RACE R E L A T IO N S

141

SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND RACE RELATIONS

E. SEDA BONILLA
University of Puerto Rico
ABSTRACT
In this paper we shall attempt to show that the codification of racial criteria in the social structure of
Latin America differs significantly from that which is conceived as legitimate in the United States. When
these differences are actualized in social interaction, they operate as sources of conflict and resentment
between members of these two cultures.

N 1957, in response to a United Nations

resolution to encourage and assist govern
mental inquiries on civil liberties, the Gov
ernor of Puerto Rico, Hon. Luis Muoz Marn,
ganized, in consultation with Roger Baldwin of the
American Civil Liberties Committee, an interdisci
plinary program for the assessment of civil liberties
in Puerto Rico. As part of the research program and
under the auspices of the Social Science Research
Center of the University of Puerto Rico, I was
assigned the task of organizing an island-wide
project to assess the attitudes and understandings
of Puerto Ricans concerning the principles of
civil liberties.1
Early in our inquiry, we came upon one aspect
of the Puerto Rican social structure described two
decades ago as hidden in damp and unhygienic
obscurity ,2 unacknowledged and denied public
scrutiny by the dogma we have no prejudice
here .3
In the literature on race relations in Puerto
Rico, we found little agreement among different
authors on questions of crucial importance. Such
a question as, Is race a criterion of social identity
in the social structure of Puerto Rico? is answered
in the literature in the most diversified and in
consistent manner. E. S. Garver and E. B. Fincher
represent the extreme position on this issue in
arguing that race is not a criterion of social dis
crimination in Puerto Rico. According to these
authors, the degree of hybridization in Puerto

Rico is such that racial discrimination becomes

virtually impossible.45Earl Parker Hanson, in his
portrayal of Puerto Rico as a Land of Wonder,
acknowledges the existence of a special kind of
or
racial discrimination which he describes as any
body with a drop of white blood is a white man.6
White blood transfusions would not be very
profitable since, according to this author, white
and Negro status involve little if any social
advantage or disadvantage in the social structure
of Puerto Rico.
Rev. Joseph P. Fitspatrick of Fordham Uni
versity believes that there is some degree of racial
consciousness in Puerto Rico, but that racial
discrimination exists only among small groups of
the middle and upper class.6
Racial characteristics range from completely Cau
casoid to completely negroid, and apart from small
groups of the middle and upper class, any ordinary
gathering of Puerto Ricans represents a striking and
unmistakable example of complete acceptance and
social intermingling of people of different color and
racial characteristics.

Sidney Mintz argues that racial criteria in the

social structure of Puerto Rico is indistinguishable
from socioeconomic status criteria.7

It has often been said that race has meaning in the

Puerto Rican situation only in class terms. There is
evidence that this is true in many cases: an individuals
color may vary in accord with the changes of his
socioeconomic status. The peculiar history of Puerto
1
For further details see E. Seda Bonilla, Conoci
4 E. S. Garver and E. B. Fincher, Puerto Rico:
miento, Actitudes y Apercepcin del Pueblo Puertorri
Unsolved Problem (Indiana: The Brethren Press),
queo sobre Derechos Civiles, Progress Report
1946.
{University of Puerto Rico: 1959); Social Science Re
5 Earl Parker Hanson, Puerto Rico, Land of Wonder
search Center, Los Derechos Civiles en la Cultura
(New York: Knopf, 1960), p. 34.
Puertorriquea (Editorial Universitario, in press).
2
J. C. Rosario and J. Carrin, E l Negro (San Juan: 6 Rev. Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, Attitudes of Puerto
Ricans towards Color, Mimeograph, 1950.
University of Puerto Rico, 1951).
3
Maxine W. Gordon, Cultural Aspects of Puerto 7 Sidney Mintz, in The People of Puerto Ricoy (ed.)
Julian Steward (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
Ricos Race Problem, American Sociological Review,
1954), p. 412.
Vol. 15, No. 3 (June 1950).

142

SO C IA L FORCES

Rico did not permit color to become a special mark of

degradation within the class itself as happened so
tragically in the United States.

The conclusions drawn by Renzo Sereno re

garding the social significance of race in Puerto
Rico depart markedly from those of the previous
authors. According to this writer, race is indeed a
criterion of social distinction.8
To a non-Negro Puerto Rican, a Negro is a fellow
human being with three drawbacks, first he is the
result of an illegitimate union; second, he is the de
scendant of slaves; and third he is not presentable to
North Americans.

Serenos hypothesis about cryptomelanism,

i.e., the insecurity of many Puerto Ricans about
their racial identity in their social relations with
North Americans raises more questions than it
answers and opens unexplored territories for
fruitful analysis. I t also implies a serious rebuttal
to the naive idea that race in itself has no social
significance in the social structure of Puerto Rico.
The. previously mentioned dogma, There is no
racial prejudice here , and the cryptomelanic
hypocrisy behind it have not presented insur
mountable barriers for a few American authors.
Maxine Gordon,9 among these, has written:
We maintain, however, that no Puerto Rican is
unaware of his position in the Puerto Rican society, as
determined by the color of his skin. Color is not the
only physical characteristic which subjects him to
discrimination. M any Puerto Ricans fear their fellows
will see in them other racial traits associated with
Negroes. Caste status for Negro and white in Puerto
Rico is based upon the same factors Dollard cites for
Negro and white in the United States.

Morris Siegel is still more emphatic in his

portrayal of racial prejudice and discrimination in
Puerto Rico as he states, They see as ugly the
physical characteristics associated with Negroes ,
etc.10
Most Puerto Rican authors have condemned
8 Renzo Sereno, Cryptomelanism, A Study of
Color Relations and Personal Insecurity in Puerto
Rico, Psychiatry (August 4, 1946).
9 Op. cit., p. 382.
10 Morris Siegel, Race Attitudes in Puerto Rico
(manuscript).

T able 1.

racial composition of the

SAMPLE13
W hite..................................................
Intermediate.....................................
N egro..................................................

73.1%
19.2%
7.5%

Size of sample...................................

623

prevalent racial discrimination and prejudice in

the social structure of Puerto Rico.11
A pilot study conducted prior to our survey
revealed that Puerto Ricans associate certain
physical traits with racial categories which are
differentially evaluated in hierarchical terms.
Yet, instead of a twofold black and white classi
fication, assumed as legitimate codification by
some American writers, we found three socially
differentiated categories: a black category, an
intermediate category12 and a white category.
Interviewers evaluations of the respondents
selected in the sample reveal the racial distribu
tions of the Puerto Rican population shown in
Table 1.
Our study reveals that the racial identity of
individuals in Puerto Rico functions as a barrier
to the achievement of high status in the social
hierarchy. Of those classified by interviewers as
nonwhite, none identified themselves as members
of the upper class, while the majority identified
themselves with the lower class. The responses of
an island-wide sample selected in our study reveal
that 47 percent of the white compared with 57
percent of the intermediate and 61 percent of the
Negro population identified themselves as members
of the lower class (Table 2).
Race consciousness is evident in Puerto Rico.
In our study 63.6 percent of the non white re
spondents stated that they would feel out of place
in a dance where the majority of the dancing
couples were white (Table 3).
11 Cf. Toms Blanco in El Prejuicio Racial en Puerto
Rico (San Juan: Biblioteca Autores Puertorriqueos,
1948), and Jos Colombn Rosario and Justina Carrin,
op. cit.
12 The intermediate position in Puerto Rico is desig
nated with such terms as mulato, grifo, and jabao (high
yellow).
13 The 1950 census reports a racial distribution of 77
percent white and 23 percent negro. No intermediate
category is given by the census.

143

RACE R E L A T IO N S
T able 2.

T able 4.

race and class composition

residential distribution by

RACE IN VARIOUS SAN JUAN

Race

Upper

% W hite............................
% Intermediate...............
% Negro............................
Total cases........................

T able 3.

100
0
0
10

Middle

78.3
15.7
6 .0
203

Lower

6 8 .7
2 2 .0
9 .2
314

D ont
Know

73.9
19.8
6 .3
96

racial consciousness in

PUERTO RICO

If you were invited to a dance where most

couples were white, how would you feel?
% Nonwhite

Out of place......................................
All right.............................................
Would not bother m e.....................
Did not answer................................

6 3 .6
23.6
10.0
2 .7

Total cases....................................

110

The same consciousness of racial identity is

noticed in a proportion of 38 percent of the non
white respondents who believe that they would not
be welcomed as residents in a white neighborhood.
These anticipations of rejection might seem
unfounded in the light of the fact that 70.3 percent of the white respondents said that they
themselves would welcome a Negro family in their
neighborhood. The validity of the appraisal made
by nonwhite respondents is discovered in the
fact that only 36.3 percent of the white respondents
believe that other residents would welcome such
a family. Observed patterns of residential dis
tribution show that segregation practices are in
operation. A study on urban planning directed by
Dr. Theodore Caplow reveals the racial com
position of various residential areas of San Juan
shown in Table 4.
The Civil Liberties Committee informs about
open racial segregation practiced by university
fraternities,14 social clubs and casinos.15 In our
study, we asked our nonwhite informants to make
14 The University of Puerto Rico policy however is to
bar such fraternities from the university campus.
15 Comit del Gobernador para el Estudio de los
Derechos Civiles en Puerto Rico, Informe al Honorable
Gobernador (San Juan: Mimeograph) 1959.

METROPOLITAN

areas

Area

% White

Nonwhite

M orro............................................
Las M arias...................................
Monacillo Urbano......................

94
96
40

6
4
60

an appraisal of their chances of being accepted as

members in any white organization. A proportion
of 35 percent believed that they had no chances of
being accepted. Again the appraisal seems ex
aggerated in the light of 86.5 percent of the white
respondents who answered that they would vote
in favor of accepting such candidates. The validity
of the segregation appraisal made by nonwhite
respondents finds support in the fact that only
53.4 percent of the white respondents believed
that others would vote in favor of the candi
date in question. Either social hypocrisy or
pluralized ignorance should account for these
inconsistencies.
On the question of intermarriage, we find that
a hypothetic marriage of a daughter with a non
white person was opposed by 100 percent of the
upper class, as well as by 80 percent of the middle
class and 44.5 percent of the lower class white
respondents. On the other hand, 12 percent of the
white middle class and 31.5 percent of the lower
class responded that they would accept such a
marriage.
Although there are constitutional and legal
rights in Puerto Rico that guarantee equal op
portunities in education and declare illegal any
discriminatory practices based on religion, race
and nationality, the committee on Civil Liberties
described racial segregation as practiced in a few
private schools. In our study, we found 63.6
percent of the white population favoring racial
segregation in private schools.
Educational opportunities have not reached in
the same proportion all racial groups in Puerto
Rico. A proportion of 8.4 percent of the white
informants compared with 4.8 percent of the
intermediates and 2 percent of the Negroes have
had access to university education. The Civil
Liberties Committee reports an inspection of
San Juan business, banking and hotel employees in
which they noticed an almost complete absence of

144

SO CIAL FORCES

Negro and intermediate employees. The results

of our survey indicate that Negro respondents
hold unskilled jobs in a proportion twice as large
as that of intermediate and white respondents.
Negro respondents in the sample hold professional
jobs in a smaller proportion than the other groups
although in the business and farming categories,
they are represented in a higher proportion than
the intermediate group.
In the light of these findings, we can not escape
the conclusion that race is a significant criterion
of social differentiation in the social structure of
Puerto Rico. Furthermore, the significance of race
as a criterion of social identity in the processes of
social interaction in Puerto Rico is by no means of
little importance.
Yet, there are a multitude of questions still
unanswered, the clarification of which may prove
of some utility in determining future policies
designed to deal effectively with these problems.
I t might be important to know in determining
these policies, if in the long run, the concealment
and denial of racial problems in Puerto Rico
might result in a self-fulfilling prophecy or if on
the contrary it might result in a self-defeating
one? I t is a fact that a number of American
observers have met with concealment and denial
of racial prejudice in Puerto Rico, and that this
has given support to the reiterated notion that no
racial prejudice exists here. Sound logic takes care
of the next step which consists in ascribing a
mixed racial ancestry to all Puerto Ricans. Trans
lated into the American cultural code book ,
racial mixture is equivalent to a Negro social
identity. The reactions of Puerto Ricans con
fronted with this reflected social image vary in
different groups of the society. While one group
reacts with fear and uncertainty described as
cryptomelanism by Renzo Sereno, another
reacts with attempts to disengage itself from the
Puerto Rican social identity; still another group
reacts with indignation and indigenista selfassertion.
Interpersonal interaction among individuals
takes place within the framework of legitimate
expectations derived from the social meaning of
those attributes which function as credentials of
identity in a situation. These credentials of
interpersonal identity cash in and commit
interacting individuals to certain patterns of
proper and pertinent conduct and when their
significance is shared in the interpersonal process,

reciprocal expectations are likely to be lived up

to. However, when the meaning adhering to
credentials of identity is not shared by interacting
individuals, the actions which one part may
conceive as legitimate and proper on the basis of
his cultural assumptions may provoke rebuff as
impertinent pretention in the other.
The coded meaning of a number of socially
significant attributes of identity and social status
in the United States often involves assumptions
which find no legitimate counterpart in Latin
America. In the area of racial identity, Americans
assume as legitimate grounds for claims of white
social status, the absence of Negro blood, i.e.,
pure white ancestry; however Latin Americans
assume physical appearance as the main criterion.
Whereas Latin Americans assume the legitimacy
of racial identities intermediate to those of white
and Negro, Americans assume a two-dass system
in which physical appearance conveys no social
significance.16
If the word race were to have any meaning at all
when applied to Negroes, it should indicate that
Negroes produce Negro offspring when mated with
their own kind. But some of the Negroes of Old City
could not produce a racial Negro no matter how often
and hard they might try. This is true for the very good
reason, that by all physical tests an anthropologist
might apply, some social Negroes are biologically
white and, when mated with their own kind, can
produce only white children.

On the other hand, in Latin America, a person

with known Negro ancestry may assume a white
social status, and the mechanism of passing17
has no social significance. In Brazil, such persons
are known as branco de terra;18 and in Puerto Rico,
16 W. Lloyd Warner, Introduction, A. Davis and
B. B. Gardner, Deep South (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1941).
17 The rate of Negro passing in the United States is
calculated by John H. Burma, The Measurement of
Negro Passing, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 52
(July 1946), p. 20 as follows: Since there are approxi
mately 2,750,000 Negro families that would furnish an
estimate of approximately 110,000 persons legally
Negro who are now permanently passing as white, and
since this group would cover an age range of about 40
years, it might be estimated that some 2,500 to 2,750
persons each year change their racial classification
from Negro to white.
18 Charles Wagley, Race and Class in Rural Brazil
(Paris: Unesco, 1953).

145

RACE R E L A T IO N S

the term raja (stripe) designates the same type of

situation.
Renzo Serenos hypothesis about crypto
melanism in Puerto Rico contains an unstated
reference to the difficulties of communication and
interaction between Puerto Ricans and North
Americans that stems directly from dissimilar
assumptions about racial identity. I t tells us that
some Puerto Ricans have begun to concede
priority to the assumption of racial purity, and
the burden of proof for claims of white identity is
against them. Since ancestry or ethnic affiliation
has no social meaning in Latin America because
criollismo obliterates such distinctions, the up
rooted Puerto Rican, like the Mexican in the
South West, suffers from an identity problem.
The fact that Puerto Ricans and not Americans
suffer in this situation is a matter of political
rather than biological significance.
Other sectors of Puerto Rican society react to
this situation with antagonism. One of Puerto
Ricos outstanding historians exemplifies this
reaction in the following statement.19
In the same way that our people would never under
stand the scope of racial prejudice in the United States,
the average North American cannot or does not want
to understand the degree of civilized racial coexistence
in Puerto Rico, and thus falls into easy and simple
explanations. In general such explanations consist of
declaring that all (or almost all) Puerto Ricans are
Negroes. Even children of European immigrants are
so placed, on the grounds that if they were born here,
no one could guarantee their legitimacy. The absurdity
of these evaluations is the result of prejudicial lack of
comprehension and stupidity. In the present as well as
in the past, Puerto Rico has been as black or as white
as many of the states of the Union.

Comparing the proportions of white and Negro

populations throughout a number of decades,
Dr. Blanco argues that the differences in the rate
of racial mobility in Puerto Rico is not sig
nificantly different from that of various states.20
(See Table 5.)
Faced with a nonwhite social identity, some
Puerto Ricans react with indignation. Robert H.
Manners has described this reaction encountered
among World War II veterans from a highland
community.21
19 Toms Blanco, op. cit., pp. 50-52.
20 Op. cit.
21 Robert H. Manners, Tabara, Ph.D. Disserta
tion (Columbia University: Department of Anthro
pology, 1950), p. 220.

T able 5.

changes through ten -year periods in

THE RACIAL COMPOSITION OF VARIOUS STATES

AND PUERTO RICO
Nonwhite Population In

1910

1920

1930

M ississippi..........................
South Carolina..................
Georgia................................
Puerto R ico........................
Virginia...............................

56.2
55.2
45.1
3 4 .4
3 2.6

52.2
5 1.4
4 1.7
2 7 .0
2 9 .9

50.2
4 5 .6
3 6 .8
2 5.7
2 6.8

They were given a separate status as Puerto

Ricans. The whites resented the blanket classification
lumping them with other Puerto Ricans who were
Negro because they noted, too, the segregation of con
tinental Negroes. It was apparent that they were being
treated as inferiors on a par with black Puerto Ricans
from whom they were not separated. The whole ex
perience was, for most of them, extremely disagreeable
and the focus of their present resentment is the govern
ment which was responsible for the indignities they
suffered.

Manners data raises a variety of important

questions concerning the reaction of nonwhite
Puerto Rican soldiers in the situation. We hope
to throw some light on these questions with data
concerning the adaptation of the various racial
groups of Puerto Ricans in New York City. The
third reaction of Puerto Ricans to the reflected
nonwhite self-image contains interesting points
of resemblance with Mexican indigenismo. In the
literary work of Pals Matos and in such novels
as Usmail of Pedro Juan Soto, the Negro social
identity is assumed with self-assertive pride by
literary characters who do not belong in that
social position by Puerto Rican standards.
The vicissitudes in the communication and
interaction processes which a dissimilar codifica
tion of racial criteria creates between Puerto
Ricans and North Americans can be outlined in a
clearer perspective if we examine the patterns of
social accommodation of Puerto Ricans in the
American social structure.
The racial composition of the migrant Puerto
Rican population reported by the authors of the
Puerto Rican Journey22 is given in Table 6.
Participant observation studies in three Puerto
Rican neighborhoods of New York City conducted
22
C. W. Mills, Clarence Senior, and Rose Kohn
Goldsen, The Puerto Rican Journey (New York: Harper
and Brothers), 1950.

146

SO CIAL FORCES
T a b l e 6.

lower class white Puerto Ricans in New York has

been coherently summarized by C. W. Mills and
Associates:24

r a c ia l c o m p o s it io n o f p u e r t o

RICAN MIGRANTS ACCORDING TO C. W.

MILLS AND ASSOCIATES
Sex
% T otal

Race

W hite...................................
Intermediate......................
N egro...................................

Male

Female

70
14
16

60
17
23

64
16
20

by the author from 1953-56 reveal the following

data:23
THE W H ITE LOW ER CLASS

One of the neighborhoods, located in the Yorkville area, was studied in collaboration with the
Yorkville Community Mental Health Project, of
the Department of Social Psychiatry of Cornell
University. The area had been sampled by blocks,
and some Puerto Rican families were selected.
Interviewing these Puerto Rican families proved
to be a difficult task because of their reluctance
to give their national origins. I was assigned to
these interviews, and it was only after two or
three visits that they hesitantly admitted their
Puerto Rican origins explaining that nobody in
the neighborhood knew them as Puerto Rican.
They said they never spoke Spanish in public and
expressed resentment against fellow Puerto Rican
migrants whom they blamed for the disrepute
which they have made of Puerto Rican name .
The identity problem of the group was of such a
nature that they did not notice any contradiction
in saying that their neighborhood was a good one
because no Puerto Ricans or Negroes were
allowed to rent an apartment in it . They were
ashamed of other Puerto Ricans whom they
considered rabble , ignorant and clannish .
In another neighborhood study in East Harlem,
we also met second-generation white children who
also refused to be identified as Puerto Ricans and
pretended not to understand Spanish. White lower
class children were also antagonistic to their
parents whom they blamed for the difficulties
they had to live through because of their national
identity. The general pattern of integration of

After a time, the migrant who becomes acclimated to

the cityespecially if he has been economically suc
cessfulmay move out of the area of first settlement.
H e loses his former identity in non-Puerto Rican neigh
borhoods in Inwood, Queens, Long Island, Jersey and
usually at best maintains but minimal contacts with
the old area of first settlement. That is, if he is white.
But if he is Negro, because his residential mobility is
much more limited, he is forced to stay where he is.

Losing his former identity is tantamount to

saying that he must acquire a new one. The
identity which they acquire is usually based on
the negative criterion of not being Puerto Rican,
and when pressed, they often take refuge in
Spanish credentials of white identity. Puerto
Ricanness for this group spells out a nonwhite
social identity.
TH E INTERM EDIATE GROUP

Nonwhite Puerto Ricans do not represent a

unified social group in the New York situation
even when the social status in which they are
placed is the same. The intermediate group is
limited in their residential mobility, and marooned
in segregated areas. He finds, in the words of
the Puerto Rican Journey, that he can hold only
certain jobs, mix socially with certain people, and
his area of residence is limited to such areas as
Harlem.25 He finds his racial identity no longer
acknowledged above the Negro group, and he is
reluctant to accept that which Americans con
ceive as his legitimate social identity.
The predicaments of intermediate Puerto
Ricans in the American setting is vividly por
trayed in Langston Hughes Jesse Semple:26
I said, Puerto Ricans? Are you one?
He said, S, are you one too?
I said, I am not! I am just plain old American!
I said, You look just like me, dont you? Whos the
darkest, me or you?
He said, You, darkest.
I said, I admit I have an edge on almost anybody.

24 Op. cit., p. 133.

26 Op. cit., p. 157.
23
For a full description of these studies see E. Seda 26 Langston Hughes, Jesse Semple, as quoted by
Frank Bonilla, The Young Puerto Rican in New
Bonilla, The Normative Patterns of the Puerto
York: The Search for a Culture (New York Uni
Rican Family (New York: Columbia University,
versity: Second Puerto Rican Youth Conference,
Department of Anthropology, Ph.D. dissertation,
March 19, 1960).
1957).

147

RA C E R E L A T IO N S
But you are colored too, daddy-o, dont forget, Puerto
Rican or not.
He said, In my country, no.
In my country, yes, I said, here in the U. S. A.,
you, me, all colored folksare colored.
He said, No entiendo. Dont understand.

This group enters a no-mans land type of social

marginality, singled out as the Puerto Ricans.
Their situation is cogently summarized by the
authors of the Puerto Rican Journey?1
They are not accepted by American whites and they
are reluctant to enter the American Negro community.
Intermediate Puerto Rican migrants would rather be
conspicuous as a member of a foreign language group
than as a Negro.
TH E NEGRO GROUP

The Negro Puerto Rican on the other hand

undertakes a very different type of social integra
tion in the New York situation. One unexpected
finding of this East Harlem neighborhood study
was the fact that Puerto Rican Negro migrants
find open acceptance in the American Negro
society with credentials of West Indian . In the
Harlem study, we interviewed some of these
migrants, whose accent made difficult their
differentiation from Southern Negro migrants
who constituted the bulk of the neighborhood
population. But they also spoke Spanish with ease
and showed no anxiety about their Puerto Rican
identity. However, the heroes which they selected
during the interview were American Negroes of
outstanding achievement. The Puerto Rican
Journey reports that among the Puerto Rican
migrants, this group has the highest feeling of
acceptance from Americans. Fifty percent of this
group compared with 46 percent of the white and
30 percent of the intermediate group answered
affirmatively the question, Do Americans like
Puerto Ricans?28
THE IN D IG EN ISTA GROUP

A fourth segment of Puerto Rican migrants in

New York City represents the counterpart of the
Mexican Indigenista. They carry the Puerto Rican
credentials of identity with dignity and selfassurance. In our study, we met many individuals
who even in the third generation spoke Spanish
well and exhibited pride in their Puerto Rican
origin. They did not fit the stereotype of the
27 Op. c it , p. 152.
28 Op. cit., p. 110.

Puerto Rican and frequently faced the mildly

disappointed comment, You dont look Puerto
Rican . According to the work of Manuel Allers
Montalvo29 this comment is deemed as a compli
ment in the renegading sector of the migrant
population. Yet the indigenista insisted on their
Puerto Rican identity countering with How do
you think a Puerto Rican looks? They are
frequently in the forefront of organizations for
the defense of Puerto Rican migrants yet their
efforts to unite the Puerto Rican population on the
basis of national identity peters out in so far as
they do not realize the latent functions of con
flicting racial identities which the impact of
American culture creates among Puerto Ricans,
The function of disuniting identities was
dramatically manifested in the fact that in 1956
an annual parade was organized with the object
of presenting a unified front. The parade was
split soon in 1957 precisely on the issue of Puerto
Rican-Spanish identity.
CONCLUDING REMARKS

Race relations can be fruitfully approached

within the framework of social interaction proc
esses, the linkage points of which are socially
discriminated traits upon which the racial identity
of individuals in a society are postulated. Other
socially discriminated traits such as age and sex,
whose functions as criteria of social identity
parallels that of race, have been shown to convey
different action commitments in the social
structure of different societies. In almost every
study of race relations made in Puerto Rico, the
fallacy of reification can be detected. Race is
conceived as a thing in itself and not as an item of
cultural codification.
No differences are drawn in these studies
between the anthropological concept of race by
which human populations are classified on the
basis of biologically valid and reliable criteria,
and the sociological concept of race by which the
members of a society establish certain status
categories on the basis of socially legitimate
criteria which may or may not correspond with
biologically valid criteria. In not distinguishing
these different types of concepts they have often
unintentionally imported certain assumptions
that have legitimacy in one culture, or another,
but none in scientific analysis. In science, the
29
Manuel Allers-Montalvo, The Puerto Ricans in
New York (Columbia University: Department of
Sociology, M.A. thesis, 1951).

148

SO CIAL FORCES

It seems slightly ludicrous that the main exponents

of the theory of superiority of pure strains should be
inhabitants of Europe, one of the most thoroughly
hybridized regions in the world. It is improbable that
there is a single European alive today who does not
have at least one hybrid among his ancestors while most
Europeans are a result of a long series of crossings.
The Huns, a yellow tribe from far Eastern Asia, raided
almost to the Atlantic and after their defeat dissolved
into the European population. Other Asiatic tribes
such as the Avars and Magyars settled areas in Eastern
Europe interbreeding until they disappeared as a
distinct physical type. The Romans brought in Negro
slaves while in later times the Mohammedan con
querors of Spain and Sicily had more than a tinge of
black blood. Lastly, there have been several varieties
of whites in Europe since before the close of the old
stone age.

Seen from the perspective of a rigid two-class

system, Latin American social structure and the
interracial relations within it may seem hap
hazard, and wishful thinking might easily contrive
an idyllic wonderland where human beings are
taken on their innate value and the venom of
racial prejudice is lacking. Confronted with facts
which leave no room for doubt about the existence
of racial prejudice in Brazil, Dr. Marvin Harris
wrote that the denial of this glaring fact by
certain authors must be the result of wishful
thinking .3031 The denial of the existence of these
problems only precludes any realistic effort to deal
with them.
The stereotyped denial of racial prejudice in
Puerto Rico has become an assumption that
shapes, in some significant situations, their social
identity. The reaction of various segments of the
Puerto Rican society to this situation is not always
in attenuation of racial prejudice.

30 Ralph Linton, Study of M an (New York: Appleton

Century, 1936), p. 35.

31
Marvin Harris, in Race and Class in Rural Brazil
(ed.) Charles Wagley (Paris: Unesco, 1953).

concept of pure race has no validity when applied

to human populations. Ralph Linton has tackled
this problem in his classical Study of Man.zo

ASSIMILATION THROUGH INTERMARRIAGE *

B. R. BUGELSKI
University of Buffalo
ABSTRACT
The rates at which residents of Buffalo, New York with Polish or Italian names married partners of
similar background were examined for sample years between 1930 and 1960. In-group marriages among
Italians fell from 71 percent in 1930 to 27 percent in 1960, and among Poles from 79 percent to 33 percent.
The trends indicate a steady and pronounced decline for in-group marriages with a prospect of such mar
riages becoming rare by 1975.

HE MELTING-POT hypothesis pic country loyalties, language, customs, and physical

tures the gradual development of a new proximity maintain group solidarity. Subsequently
American society as the various immi as these barriers are weakened and as economic,
grant groups and their descendants venturetransportation,
forth
and other factors such as the
from their original settlements in the population influx of other foreign groups begin to play a role,
centers and mingle with their neighbors, learning the rate of interaction may alter. The rate of
new ways. At the same time it is assumed that the interaction is difficult to measure because of the
neighbors may invade the immigrant settle manifold ways in which it can operate. One
ment and thereby establish a two-way channel of index of what must be considered a serious and
interaction. Some of this interaction results in important degree of interaction might be the
marriages between members of the differing intermarriage rate. To determine this it would
groups, at first only on a limited scale as old only be necessary to count the number of inter
group marriages year by year, comparing this
* The writer is indebted to Dr. Louis Wienckowski
with the number of intragroup marriages and
for assistance with tabulation of part of the data.

RACE R E L A T IO N S

141

SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND RACE RELATIONS

E. SEDA BONILLA
University of Puerto Rico
ABSTRACT
In this paper we shall attempt to show that the codification of racial criteria in the social structure of
Latin America differs significantly from that which is conceived as legitimate in the United States. When
these differences are actualized in social interaction, they operate as sources of conflict and resentment
between members of these two cultures.

N 1957, in response to a United Nations

resolution to encourage and assist govern
mental inquiries on civil liberties, the Gov
ernor of Puerto Rico, Hon. Luis Muoz Marn,
ganized, in consultation with Roger Baldwin of the
American Civil Liberties Committee, an interdisci
plinary program for the assessment of civil liberties
in Puerto Rico. As part of the research program and
under the auspices of the Social Science Research
Center of the University of Puerto Rico, I was
assigned the task of organizing an island-wide
project to assess the attitudes and understandings
of Puerto Ricans concerning the principles of
civil liberties.1
Early in our inquiry, we came upon one aspect
of the Puerto Rican social structure described two
decades ago as hidden in damp and unhygienic
obscurity ,2 unacknowledged and denied public
scrutiny by the dogma we have no prejudice
here .3
In the literature on race relations in Puerto
Rico, we found little agreement among different
authors on questions of crucial importance. Such
a question as, Is race a criterion of social identity
in the social structure of Puerto Rico? is answered
in the literature in the most diversified and in
consistent manner. E. S. Garver and E. B. Fincher
represent the extreme position on this issue in
arguing that race is not a criterion of social dis
crimination in Puerto Rico. According to these
authors, the degree of hybridization in Puerto

Rico is such that racial discrimination becomes

virtually impossible.45Earl Parker Hanson, in his
portrayal of Puerto Rico as a Land of Wonder,
acknowledges the existence of a special kind of
or
racial discrimination which he describes as any
body with a drop of white blood is a white man.6
White blood transfusions would not be very
profitable since, according to this author, white
and Negro status involve little if any social
advantage or disadvantage in the social structure
of Puerto Rico.
Rev. Joseph P. Fitspatrick of Fordham Uni
versity believes that there is some degree of racial
consciousness in Puerto Rico, but that racial
discrimination exists only among small groups of
the middle and upper class.6
Racial characteristics range from completely Cau
casoid to completely negroid, and apart from small
groups of the middle and upper class, any ordinary
gathering of Puerto Ricans represents a striking and
unmistakable example of complete acceptance and
social intermingling of people of different color and
racial characteristics.

Sidney Mintz argues that racial criteria in the

social structure of Puerto Rico is indistinguishable
from socioeconomic status criteria.7
It has often been said that race has meaning in the
Puerto Rican situation only in class terms. There is
evidence that this is true in many cases: an individuals
color may vary in accord with the changes of his
socioeconomic status. The peculiar history of Puerto

1 For further details see E. Seda Bonilla, Conoci

4 E. S. Garver and E. B. Fincher, Puerto Rico:
miento, Actitudes y Apercepcin del Pueblo Puertorri
Unsolved Problem (Indiana: The Brethren Press),
queo sobre Derechos Civiles, Progress Report
1946.
{University of Puerto Rico: 1959); Social Science Re
5 Earl Parker Hanson, Puerto Rico, Land of Wonder
search Center, Los Derechos Civiles en la Cultura
(New York: Knopf, 1960), p. 34.
Puertorriquea (Editorial Universitario, in press).
2
J. C. Rosario and J. Carrin, E l Negro (San Juan: 6 Rev. Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, Attitudes of Puerto
Ricans towards Color, Mimeograph, 1950.
University of Puerto Rico, 1951).
3
Maxine W. Gordon, Cultural Aspects of Puerto 7 Sidney Mintz, in The People of Puerto Ricoy (ed.)
Julian Steward (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
Ricos Race Problem, American Sociological Review,
1954), p. 412.
Vol. 15, No. 3 (June 1950).

142

SO C IA L FORCES

Rico did not permit color to become a special mark of

degradation within the class itself as happened so
tragically in the United States.

The conclusions drawn by Renzo Sereno re

garding the social significance of race in Puerto
Rico depart markedly from those of the previous
authors. According to this writer, race is indeed a
criterion of social distinction.8
To a non-Negro Puerto Rican, a Negro is a fellow
human being with three drawbacks, first he is the
result of an illegitimate union; second, he is the de
scendant of slaves; and third he is not presentable to
North Americans.

Serenos hypothesis about cryptomelanism,

i.e., the insecurity of many Puerto Ricans about
their racial identity in their social relations with
North Americans raises more questions than it
answers and opens unexplored territories for
fruitful analysis. I t also implies a serious rebuttal
to the naive idea that race in itself has no social
significance in the social structure of Puerto Rico.
The. previously mentioned dogma, There is no
racial prejudice here , and the cryptomelanic
hypocrisy behind it have not presented insur
mountable barriers for a few American authors.
Maxine Gordon,9 among these, has written:
We maintain, however, that no Puerto Rican is
unaware of his position in the Puerto Rican society, as
determined by the color of his skin. Color is not the
only physical characteristic which subjects him to
discrimination. M any Puerto Ricans fear their fellows
will see in them other racial traits associated with
Negroes. Caste status for Negro and white in Puerto
Rico is based upon the same factors Dollard cites for
Negro and white in the United States.

Morris Siegel is still more emphatic in his

portrayal of racial prejudice and discrimination in
Puerto Rico as he states, They see as ugly the
physical characteristics associated with Negroes ,
etc.10
Most Puerto Rican authors have condemned
8 Renzo Sereno, Cryptomelanism, A Study of
Color Relations and Personal Insecurity in Puerto
Rico, Psychiatry (August 4, 1946).
9 Op. cit., p. 382.
10 Morris Siegel, Race Attitudes in Puerto Rico
(manuscript).

T a b l e 1.

r a c ia l c o m p o s it io n o f t h e

SAMPLE13

W hite..................................................
Intermediate.....................................
N egro..................................................

73.1%
19.2%
7.5%

Size of sample...................................

623

prevalent racial discrimination and prejudice in

the social structure of Puerto Rico.11
A pilot study conducted prior to our survey
revealed that Puerto Ricans associate certain
physical traits with racial categories which are
differentially evaluated in hierarchical terms.
Yet, instead of a twofold black and white classi
fication, assumed as legitimate codification by
some American writers, we found three socially
differentiated categories: a black category, an
intermediate category12 and a white category.
Interviewers evaluations of the respondents
selected in the sample reveal the racial distribu
tions of the Puerto Rican population shown in
Table 1.
Our study reveals that the racial identity of
individuals in Puerto Rico functions as a barrier
to the achievement of high status in the social
hierarchy. Of those classified by interviewers as
nonwhite, none identified themselves as members
of the upper class, while the majority identified
themselves with the lower class. The responses of
an island-wide sample selected in our study reveal
that 47 percent of the white compared with 57
percent of the intermediate and 61 percent of the
Negro population identified themselves as members
of the lower class (Table 2).
Race consciousness is evident in Puerto Rico.
In our study 63.6 percent of the non white re
spondents stated that they would feel out of place
in a dance where the majority of the dancing
couples were white (Table 3).
11 Cf. Toms Blanco in El Prejuicio Racial en Puerto
Rico (San Juan: Biblioteca Autores Puertorriqueos,
1948), and Jos Colombn Rosario and Justina Carrin,
op. cit.
12 The intermediate position in Puerto Rico is desig
nated with such terms as mulato, grifo, and jabao (high
yellow).
13 The 1950 census reports a racial distribution of 77
percent white and 23 percent negro. No intermediate
category is given by the census.

143

RACE R E L A T IO N S
T a b l e 2.

T a b l e 4.

r a c e a n d c l a s s c o m p o s it io n

r e s id e n t ia l d i s t r i b u t i o n

by

RACE IN VARIOUS SAN JUAN

Race

Upper

% W hite............................
% Intermediate...............
% Negro............................
Total cases........................

able

3.

100
0
0
10

Middle

78.3
15.7
6 .0
203

Lower

6 8 .7
2 2 .0
9 .2
314

D ont
Know

73.9
19.8
6 .3
96

r a c ia l c o n s c io u s n e s s i n

PUERTO RICO

If you were invited to a dance where most

couples were white, how would you feel?
% Nonwhite

Out of place......................................
All right.............................................
Would not bother m e.....................
Did not answer................................

6 3 .6
23.6
10.0
2 .7

Total cases....................................

110

The same consciousness of racial identity is

noticed in a proportion of 38 percent of the non
white respondents who believe that they would not
be welcomed as residents in a white neighborhood.
These anticipations of rejection might seem
unfounded in the light of the fact that 70.3 percent of the white respondents said that they
themselves would welcome a Negro family in their
neighborhood. The validity of the appraisal made
by nonwhite respondents is discovered in the
fact that only 36.3 percent of the white respondents
believe that other residents would welcome such
a family. Observed patterns of residential dis
tribution show that segregation practices are in
operation. A study on urban planning directed by
Dr. Theodore Caplow reveals the racial com
position of various residential areas of San Juan
shown in Table 4.
The Civil Liberties Committee informs about
open racial segregation practiced by university
fraternities,14 social clubs and casinos.15 In our
study, we asked our nonwhite informants to make
14 The University of Puerto Rico policy however is to
bar such fraternities from the university campus.
15 Comit del Gobernador para el Estudio de los
Derechos Civiles en Puerto Rico, Informe al Honorable
Gobernador (San Juan: Mimeograph) 1959.

METROPOLITAN

areas

Area

% White

Nonwhite

M orro............................................
Las M arias...................................
Monacillo Urbano......................

94
96
40

6
4
60

an appraisal of their chances of being accepted as

members in any white organization. A proportion
of 35 percent believed that they had no chances of
being accepted. Again the appraisal seems ex
aggerated in the light of 86.5 percent of the white
respondents who answered that they would vote
in favor of accepting such candidates. The validity
of the segregation appraisal made by nonwhite
respondents finds support in the fact that only
53.4 percent of the white respondents believed
that others would vote in favor of the candi
date in question. Either social hypocrisy or
pluralized ignorance should account for these
inconsistencies.
On the question of intermarriage, we find that
a hypothetic marriage of a daughter with a non
white person was opposed by 100 percent of the
upper class, as well as by 80 percent of the middle
class and 44.5 percent of the lower class white
respondents. On the other hand, 12 percent of the
white middle class and 31.5 percent of the lower
class responded that they would accept such a
marriage.
Although there are constitutional and legal
rights in Puerto Rico that guarantee equal op
portunities in education and declare illegal any
discriminatory practices based on religion, race
and nationality, the committee on Civil Liberties
described racial segregation as practiced in a few
private schools. In our study, we found 63.6
percent of the white population favoring racial
segregation in private schools.
Educational opportunities have not reached in
the same proportion all racial groups in Puerto
Rico. A proportion of 8.4 percent of the white
informants compared with 4.8 percent of the
intermediates and 2 percent of the Negroes have
had access to university education. The Civil
Liberties Committee reports an inspection of
San Juan business, banking and hotel employees in
which they noticed an almost complete absence of

144

SO CIAL FORCES

Negro and intermediate employees. The results

of our survey indicate that Negro respondents
hold unskilled jobs in a proportion twice as large
as that of intermediate and white respondents.
Negro respondents in the sample hold professional
jobs in a smaller proportion than the other groups
although in the business and farming categories,
they are represented in a higher proportion than
the intermediate group.
In the light of these findings, we can not escape
the conclusion that race is a significant criterion
of social differentiation in the social structure of
Puerto Rico. Furthermore, the significance of race
as a criterion of social identity in the processes of
social interaction in Puerto Rico is by no means of
little importance.
Yet, there are a multitude of questions still
unanswered, the clarification of which may prove
of some utility in determining future policies
designed to deal effectively with these problems.
I t might be important to know in determining
these policies, if in the long run, the concealment
and denial of racial problems in Puerto Rico
might result in a self-fulfilling prophecy or if on
the contrary it might result in a self-defeating
one? I t is a fact that a number of American
observers have met with concealment and denial
of racial prejudice in Puerto Rico, and that this
has given support to the reiterated notion that no
racial prejudice exists here. Sound logic takes care
of the next step which consists in ascribing a
mixed racial ancestry to all Puerto Ricans. Trans
lated into the American cultural code book ,
racial mixture is equivalent to a Negro social
identity. The reactions of Puerto Ricans con
fronted with this reflected social image vary in
different groups of the society. While one group
reacts with fear and uncertainty described as
cryptomelanism by Renzo Sereno, another
reacts with attempts to disengage itself from the
Puerto Rican social identity; still another group
reacts with indignation and indigenista selfassertion.
Interpersonal interaction among individuals
takes place within the framework of legitimate
expectations derived from the social meaning of
those attributes which function as credentials of
identity in a situation. These credentials of
interpersonal identity cash in and commit
interacting individuals to certain patterns of
proper and pertinent conduct and when their
significance is shared in the interpersonal process,

reciprocal expectations are likely to be lived up

to. However, when the meaning adhering to
credentials of identity is not shared by interacting
individuals, the actions which one part may
conceive as legitimate and proper on the basis of
his cultural assumptions may provoke rebuff as
impertinent pretention in the other.
The coded meaning of a number of socially
significant attributes of identity and social status
in the United States often involves assumptions
which find no legitimate counterpart in Latin
America. In the area of racial identity, Americans
assume as legitimate grounds for claims of white
social status, the absence of Negro blood, i.e.,
pure white ancestry; however Latin Americans
assume physical appearance as the main criterion.
Whereas Latin Americans assume the legitimacy
of racial identities intermediate to those of white
and Negro, Americans assume a two-dass system
in which physical appearance conveys no social
significance.16
If the word race were to have any meaning at all
when applied to Negroes, it should indicate that
Negroes produce Negro offspring when mated with
their own kind. But some of the Negroes of Old City
could not produce a racial Negro no matter how often
and hard they might try. This is true for the very good
reason, that by all physical tests an anthropologist
might apply, some social Negroes are biologically
white and, when mated with their own kind, can
produce only white children.

On the other hand, in Latin America, a person

with known Negro ancestry may assume a white
social status, and the mechanism of passing17
has no social significance. In Brazil, such persons
are known as branco de terra;18 and in Puerto Rico,
16 W. Lloyd Warner, Introduction, A. Davis and
B. B. Gardner, Deep South (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1941).
17 The rate of Negro passing in the United States is
calculated by John H. Burma, The Measurement of
Negro Passing, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 52
(July 1946), p. 20 as follows: Since there are approxi
mately 2,750,000 Negro families that would furnish an
estimate of approximately 110,000 persons legally
Negro who are now permanently passing as white, and
since this group would cover an age range of about 40
years, it might be estimated that some 2,500 to 2,750
persons each year change their racial classification
from Negro to white.
18 Charles Wagley, Race and Class in Rural Brazil
(Paris: Unesco, 1953).

145

RACE R E L A T IO N S

the term raja (stripe) designates the same type of

situation.
Renzo Serenos hypothesis about crypto
melanism in Puerto Rico contains an unstated
reference to the difficulties of communication and
interaction between Puerto Ricans and North
Americans that stems directly from dissimilar
assumptions about racial identity. I t tells us that
some Puerto Ricans have begun to concede
priority to the assumption of racial purity, and
the burden of proof for claims of white identity is
against them. Since ancestry or ethnic affiliation
has no social meaning in Latin America because
criollismo obliterates such distinctions, the up
rooted Puerto Rican, like the Mexican in the
South West, suffers from an identity problem.
The fact that Puerto Ricans and not Americans
suffer in this situation is a matter of political
rather than biological significance.
Other sectors of Puerto Rican society react to
this situation with antagonism. One of Puerto
Ricos outstanding historians exemplifies this
reaction in the following statement.19
In the same way that our people would never under
stand the scope of racial prejudice in the United States,
the average North American cannot or does not want
to understand the degree of civilized racial coexistence
in Puerto Rico, and thus falls into easy and simple
explanations. In general such explanations consist of
declaring that all (or almost all) Puerto Ricans are
Negroes. Even children of European immigrants are
so placed, on the grounds that if they were born here,
no one could guarantee their legitimacy. The absurdity
of these evaluations is the result of prejudicial lack of
comprehension and stupidity. In the present as well as
in the past, Puerto Rico has been as black or as white
as many of the states of the Union.

Comparing the proportions of white and Negro

populations throughout a number of decades,
Dr. Blanco argues that the differences in the rate
of racial mobility in Puerto Rico is not sig
nificantly different from that of various states.20
(See Table 5.)
Faced with a nonwhite social identity, some
Puerto Ricans react with indignation. Robert H.
Manners has described this reaction encountered
among World War II veterans from a highland
community.21
19 Toms Blanco, op. cit., pp. 50-52.
20 Op. cit.
21 Robert H. Manners, Tabara, Ph.D. Disserta
tion (Columbia University: Department of Anthro
pology, 1950), p. 220.

T able 5.

changes through ten -year periods in

THE RACIAL COMPOSITION OF VARIOUS STATES

AND PUERTO RICO
Nonwhite Population In

1910

1920

1930

M ississippi..........................
South Carolina..................
Georgia................................
Puerto R ico........................
Virginia...............................

56.2
55.2
45.1
3 4 .4
3 2.6

52.2
5 1.4
4 1.7
2 7 .0
2 9 .9

50.2
4 5 .6
3 6 .8
2 5.7
2 6.8

They were given a separate status as Puerto

Ricans. The whites resented the blanket classification
lumping them with other Puerto Ricans who were
Negro because they noted, too, the segregation of con
tinental Negroes. It was apparent that they were being
treated as inferiors on a par with black Puerto Ricans
from whom they were not separated. The whole ex
perience was, for most of them, extremely disagreeable
and the focus of their present resentment is the govern
ment which was responsible for the indignities they
suffered.

Manners data raises a variety of important

questions concerning the reaction of nonwhite
Puerto Rican soldiers in the situation. We hope
to throw some light on these questions with data
concerning the adaptation of the various racial
groups of Puerto Ricans in New York City. The
third reaction of Puerto Ricans to the reflected
nonwhite self-image contains interesting points
of resemblance with Mexican indigenismo. In the
literary work of Pals Matos and in such novels
as Usmail of Pedro Juan Soto, the Negro social
identity is assumed with self-assertive pride by
literary characters who do not belong in that
social position by Puerto Rican standards.
The vicissitudes in the communication and
interaction processes which a dissimilar codifica
tion of racial criteria creates between Puerto
Ricans and North Americans can be outlined in a
clearer perspective if we examine the patterns of
social accommodation of Puerto Ricans in the
American social structure.
The racial composition of the migrant Puerto
Rican population reported by the authors of the
Puerto Rican Journey22 is given in Table 6.
Participant observation studies in three Puerto
Rican neighborhoods of New York City conducted
22
C. W. Mills, Clarence Senior, and Rose Kohn
Goldsen, The Puerto Rican Journey (New York: Harper
and Brothers), 1950.

146

SO CIAL FORCES
T a b l e 6.

lower class white Puerto Ricans in New York has

been coherently summarized by C. W. Mills and
Associates:24

r a c ia l c o m p o s it io n o f p u e r t o

RICAN MIGRANTS ACCORDING TO C. W.

MILLS AND ASSOCIATES
Sex
% T otal

Race

W hite...................................
Intermediate......................
N egro...................................

Male

Female

70
14
16

60
17
23

64
16
20

by the author from 1953-56 reveal the following

data:23
THE W H ITE LOW ER CLASS

One of the neighborhoods, located in the Yorkville area, was studied in collaboration with the
Yorkville Community Mental Health Project, of
the Department of Social Psychiatry of Cornell
University. The area had been sampled by blocks,
and some Puerto Rican families were selected.
Interviewing these Puerto Rican families proved
to be a difficult task because of their reluctance
to give their national origins. I was assigned to
these interviews, and it was only after two or
three visits that they hesitantly admitted their
Puerto Rican origins explaining that nobody in
the neighborhood knew them as Puerto Rican.
They said they never spoke Spanish in public and
expressed resentment against fellow Puerto Rican
migrants whom they blamed for the disrepute
which they have made of Puerto Rican name .
The identity problem of the group was of such a
nature that they did not notice any contradiction
in saying that their neighborhood was a good one
because no Puerto Ricans or Negroes were
allowed to rent an apartment in it . They were
ashamed of other Puerto Ricans whom they
considered rabble , ignorant and clannish .
In another neighborhood study in East Harlem,
we also met second-generation white children who
also refused to be identified as Puerto Ricans and
pretended not to understand Spanish. White lower
class children were also antagonistic to their
parents whom they blamed for the difficulties
they had to live through because of their national
identity. The general pattern of integration of

After a time, the migrant who becomes acclimated to

the cityespecially if he has been economically suc
cessfulmay move out of the area of first settlement.
H e loses his former identity in non-Puerto Rican neigh
borhoods in Inwood, Queens, Long Island, Jersey and
usually at best maintains but minimal contacts with
the old area of first settlement. That is, if he is white.
But if he is Negro, because his residential mobility is
much more limited, he is forced to stay where he is.

Losing his former identity is tantamount to

saying that he must acquire a new one. The
identity which they acquire is usually based on
the negative criterion of not being Puerto Rican,
and when pressed, they often take refuge in
Spanish credentials of white identity. Puerto
Ricanness for this group spells out a nonwhite
social identity.
TH E INTERM EDIATE GROUP

Nonwhite Puerto Ricans do not represent a

unified social group in the New York situation
even when the social status in which they are
placed is the same. The intermediate group is
limited in their residential mobility, and marooned
in segregated areas. He finds, in the words of
the Puerto Rican Journey, that he can hold only
certain jobs, mix socially with certain people, and
his area of residence is limited to such areas as
Harlem.25 He finds his racial identity no longer
acknowledged above the Negro group, and he is
reluctant to accept that which Americans con
ceive as his legitimate social identity.
The predicaments of intermediate Puerto
Ricans in the American setting is vividly por
trayed in Langston Hughes Jesse Semple:26
I said, Puerto Ricans? Are you one?
He said, S, are you one too?
I said, I am not! I am just plain old American!
I said, You look just like me, dont you? Whos the
darkest, me or you?
He said, You, darkest.
I said, I admit I have an edge on almost anybody.

24 Op. cit., p. 133.

26 Op. cit., p. 157.
23
For a full description of these studies see E. Seda 26 Langston Hughes, Jesse Semple, as quoted by
Frank Bonilla, The Young Puerto Rican in New
Bonilla, The Normative Patterns of the Puerto
York: The Search for a Culture (New York Uni
Rican Family (New York: Columbia University,
versity: Second Puerto Rican Youth Conference,
Department of Anthropology, Ph.D. dissertation,
March 19, 1960).
1957).

147

RA C E R E L A T IO N S
But you are colored too, daddy-o, dont forget, Puerto
Rican or not.
He said, In my country, no.
In my country, yes, I said, here in the U. S. A.,
you, me, all colored folksare colored.
He said, No entiendo. Dont understand.

This group enters a no-mans land type of social

marginality, singled out as the Puerto Ricans.
Their situation is cogently summarized by the
authors of the Puerto Rican Journey?1
They are not accepted by American whites and they
are reluctant to enter the American Negro community.
Intermediate Puerto Rican migrants would rather be
conspicuous as a member of a foreign language group
than as a Negro.
TH E NEGRO GROUP

The Negro Puerto Rican on the other hand

undertakes a very different type of social integra
tion in the New York situation. One unexpected
finding of this East Harlem neighborhood study
was the fact that Puerto Rican Negro migrants
find open acceptance in the American Negro
society with credentials of West Indian . In the
Harlem study, we interviewed some of these
migrants, whose accent made difficult their
differentiation from Southern Negro migrants
who constituted the bulk of the neighborhood
population. But they also spoke Spanish with ease
and showed no anxiety about their Puerto Rican
identity. However, the heroes which they selected
during the interview were American Negroes of
outstanding achievement. The Puerto Rican
Journey reports that among the Puerto Rican
migrants, this group has the highest feeling of
acceptance from Americans. Fifty percent of this
group compared with 46 percent of the white and
30 percent of the intermediate group answered
affirmatively the question, Do Americans like
Puerto Ricans?28
THE IN D IG EN ISTA GROUP

A fourth segment of Puerto Rican migrants in

New York City represents the counterpart of the
Mexican Indigenista. They carry the Puerto Rican
credentials of identity with dignity and selfassurance. In our study, we met many individuals
who even in the third generation spoke Spanish
well and exhibited pride in their Puerto Rican
origin. They did not fit the stereotype of the
27 Op. c it , p. 152.
28 Op. cit., p. 110.

Puerto Rican and frequently faced the mildly

disappointed comment, You dont look Puerto
Rican . According to the work of Manuel Allers
Montalvo29 this comment is deemed as a compli
ment in the renegading sector of the migrant
population. Yet the indigenista insisted on their
Puerto Rican identity countering with How do
you think a Puerto Rican looks? They are
frequently in the forefront of organizations for
the defense of Puerto Rican migrants yet their
efforts to unite the Puerto Rican population on the
basis of national identity peters out in so far as
they do not realize the latent functions of con
flicting racial identities which the impact of
American culture creates among Puerto Ricans,
The function of disuniting identities was
dramatically manifested in the fact that in 1956
an annual parade was organized with the object
of presenting a unified front. The parade was
split soon in 1957 precisely on the issue of Puerto
Rican-Spanish identity.
CONCLUDING REMARKS

Race relations can be fruitfully approached

within the framework of social interaction proc
esses, the linkage points of which are socially
discriminated traits upon which the racial identity
of individuals in a society are postulated. Other
socially discriminated traits such as age and sex,
whose functions as criteria of social identity
parallels that of race, have been shown to convey
different action commitments in the social
structure of different societies. In almost every
study of race relations made in Puerto Rico, the
fallacy of reification can be detected. Race is
conceived as a thing in itself and not as an item of
cultural codification.
No differences are drawn in these studies
between the anthropological concept of race by
which human populations are classified on the
basis of biologically valid and reliable criteria,
and the sociological concept of race by which the
members of a society establish certain status
categories on the basis of socially legitimate
criteria which may or may not correspond with
biologically valid criteria. In not distinguishing
these different types of concepts they have often
unintentionally imported certain assumptions
that have legitimacy in one culture, or another,
but none in scientific analysis. In science, the
29
Manuel Allers-Montalvo, The Puerto Ricans in
New York (Columbia University: Department of
Sociology, M.A. thesis, 1951).

148

SO CIAL FORCES

It seems slightly ludicrous that the main exponents

of the theory of superiority of pure strains should be
inhabitants of Europe, one of the most thoroughly
hybridized regions in the world. It is improbable that
there is a single European alive today who does not
have at least one hybrid among his ancestors while most
Europeans are a result of a long series of crossings.
The Huns, a yellow tribe from far Eastern Asia, raided
almost to the Atlantic and after their defeat dissolved
into the European population. Other Asiatic tribes
such as the Avars and Magyars settled areas in Eastern
Europe interbreeding until they disappeared as a
distinct physical type. The Romans brought in Negro
slaves while in later times the Mohammedan con
querors of Spain and Sicily had more than a tinge of
black blood. Lastly, there have been several varieties
of whites in Europe since before the close of the old
stone age.

Seen from the perspective of a rigid two-class

system, Latin American social structure and the
interracial relations within it may seem hap
hazard, and wishful thinking might easily contrive
an idyllic wonderland where human beings are
taken on their innate value and the venom of
racial prejudice is lacking. Confronted with facts
which leave no room for doubt about the existence
of racial prejudice in Brazil, Dr. Marvin Harris
wrote that the denial of this glaring fact by
certain authors must be the result of wishful
thinking .3031 The denial of the existence of these
problems only precludes any realistic effort to deal
with them.
The stereotyped denial of racial prejudice in
Puerto Rico has become an assumption that
shapes, in some significant situations, their social
identity. The reaction of various segments of the
Puerto Rican society to this situation is not always
in attenuation of racial prejudice.

30 Ralph Linton, Study of M an (New York: Appleton

Century, 1936), p. 35.

31
Marvin Harris, in Race and Class in Rural Brazil
(ed.) Charles Wagley (Paris: Unesco, 1953).

concept of pure race has no validity when applied

to human populations. Ralph Linton has tackled
this problem in his classical Study of Man.zo

ASSIMILATION THROUGH INTERMARRIAGE *

B. R. BUGELSKI
University of Buffalo
ABSTRACT
The rates at which residents of Buffalo, New York with Polish or Italian names married partners of
similar background were examined for sample years between 1930 and 1960. In-group marriages among
Italians fell from 71 percent in 1930 to 27 percent in 1960, and among Poles from 79 percent to 33 percent.
The trends indicate a steady and pronounced decline for in-group marriages with a prospect of such mar
riages becoming rare by 1975.

HE MELTING-POT hypothesis pic country loyalties, language, customs, and physical

tures the gradual development of a new proximity maintain group solidarity. Subsequently
American society as the various immi as these barriers are weakened and as economic,
grant groups and their descendants venturetransportation,
forth
and other factors such as the
from their original settlements in the population influx of other foreign groups begin to play a role,
centers and mingle with their neighbors, learning the rate of interaction may alter. The rate of
new ways. At the same time it is assumed that the interaction is difficult to measure because of the
neighbors may invade the immigrant settle manifold ways in which it can operate. One
ment and thereby establish a two-way channel of index of what must be considered a serious and
interaction. Some of this interaction results in important degree of interaction might be the
marriages between members of the differing intermarriage rate. To determine this it would
groups, at first only on a limited scale as old
only be necessary to count the number of inter
group marriages year by year, comparing this
* The writer is indebted to Dr. Louis Wienckowski
with the number of intragroup marriages and
for assistance with tabulation of part of the data.