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BLACK, TRIGUEÑO, WHITE … ? Shifting Racial Identification among Puerto Ricans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2006

Carlos Vargas-Ramos
Carlos Vargas-Ramos
Affiliation:
Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College of the City University of New York
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Abstract

The use of U.S.-oriented racial categories in the 2000 decennial census conducted by the Census Bureau in Puerto Rico provided results that may not accurately reflect social dynamics in Puerto Rico, more generally, and inequality based on race, in particular. This work explores how variations in racial typologies used for the collection of data in Puerto Rico and the methodology used to collect such data produce widely ranging results on racial identification that in turn affect the measurement of the impact of “race” on social outcomes. Specifically, the analysis focuses on how the omission of locally based and meaningful racial terminology from census questionnaires leads to results on racial identification that differ markedly from those found in survey data that include such terminology. In addition, differing strategies to record the racial identification of Puerto Ricans on the island (i.e., self-identification versus identification by others), lead to variations that highlight the changing effect of race on socioeconomic status. Who identifies a person's race affects analyses of how race affects the life chances of individuals in Puerto Rico.

Keywords

RacePuerto RicoRacial CategorizationStratificationCensus
Type
STATE OF THE ART
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , September 2005 , pp. 267 - 285
Copyright
© 2005 W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

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Footnotes

The author would like to thank Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas for her helpful comments on a previous version of this work; and the anonymous DBR referees for their comments, suggestions, and assistance on an earlier draft. The author is singularly grateful to the managing editor for her dedicated assistance and contribution in editing this work.

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