2020 CENSUS Data Indicates that Puerto Rican Residents are no longer Identifying as “ White “

NEW YORK, NY | CENTER FOR PUERTO RICAN STUDIES at HUNTER COLLEGE - CUNY | August 17, 2021 – Newly released 2020 census data shows a dramatic decline in the number of Puerto Rican residents who selfidentified as White going from 75.8% in 2010 to 17.1% in 2020 — a drop of 80%. A new study in the journal American Anthropologist by Dr. Yarimar Bonilla (Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College-CUNY) and Dr. Isar Godreau (Institute for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Puerto Rico—Cayey) provides insight into the numbers.

Dr. Yarimar Bonilla (Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College-CUNY) Researchers attributed the decline in identification with whiteness to the island’s economic and political crisis. “We argue that in the wake of both Puerto Rico’s debt crisis and Hurricane Maria, residents gained a new awareness about their place within the racial formation of the United States,” said Bonilla. Among those surveyed 68% categorized Puerto Rico as a US colony. “That awareness challenges the notion of being white,” said Bonilla who was recently appointed director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. The study is based on a 2016 survey of more than 1,000 people in 9 municipalities in Puerto Rico. The newly released Census data affirms the findings. However, unlike the census, the anthropological study utilized an open-ended question format that allowed respondents to answer freely, allowing the researchers to not just document responses but also probe further about the context behind shifting attitudes. “Among those who identified as white, nearly half tended to qualify their answers by clarifying that they were “white Latinos” or “Puerto Rican whites” —thus recognizing that there is an normative white group, to which local residents do not feel they belong,” explained Isar Godreau from the Institute of Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Puerto Rico-Cayey. The researchers also found a direct correlation between age and racial identification with 33% of those over 77 identifying as white as opposed to 9% of those under 24, suggesting that whiteness is an identity on the decline. The findings offer new insight into how political status and state agencies shape racial perceptions. “Governments do not only produce infrastructure and bureaucracy. They also produce racial identities,” explained Bonilla. The researchers argue that cuts in public funds for educational and cultural programs, as well as the inability of a financially strapped government to carry out its own census (which until the year 2000 did not include a question about race), resulted in weakened narratives of mestizaje and color-blindness. “The economic crisis meant that there were no funds with which to produce state-sponsored narratives about race-mixture and blanqueamiento.” explained Godreau. In the study, the authors predicted that recent events would further transform Puerto Rican racial identities. “The federal response after Hurricane Maria, the global resonance of the Black Lives Matter movement, and local antiracist efforts have all pushed Puerto Ricans away from identifying with the normative kind of whiteness that is associated with the US census,” said Godreau. Although the study focused solely on residents of Puerto Rico, the findings help understand the move towards mixed race identification among Latinos within the fifty states as well. “During the Trump administration it was made clear to Latinos that they were not considered white by federal agencies— this includes the Census Bureau,” explained Bonilla. For her part, Dr. Mariluz Franco Oritz, who is also a researcher at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and a member of the anti-racist group Colectivo Ilé, highlighted the impact of community and grassroots organizations within Puerto Rico on the census results. “We launched a public campaign to encourage Puerto Ricans to affirm their blackness and avoid whitening themselves in the 2020 census. We see the newly released Census data as an affirmation of our success and a recognition that racial identification is a political act” she said. The researchers stressed that their findings should be interpreted with caution. “This does not mean that Puerto Rico is a less racist society,” said Dr. Franco-Ortiz. All three scholars agreed that whiteness as an ideal is still highly valued in Puerto Rico and that there is still much work to be done to dismantle racial inequalities and anti-black racism within Puerto Rico. “The events of the last decade have transformed how Puerto Ricans understand their place within the racial fabric of the United States” said Bonilla, “but there is still much work to be done to recognize and address our own internal prejudices and racial hierarchies.” The complete study “Nonsovereign Racecraft: How Colonialism, Debt, and Disaster are Transforming Puerto Rican Racial Subjectivities” can be found on the American Anthropologist website anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley. com/doi/abs/10.1111/aman.13601

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Desde 1994, PRSA ha organizado una Conferencia Bienal en la que sus miembros presentan sus últimos trabajos en investigación académica y aplicada, pedagogía, artes creativas y activismo comunitario. En el 2020, la PRSA celebró su cuarta conferencia en el oeste de Massachusetts la cual fue organizada por UMass-Amherst con la colaboración de Amherst College, Hampshire College y Holyoke Community College. El Dr. Villanueva tiene un B.A. de la Universidad de Puerto Rico Río Piedras. Concentración en Italiano y Francés con una sub-concentración en Geografía. Tiene una maestría y doctorado del Departamento de Geografía de la Universidad de Syracuse. En su tesis doctoral, Villanueva estudia las políticas contemporáneas de control del crimen implementadas en vecindarios desfavorecidos en las afueras de París. Las urbanizaciones sociales ubicadas en las afueras de París han tendido a concentrar altas tasas de pobreza, desempleo y delincuencia entre una población, la mayoría de origen inmigrante, que no ha podido integrarse plenamente a Francia.. Recientemente ha comenzando un nuevo proyecto que explora los orígenes de la crisis de la deuda en Puerto Rico. Basándose en el trabajo revolucionario de Frantz Fanon, el proyecto explora la transformación del paisaje urbano por parte de la Junta de Planificación de Puerto Rico en la década de 1940 y como esta, desde sus inicios, diseñó ciudades que privilegiaban la urbanización del capital y la alienación de los miserables de la tierra. Enseña cursos de geografía humana: geografía regional mundial; introducción a la geografía humana; geografía urbana; geografía política; geografía de paz, crimen y violencia; y geografía deportiva.