United States since 1898\u2015and a colony of Spain for 400 years before \u2015was very much subjected, by the empires and local criollo elites, to eugenicist ideas. \u201cRace\u201d science, in the first-half of the twentieth century, allowed criollo elites to create new racializing parameters while inserting \u201cprogressive\u201d measures of social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2654,30919,30921],"class_list":["post-59835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-puerto-rico","tag-r-sanchez-rivera","tag-the-abusable-past"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59835","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=59835"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59839,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59835\/revisions\/59839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}