RACIAL AND ETHNIC RELATIONS By Joe. E. Feagin and Clairece Booher Feagin

PUERTO RICANS

From Spanish to U.S. Rule

Borinquèn, the original native name for Puerto Rico, had a population of about 50,000 in 1493 when violent Spanish imperialism reached the island. Spain used the native people there, (the Taino) as forced labor in mines and fields. Forced labor, disease and violent suppression of rebellions caused a decline in the native population, so slaves were imported by the Spanish from Africa to fill the gap. The absence of women among the Spanish colonizers led to marriage between Spanish men and Native American or African women, producing a blended population of significant size.

Over time, the population included a growing number of free blacks, since Spanish law allowed slaves to purchase their freedom. By 1530 only 369 of Puerto Rico's inhabitants were European-born Spaniards. During the nineteenth century, immigrants and refugees from numerous countries, both European and Latin American, made their way to Puerto Rico. The census of 1872 found that the proportions of whites and people of color in Puerto Rico were almost equal. By the end of the century the island's population comprised thirty-four nationalities Puerto Ricans today are the product of many racial and ethnic streams.

In 1897, Puerto Ricans pressured the Spanish government into granting them internal autonomy. The following year, during the Spanish-American War, U.S. troops occupied the island. In the peace treaty that ended this brief war (1899) Spain gave Puerto Rico to the United States, whose leaders saw it as a useful station for warships and a profitable agricultural enclave. After four centuries of Spanish colonial rule, Puerto Rico came under U.S. control with no input from its local inhabitants, thereby losing the autonomy so recently won from Spain.

As a U.S. possession, Puerto Rico was headed by a governor from the mainland appointed by the U.S president. Puerto Rican scholar Maldonado-Denis wrote the following description of Puerto Rico's governors during this early period:

The criterion used by the President of the United States to
choose the colonial governor and his cabinet was, with very
few exceptions, one of compensation for political favors
received. Many of these men came to Puerto Rico without
knowing the language or, at times, even the location of the
island. The same can be said of many of the bureaucrats
sent to Puerto Rico in the colonial free-for-all: they were
ignorant and prejudiced, with the feelings of superiority
common to all colonizers.

Acts of the locally elected legislature were subject to veto by the U.S. Congress, the president or the governor, and English became the mandatory language in schools. In 1917, the Jones Act awarded U.S. citizenship to all Puerto Ricans. Islanders have long been divided over the character of their political ties to the United States.

In 1948, Puerto Ricans were permitted to elect their own governor. In 1952 the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the idea of Governor Luis Munoz Marín, was created with its own constitution, (approved by the U.S. Congress). Considerable home rule was granted Puerto Ricans, including the right to elect their own officials, make their own civil and criminal codes and run their own schools. In 1948, Spanish became the official language in schools, and the Puerto Rican flag was allowed to fly. However, these changes came about only with the permission of the U.S. government; the colonial power that still oversees Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico still have no vote in national elections and so senators or House members. Their only representation in the U.S. Congress is by a non-voting commissioner. In addition, the Commonwealth status has an important economic dimension, since it includes strong economic ties to the United States.

When the United States took over Puerto Rico much of the land was owned by small farmers who raised coffee, sugar and other foodstuffs, in 1898 Puerto Ricans owned 93 percent of the farms. Under U.S. control, heavy taxes and restrictions on credit forced many farmers to sell their land to U.S. companies and independent farmers growing coffee were driven out by the U.S.-forced devaluation of the Puerto Rican peso and the closing of European markets that came with U.S. occupation. By 1930, large absentee-owned companies controlled 60 percent of sugar production and monopolized tobacco production and the shipping lines; by 1952, sugar production dominated the island's economy. The island moved from a locally controlled, diversified economy to one dominated by sugar interests and under external control. Many peasant farmers and their families were forced to seek jobs with absentee-owned sugar companies. Puerto Ricans have thus become low-wage labor for international corporations and in the slack employment seasons thousands have endured terrible poverty.

Until the 1930's Puerto Rico was ruled as an agricultural colony under various U.S. decrees that determined life on the island, from currency exchange to the amount of land a person could own. When the 1930's (New Deal) reforms came to Puerto Rico, U.S. governor Rexford Tugwell envisioned a program for the island that would include agricultural and industrial development.

After World War II, agricultural development was forgotten and in the late 1940's a program implemented called Operation Bootstrap was designed by Puerto Rican governor Marín to bring about economic development by attracting U.S. industrial corporation to the island. Lured by a ten-year exemption from local taxation as well as by lower wages than on the mainland, some 1,700 factories came to the island by 1975, creating manufacturing jobs and bringing a boom in construction. Real annual per capita income increased almost sevenfold during this twenty-five year period and Puerto Rico's gross domestic product tripled between 1950 and 1970. However, the tax exemptions for most of these new industries left the burden of financing the infrastructure (sewers, water and electricity) on the local population, resulting in high personal income tax. Operation Bootstrap's emphasis on urban industry and neglect of agriculture tilted the island farther away from its heritage of locally owned farms. Loss of agricultural land to industrial development even forced the island to import food. Today, little of the island's economy is agricultural and sugar is no longer of any importance. Industry mainly takes the form of manufacturing plants.

By the 1970's, massive unemployment had led to approximately one third of the island's population to migrate to the mainland. Since then, the island's official unemployment rate has remained at least as high as 10 percent. The return of many Puerto Ricans to the island from the mainland during the mid-1970's caused even greater unemployment. In recent years, recessions have brought cutbacks in Puerto Rico's petrochemical plants, increasing unemployment rates. Numerous companies have left the island, some looking for cheaper labor and tax exemptions elsewhere. One Puerto Rican immigrant testified at a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearing that he came to the mainland because the company he worked for had used up its exemptions from taxes and its executives had decided to move from the island rather than pay taxes. The official unemployment rate peaked at 23 percent in 1983 and stood at 16.8 percent (19 percent for men and 13.3 percent for women) in 1993. Some analysts have estimated the real unemployment rate (including part-time workers) to be 40 percent or higher.

In 1996 the U.S. Congress passed legislation ending the tax incentive that encouraged U.S. manufacturing firms to locate in Puerto Rico, where they have had little or no federal income tax obligation. The tax exemption will be phased out over the years between now and 2006. As a result, the 300 U.S. canning, textile, pharmaceutical, electronics and other factories on the island may eventually move to cheaper labor and taxation areas around the globe, thereby creating another serious job crisis for the island and a new large-scale search for jobs on the mainland.

MIGRATION TO THE MAINLAND Migration Streams

The number of Puerto Ricans in the United States before the island became a U.S. possession was small and consisted largely of prosperous merchants, political activists and tobacco workers. Some 2,000 Puerto Ricans lived on the mainland in 1900, most of these were in New York City. Significant immigration to the mainland in response to unemployment and poverty on the island began in the late 1920's and a somewhat smaller group came in the late 1930's. By 1940, mainland Puerto Ricans numbered almost 70,000; most continued to reside in various sections of New York City. Over the next two decades the number increased more than tenfold to 887,000; the period called the "great migration". A major reason for this was the previously mentioned Operation Bootstrap, which resulted in a net loss of jobs and included active encouragement (such as radio ads) to emigrate. Between 1945 and 1970, about one in three Puerto Ricans left the island. Thousands were farm workers forced out of work by the aforementioned changes in agriculture. Puerto Rican communities were established in New Jersey, Connecticut and Chicago, although the majority of new immigrants continued to settle in New York.

Many a tourist who has seen Puerto Rico has probably asked, "Why would anyone want to leave such a beautiful island?" Piri Thomas answers succinctly: "Bread, money, gold, a peso to make a living . . . wasn't that the greatest reason all the other different ethnic groups came to America for, freedom from want?" Another Puerto Rican writer, Jack Agueros, describes the impact of the surge of new immigration on established Puerto Rican communities on the mainland:

World War II ended and the heavy Puerto Rican migration
began . . . Into an ancient neighborhood came pouring four
to five times more people than it had been designed to hold.
Men who came running at the promise of jobs were jobless
as the war ended. They were confused. They could not see
the economic forces that ruled their lives as they drank beer
on the corners, reassuring themselves of good times to come
while they were hell-bent toward alcoholism. The sudden
surge in numbers caused new resentments and prejudice was
intensified. Some were forced to live in cellars and were then characterized as cave dwellers. Kids came who were confused
by the new surroundings; their Puerto Ricanness forced us
against a mirror of asking, "If they are Puerto Ricans, what are
we?" and thus they confused us. In our confusion we were
sometimes pathetically reaching out, sometimes pathologically
striking out . . . Education collapsed. Every classroom had ten
kids who spoke no English.

The island's political and economic ties to the United States made possible a variety of favorable investment and trade arrangements for U.S. forms, ultimately displacing large numbers of workers on the island and creating the need for mass emigration. The Puerto Rican government encouraged migration as a safety valve to reduce the pressures of unemployment. Pull factor were also important. Many came to the mainland as contract laborers. Puerto Rican workers brought to southern New Jersey farms in the mid-1940's were 'flown up here to a strange land, in the dark of night, and by morning some are in the farmers' fields ready to work. There is no time for any sort of adjustment. The Puerto Rican is plunged into a strange environment with not even the advantage of a common language among these strangers.'

Beginning in the mid-1940's corporations sent recruiters to Puerto Rico seeking cheap labor for the booming post war economy, workers came to textile sweatshops in New York; steel mills in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana; foundries in Wisconsin and Illinois and electronics industries in Illinois. Many of these immigrants hoped to earn money on the mainland and then return to the island. But for the large majority marginal employment or chronic unemployment gave them little choice but to come to work in the coal mines in Dover, New Jersey in the mid-1940's stayed to work in factories in that area.

The decades since 1970 are sometimes called a period of "revolving-door" migration. Many Puerto Ricans fleeing declining industrialization on the island have arrived in the U.S. cities that are periodically plagued by unemployment. A series of recessions along with deteriorating neighborhoods and living conditions on the mainland have combined with love for the island, family ties and a desire to nurture children in island culture to prompt many Puerto Ricans to return to the island. Often these same people come back to the mainland after a time because of lower wages and poor working conditions on the island. In the 1990's, manufacturing wages on the island have been about half of those on the mainland, and Puerto Rico's per capita income has been half that of the poorest U.S. state. For many who come to the mainland to work, intending to accumulate enough money to start a business and begin a new life on the island, the cycle of migration and return becomes a familiar pattern. Some analysts have argued that this circular migration is one reason for lower educational and economic statues of Puerto Ricans living on the mainland. Each return to the island is accompanied by the hope of success, although few have achieved that success. Moreover, in recent years the number of professional and other well-educated Puerto Rican workers coming to the mainland has increased, in part because of an absence of appropriate jobs on the island.

In 1993, approximately 40 percent of all Puerto Ricans - more than 2.4 million people - resided in mainland communities in virtually every state. Puerto Ricans now make up almost 11 percent of all Latinos on the mainland. Increasingly, many Puerto Ricans have settled in areas other than New York. Both Connecticut and Florida have a large and growing Puerto Rican populations.

PREJUDICE AND STEROTYPES

Puerto Ricans have been stereotyped in ways similar to Mexican Americans and African Americans. The first white stereotypes were probably developed by U.S. military officials and colonial administrators. (Note: The term white refers to those identified by the U.S. census as non-Hispanic whites). In the 1890's for example, a white U.S. officer noted that "the people seem willing to work, even at starvation wages, and they seem to be docile and grateful for anything done for them. They are emotional." Other officials saw Puerto Ricans as "lazy natives."

Images of lazy, submissive Puerto Ricans persist, particularly among white officials who deal with Puerto Rican clients. White teachers have held images of Puerto Ricans as lazy and immoral. Alfredo Lopez reports being at a college meeting in New York where an experienced teacher from a poor school spoke on instilling the "middle-class values" of thrift, morality and motivation in the children. Lopez asked the white teacher about her image of Puerto Rican children:

It was when I asked what morality was and where it was
practiced among middle class people or what motivation was
lacking in our people and how she discovered this, or finally,
how the hell a person could be thrifty on eighty-four dollars a
week, that she began to do some thinking.

Often referred to by the derogatory term spic, Puerto Ricans have been viewed, as were the Italians and Mexican Americans before them, as a criminal lot. An Aspen Institute conference reported that the English language news media exaggerate certain aspects of Puerto Rican and Mexican American life - poverty, gang violence and illegal immigrants. Crimes by Puerto Ricans have been sensationalized in the New York City newspapers and other mass media; this has helped foster the image of Puerto Ricans as criminals. J. Edgar Hoover, a former director of the FBI, promulgated this perverse stereotype:

We cooperate with the Secret Service on presidential type trips
abroad. You never have to bother about a President being shot
by Puerto Ricans or Mexicans. They don't shoot very straight.
But if they come at you with a knife, beware.

Hoover's crude stereotype of Latino Americans as dumb-but-sinister knife carriers is still common in the United States.

In the 1950's, when large numbers of migrants began coming to the mainland, the Puerto Rican government circulated pamphlets trying to prepare migrants for prejudice they were likely to face. One read as follows:

If one Puerto Rican steals, Americans who are prejudiced say
that all Puerto Ricans are thieves. If one Puerto Rican doesn't
work, prejudiced Americans say all of us are lazy . . We pay,
because a bad opinion of us is informed, and the result may be
that they discredit us, they won't give us work, or they deny us
our rights.

This pamphlet recognizes the ways in which whites unfairly generalize, and it clearly implied that negative stereotypes are translated into discrimination against Puerto Ricans who are looking for jobs. A majority of Puerto Ricans interviewed in a recent New York City survey felt that Puerto Ricans were discriminated against by non-Puerto Ricans on the mainland.

Stereotypes of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans have been circulated by social scientists as well. For example, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan argued that their famous 1963 book Beyond the Melting Pot that Puerto Rican society was "sadly defective" in its culture and family system. They characterized Puerto Rican families as weak and disorganized. Glazer and Moynihan suggested that this allegedly weak family structure was the reason Puerto Ricans on the mainland did not more into better paying jobs.

Similarly, in a famous book titled La Vida, anthropologist Oscar Lewis honed his influential but stereotyped "culture of poverty" concept, which emphasizes the allegedly defective subculture of those in poverty. Lewis initially developed this perspective based on research on low-income Puerto Ricans on the island. Then, in the 1960's, he applied the concept to the poor in the United States, arguing that the culture of the poor is "a way of life which is passed down from generation to generation along family lines." The poor, he contends, adapt in distinctive ways to their living conditions, and these adaptations are transmitted through the socialization process. Lewis's negative culture-of-poverty generalizations have greatly influenced the contemporary popular emphasis on the supposedly pathological traits of poor communities. What is missing from such "culture of poverty" analyses is a clear discussion of the role of unemployed and underemployment in generating extremely oppressive conditions for poor Americans.

Stereotypes of Puerto Ricans as drug users and criminals influence police actions in Puerto Rican communities in U.S. cities, which are often more closely patrolled than other areas. In the words of one Puerto Rican rights activist, "There is this idea that young Hispanics are all drug abusers who come here to terrorize people." Significantly, however, a survey in New York State found that Latino teenagers actually use drugs less often than white teenagers do. Unfortunately, such data has not yet corrected the racial bias in drug-use stereotypes circulated in many police departments or in the mass media.

A recent report on the local economy in New Britain, Connecticut, revealed a new form of stereotyped images of Puerto Ricans. The report, issued by some white members of the city's business elite, alleged that the "poor language skills", "poor family values" and work ethic of Puerto Ricans contributed to the city's economic problems and suggested that Puerto Ricans should be encouraged to leave the city. In response, in the spring of 1997 a large group of Puerto Rican residents organized the Puerto Rican Organization for Unity and Dignity to counter overt anti-Latino stereotyping and discrimination and to press for expanded political clout.

COLOR CODING AND WHITE PREJUDICES

As with other non-European groups, racial prejudices and stereotyping are reflected in discrimination against Puerto Ricans and have a negative impact on their self-images. To understand the Puerto Rican experience on the mainland, we must first look at the situation in Puerto Rico, for, although prejudice and discrimination exist on the island, there is a considerable difference between the two areas. The phenomenon of "passing" on the mainland, in which a light-skinned individual hides his or her African ancestry in order to pass for white and bypass discrimination, is not necessary in Puerto Rican society. Puerto Rican society, like other Latin American countries, recognizes a spectrum of several racial categories based on multiple physical characteristics and not just skin color. Puerto Rican society is also much more racially integrated than mainland U.S. society. A Puerto Rican family's members may represent a variety of skin colors. Moreover, an individual's treatment in terms of housing, political rights, government policy and other social institutions is often not racially differentiated. Finally, Puerto Rican culture represents a complex synthesis of multiple and diverse cultural elements, whereas acculturation on the mainland is (with few exceptions such as music) one-way, with Latino groups typically adopting dominant-group cultural values rather than the reverse.

Americans of European descent tend to see Puerto Ricans as a "non-white" group, lumping them with African Americans and Mexican Americans. Until they come to the mainland, most Puerto Ricans have seldom had to deal with blatant color-based discrimination. Overt racial discrimination on the mainland comes as a shock to most immigrants. Recalling an experience in high school when a girl whom he had asked to dance turned him down, Piri Thomas, a Puerto Rican who grew up in Spanish Harlem (El Barrio) and eventually became well known as the author of the autobiographical Down These Mean Streets, wrote about his confusion and anger at whites' denial of his identity as a Puerto Rican:

"Who?" someone asked.

"That new colored boy." . . . .

I couldn't see them, but I had that for-sure feeling that it was
me they had in their mouths . . . .

"Listen, Angelo. Jus' listen," I said stonily. . . .

"Do you mean just like that?" . . .

"Ahuh," Marcia said. "Just as if I was a black girl. Well! He
started to talk to me and what could I do except be polite and
at the same time not encourage him?"

"Christ, first that Jerry bastard and now him. We're getting
invaded by niggers."

The imposition of discrete and rigid mainland categories of black and white on Puerto Ricans, whose home culture sees racial-ethnic diversity on a continuum, creates confusion and anger, whether the individual is called "black" or "white". The denial of personal identity inherent in such a racial identification is the issue. Statements such as "You don't look Puerto Rican," or "Are you 100 percent Puerto Rican?" commonly confront Puerto Ricans on the mainland. Faced with the task of categorizing Puerto Rican school children as either "Negro" or "Caucasian" in 1954, New York State officials were aware of the invidious divisions that would arise if Puerto Rican families were asked to divide their children. The officials proposed abandoning the racial terms and listing these children simply as Puerto Rican even though this would imply that Puerto Ricans were a distinct racial category.

Research by Angel Martínez has revealed a substantial difference in the self- perception of Puerto Ricans and how they thought North Americans perceived them. When asked to classify themselves, most chose neither white nor black but a mixed category of brown. However, most felt that other North Americans saw them as either white (58 percent) or black (42 percent).

The 1980 census was the first to ask every individual whether he or she was Hispanic; it included subcategories for Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and other Hispanic persons. A separate item asked for the "race" of each individual. Fewer than 4 percent of the Puerto Ricans from the New York City area stated their "race" as black; 44 percent classified themselves as white. Almost 48 percent wrote in "Spanish" in the space labeled "Other-Specify." This indicated, among other things, the conflict between the polarized U.S. racial structure and the cultural-racial continuum with which Puerto Ricans identify.

ECONOMIC AND RELATED CONDITIONS: THE MAINLAND

Writing about his experiences as an early immigrant, Jesús Colon has explained that Puerto Ricans did the dirty work of the society and that poverty was usually their lot. Jesús and his brother worked different hours, and to save money they even shared their working clothes: "we only had one pair of working pants between the two of us."

Discrimination in employment was common for Puerto Rican immigrants; those with darker skin usually suffered the most. In Down These Mean Streets, Piri Thomas recounted a 1945 interview for a job as a door-to-door salesperson. He was not hired; a lighter-skinned friend was. Dark-skinned Puerto Ricans, he discovered by asking other applicants, we discriminated against by the white employer:

"Let's walk," I said. I didn't feel so much angry as I did sick,
like throwing-up sick. Later, when I told this story to my buddy,
a colored cat, he said, "Hell, Piri, Ah know stuff like that can
sure burn a cat up, but a Negro faces that all the time."

"I know that," I said, "but I wasn't a Negro then. I was still only
a Puerto Rican."

Occupation and Unemployment

Puerto Rican immigrants have brought with them a wide spectrum of skills. Some are artists and musicians; others are skilled in wood or other crafts. Some operated their own businesses on the island; others held positions of responsibility in the educational, medical, legal or political systems. On the mainland, however, the skills of many immigrants have gone largely unnoticed and unused. Regardless of their background, Puerto Ricans have been offered few choices for employment. Mainland Puerto Ricans have often done the "dirty work" for whites. Many have been forced to take low-level jobs in factories or restaurants in New York City. They have cleaned up as busboys and janitors; they have worked in garment industry sweatshops that paid low wages; they have driven taxis. Many have faced recurring unemployment.

The following table shows the occupational distribution for employed Puerto Ricans on the mainland in 1993:

Men Women

European Puerto European Puerto
Americans Ricans Americans Ricans

Managerial and professional 29.2% 15.5% 30.9% 18.5%
Technical, sales and administrative
Support 21.7 18.0 43.9 48.4
Service occupations 8.8 22.4 16.0 19.9
Farming, forestry and fishing 3.7 1.8 0.9 _
Precision production, craft and repair 18.7 15.1 1.7 2.4
Operators, fabricators and laborers 17.8 27.3 6.6 10.8

Totals 99.9% 100.1% 100% 100%

Puerto Rican men are still concentrated in lower-paid blue-collar and service jobs. Once mostly domestics and less-skilled blue-collar workers, Puerto Rican women are now concentrated in sales and clerical jobs. Both Puerto Rican men and women are substantially underrepresented in managerial and professional occupations. Today, Puerto Rican men are only about half as likely to hold a managerial or professional positions as European Americans and are more than two and one half times as likely to be employed in service jobs. In addition, Puerto Ricans in white-collar jobs tend to occupy the lower-paid positions, such as teacher or librarian. In many East Coast areas, Puerto Rican laborers have done much of the low-paid fieldwork that has put vegetables on U.S. tables, often working seven days a week and living in substandard housing conditions.

Unemployment at all points has been much higher for mainland Puerto Ricans than for white workers. Unemployment and sub-employment rates for Puerto Rican men and women have consistently been among the highest of any racial or ethnic group in northeastern U.S. cities. In March 1993, 14.4 percent of mainland Puerto Ricans were officially unemployed compared with 6.1 percent of whites. Moreover, these official rates show only the tip of the iceberg, for they reflect no more than half the actual number of Puerto Ricans who are unemployed or sub-employed. To ascertain the total number of unemployed and sub-employed Puerto Ricans we must add the large numbers who are discouraged from looking for work because of long-term unemployment, who are working part-time but who want full-time work, and who make very low wages.

Employment Discrimination and other Social Barriers

Institutionalized discrimination rooted in color-coding and linguistic prejudice has restricted Puerto Rican access to many job categories, contributing both to the concentration of Puerto Ricans in low-level employment and to their high unemployment rates relative to other groups. In New York City, for example, Puerto Ricans have been severely underrepresented (relative to their percentage of the population) in local and state government jobs. This is at lest in part because they are less integrated into the job information networks traditionally dominated by whites. In many cases, Puerto Ricans are screened out of jobs by tests that are, unnecessarily, given only in English. Such a procedure is discriminatory when Puerto Rican applicants are capable of doing the jobs and the screening tests are not job-related. Even trash collection jobs, for example, have sometimes required screening tests, on which those who speak English and have a high school diploma score better. As with Mexican Americans, many Puerto Ricans fiend themselves unfairly stigmatized as being of "low intelligence" because of their limited command of English.

Institutionalized discrimination can also be seen in height and weight requirements that use white men as the standard. Such requirements have sometimes disqualified Puerto Rican applicants for police and fire department jobs. Even Puerto Ricans' status as U.S. citizens has been a source of discriminatory treatment. Some have been asked by local government officials apparently unaware that Puerto Rico is part of the United States, to prove that they as Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. For other jobs, citizenship status has proved to be a handicap. In a Civil Rights Commission interview, a Puerto Ricans women in California said:

I've had about six or seven jobs since I came here. What
happens is that they hire you temporarily and get rid of you
as soon as possible because you don't belong to the right
race. I'd even say that bosses here prefer Mexicans
(particularly illegals) because they know that unions don't
represent them, so they can be exploited easier. At least
Puerto Ricans have citizenship and can get into unions.

Racial discrimination is a major factor in the employment possibilities of Puerto Ricans. White Americans tend to classify Puerto Ricans as "black" or "non-white" and may discriminate against them for the same reasons they discriminate against African Americans. Historically, U.S. unions, especially those representing skilled and craft workers, have excluded or restricted Puerto Ricans. Union, private and governmental authorities have sometimes winked at these practices. "Unions did not facilitate the economic integration of Puerto Ricans as they had for other groups," writes Rodríguez. As a result, "Puerto Rican pay rates and benefits were (and are) inferior to those of other workers doing the same jobs.

Industrial Restructuring

A variety of changing structural factors in the U.S. economy have contributed to high unemployment rates for Puerto Ricans. Early Puerto Rican immigrants came to the mainland, especially to New York City, to fill manufacturing jobs, primarily in the garment industry. By the time of the migration of 1946-1964, however, the central cities of the United States and especially New York City had generally entered a period of industrial decline. As New York City moved from an industrial economy to a service-oriented economy, production jobs once open to Puerto Ricans began to disappear. Between 1960 and 1980, New York City lost many manufacturing jobs, and this decline continued into the 1980's and 1990's. The availability of low-level service jobs did not keep pace with the decline in production jobs.

Technological innovations - automation, computerization and the use of robots - further eroded the number of less-skill blue-collar production jobs. In addition, many plants moved to the suburbs, the South, or overseas, taking jobs out of the geographical reach of inner city Puerto Ricans who did not qualify for most of the new white-collar jobs created in the city. Lack of retraining and education for white-collar jobs leaves Puerto Rican workers in New York increasingly part of a large surplus of labor force.

Marta Tienda and William Diaz have argued that the primary reasons for the sharp deterioration in the economic position of Puerto Ricans were the decline of inner city manufacturing in the northeastern cities and the continuing circular migration of Puerto Rico. The most important reason for the rising poverty and unemployment faced by Puerto Ricans between the late 1970's and the late 1980's was the "drastically reduced job opportunities in industrial Northeastern cities like New York, Newark and Pittsburgh, as well as in Puerto Rico." In addition, circular migration, the constant movement of Puerto Rican workers back and forth between Puerto Rico and the mainland in search of jobs, causes significant disruption to families and educational attainment. It exacerbates the fundamental economic problems created by economic dislocation, capital flight and discrimination in northeastern cities.

The presence of employed workers is crucial for any community's survival. For example, Mercer Sullivan describes an area of Brooklyn where unemployed and displaced Puerto Ricans live in dire straights yet reside next to employed blue-collar workers who help maintain viable institutions in that local community. Some unemployment can be more or less handled by a community as long as it doesn't become dominant.

Income and Poverty

Puerto Ricans are one of the poorest groups in the United States. Between 1959 and 1974 Puerto Rican family incomes declines from 71 percent of the national average to only 59 percent. Poverty or near poverty was the lot of most families. Accounts of oppressive conditions are not unusual. Felipe Luciano described life during this period as a Puerto Rican:

You resign yourself to poverty - my mother did this. Your face
is rubbed in shit so much that you begin to accept that shit is reality. . .
my stomach rumbling. My mother beating me when I knew it was
because of my father . . the welfare investigator cursing out my mother
because what she wants is spring clothing for her children.

Puerto Ricans were the only group in the United States to see a decline in family incomes in the 1970's and 1980's. Between 1979 and 1984, median family income for mainland Puerto Ricans fell in real terns (adjusting for inflation) 18 percent - more than the huge 14 percent drop for African Americans and the 9 percent decrease for Mexican Americans. Puerto Ricans continue to have one of the lowest median family incomes of any U.S. group. Date from the 1990 census show that only Dominicans and Hondurans ranked lower than Puerto Ricans on this economic indicator. In the mid 1990's, median family income for mainland Puerto Ricans was still only half that of that of whites. The 1994 Census Bureau population survey reported a median family income for Puerto Ricans of $20,929, which is just over two-thirds that of Cuban Americans ($30,581), the most affluent Latino group. Almost 37 percent of mainland Puerto Ricans fell below the federal poverty line, compared with less than one-tenth of whites.

The desperate nature of some Puerto Ricans' situations is evident in their use of public assistance for both couple-headed and single-parent families; this is especially significant in light of the hostility that most have for such public aid. "I'd rather starve than go on welfare" is an often-stated sentiment among Puerto Ricans regardless of their poverty status.

Housing Problems

Discrimination against Puerto Ricans is significant in the area of housing. A Rutgers University professor of law contended at one Civil Rights Commission hearing that Puerto Ricans have suffered more than African Americans from housing discrimination. Puerto Ricans have been excluded from most decent housing markets and get the "housing scraps" no one else wants.

Compared with other groups, Puerto Ricans use a larger percentage of their income for housing and are more likely to live in dilapidated or deficient housing. In 1993, less than one-fourth of Puerto Rican households owned or where buying their own home, compared with more than 70 percent of white households. As low-income renters, many Puerto Ricans are vulnerable to the devastating impact of urban decay. Overcrowding and deteriorating housing are characteristic of numerous neighborhoods. The South Bronx, home to the largest and densest mainland Puerto Rican community, is a grim example. Once composed of stable communities, this area has been gutted by highway construction, redlined by bankers and abandoned by employers and government agencies. Since 1970, the South Bronx has lost much of its housing stock and population. In addition to psychic stress and severed friendship and community ties, neighborhood decay has had a negative impact on education and has increased the distances residents must travel to shopping and workplaces. Clara Rodríguez describes the effects on residents of depopulation and commercial and industrial flight:

Certain neighborhoods were swept with devastation, leaving
local landscapes where one or two buildings were the lone
survivors of an unabated process of destruction . . . . . .

It is difficult to convey the psychic despair that is felt by people
who experience the daily loss of people and places that make
up their world. One day there was a supermarket to shop at,
the next day it is closed. Last week you had friends or relatives
up the street, today they too are leaving. Your own home edges
closer to the brink of decay as the buildings on the block empty.
The continual reminders of surrounding decay multiply with each day.

Discrimination is an omnipresent problem not only in housing but in most other areas as well. In one survey in New York City, 80 percent of Latinos (mostly Puerto Ricans) reported having been mistreated by the police. More than 70 percent reported being mistreated by landlords, employers, shopkeeper's, elected officials, the courts and the schools. When asked a general question about the frequency and extent of discrimination against Latinos, a majority of the respondents felt there was substantial discrimination in all areas of life.

EDUCATION

In 1993, more than 8 percent of mainland Puerto Ricans over twenty-four years old had completed less than five years of school. This was more than ten times the percent for whites at this low educational level. Approximately 60 percent of Puerto Ricans over twenty-four years old have completed high school, compared with more than 84 percent of whites. Eight percent had completed college, about one-third the figure for whites.

High dropout rates, or more accurately pushout rates, for Puerto Rican students remains a nationwide problem, although variations can be found from one area to another. These rates tend to he highest in central city school districts. In spite of its high positions among the states in per pupil expenditures and teacher salaries, New York ranks near the bottom in student retention. New York City has a particularly dismal record in educating Puerto Rican students, whose retention rates are lower than any other group. Tracking the school population's racial-ethnic composition by grade level shows a precipitous decline in Latino enrollment in New York City schools at the ninth grade. Some have characterized the poor education opportunities of Puerto Rican youth as "pre-market discrimination" - that is, discrimination that inhibits future success in the labor market.

The low college graduation rate for mainland Puerto Ricans restricts upward mobility. As for African and Mexican Americans, the historically white college or university setting is often an alien environment for Puerto Rican students. Mila Morales-Nadal has noted the determination and struggles for Puerto Rican women, among the poorest of all peoples of color, to get an education in order to secure a decent job. "it is not uncommon for some mothers to take their children with then to class in some public colleges." She concluded that within the context of higher education intercultural exchanges that respect and value the language, culture and identity of Puerto Ricans are vital to the empowerment of Puerto Rican youth.

At least since the great migration, Puerto Ricans have struggled against an educational system that has failed many of their children. Pressing for in-depth studies to examine their educational problems, some Puerto Rican communities have also developed local organizations to work for change. When the findings and recommendations of these numerous critical studies are ignored by school boards Puerto Ricans have sometimes turned to the courts. Nonetheless, the educational system has proved highly resistant even to court-mandated change, for white school administrators' attention to the rights and needs of culturally different students has often been halfhearted.

Barriers to Social and Economic Mobility

Few Puerto Ricans have moved into influential positions in the field of education, and Puerto Ricans have little control over the educational policies and curriculum decisions affecting their children. School authorities frequently are insensitive to Puerto Rican history and culture; the standard curriculum is often based on the implicit assumption that Puerto Ricans are culturally and linguistically deficient. Neglect of Puerto Rican history and culture by the schools contributes to a lack of self-esteem among students. The schools attended by most students have a high concentration of Puerto Rican and other students of color, yet both the actual number of Puerto Rican teachers and administrators and the ratio of Puerto Rican teachers and administrators to Puerto Rican students are extremely low. Segregated schooling has serious negative implications: low retention rates, a large majority of students who read below grade level, high student-teacher ratios, less qualified teachers and low teacher expectations. As we have noted previously, a strong correlation has been established between teachers' expectations and student's actual academic achievement. Those students, in any group, whose teachers expect them to achieve are much more likely to succeed.

Language

Most U.S. schools are not structured to deal with students who do not speak English. Prior to the American Revolution, however, bilingual education (in such languages as German, for example) was common and continued to be available to many immigrants and their children in private and sometimes publicly funded schools in the eighteenth and nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is only in the last half of the twentieth century that bilingual education has become "un-American" and highly politicized by anti-immigrant organizations.

Limited English proficiency creates multiple handicaps for Puerto Rican students as it does for other Latino groups. Children who are unable to understand English instruction fall behind native-English speaking classmates. Puerto Rican students are sometimes assigned to low-ability groups, to "language-disabled" classes or to lower grades. On the average, Puerto Rican students do not do as well as non-Latino white students on achievement tests, most of which are given in English. A psychologist in Philadelphia commented on the inaccuracy of English-language test scores:

In my clinic, the average underestimation of IQ for a Puerto Rican
kid is 20 points. We go through this again and again. When we test
in Spanish there is a 20 leap immediately - 20 higher than what he's
tested in English.

Many of the new Spanish language achievement and "IQ" tests are only translations of English-language tests, a practice that passes along the other cultural biases that exist in the tests. The predictive validity of the standardized tests used for college and graduate school entrance (the SAT and GRE) is considerably lower for Latinos than for whites. Use of such tests has been considered discriminatory by many critical observers.

Schools can be places of oppression or of support. Educator Henry Giroux has written that learning is "not merely . . . the acquisition of knowledge . . but the production of cultural practices that offer students a sense of identity, place and hope." Puerto Rican educator Herman La Fontaine has noted that "our definition of cultural pluralism must include the concept that our language and our culture will be given equal status to that of the majority population." Puerto Rican educators argue that children should be taught to read and write as well in Spanish first, taught subjects in that language, and then taught English as a second language. Some civil rights groups have pressed for expanded and effective bilingual education programs for Latino children. Indeed, a goal of Puerto Rican organizations in their struggle against the New York City school system has been a comprehensive educational program in which the strengths and values of Puerto Rican culture and the Spanish language are recognized. The outcome of their struggle so far has been a bilingual program that is designed to teach English as a replacement language and that devalues biculturalism.

Official English Policies and Spanish Speakers

Support for English as the official U.S. language has grown over the last decade or two. Much of this "nativist" movement has targeted Spanish and Spanish speakers such as Puerto Rican and Mexican Americans, especially in Florida and the southwestern states. An amendment to the Arizona Constitution went so far as to make English the language "of all government functions and actions," but a federal judge ruled in 1990 that this law violated free speech as protected by the U.S. Constitution. Nativism directed at Spanish speakers can be seen in this passage from a Council on Interamerican Security paper:

Hispanics in America today represent a very dangerous and
subversive force that is bent on taking over our nation's political
institutions for the purposes of imposing Spanish as the official
language of the U.S. and indeed of the entire Western Hemisphere. . . .
They represent a serious threat to our cherished freedoms and our
American traditions . . . . If we desire to preserve our unique culture
and the primacy of the English language, then we must so declare
rather than sitting idly by as a de facto nation evolves.

Xenophobic nativists praise official-language and English-only government policies as a means to unify diverse groups within U.S. society and to promote Anglo-Protestant cultural values. Educator Catherine Walsh reports that instead "such efforts toward linguistic cohesion resonate with a kind of colonial domination, a hegemony that threatens to silence the less powerful (and attempts) to render invisible the complex, abstract, socio-ideological nature of language." Language is one of the ways in which people define themselves.

Far from simply a set of neutral symbols, language shapes thought and thus is inseparable from personal identity and everyday life. In her years as a teacher and researcher, Walsh documented the daily struggle faced by language-minority students over whose language and therefore whose knowledge, perspectives and experiences are recognized and accepted and whose are omitted or belittled. She quotes one young bilingual student:

"Sometimes I two-times think," she said. "I think like in my family
and in my house. And then I think like in school and other places.
Then I talk. They aren't the same, you know."

Realizing that the language context of her home was not only different but less acceptable than that of the school, this child often told her teacher, "It makes me feel funny, all alone . . . different."

POLITICS

In Puerto Rico, voting by registered voters runs to 60 percent or more. Yet among mainland Puerto Ricans, voting rates have been as low as 20 percent in some urban areas. The low level of political participation by and representation of Puerto Ricans on the mainland can be explained along the lines of other exploited racial and ethnic communities: a lack of education, weak electoral support of Puerto Rican candidates by whites, a lack of campaign funds, a lack of representation in Democratic party leadership and a feeling of hopelessness regarding possibilities for political change. In a survey of Puerto Ricans in New York City who were not registered to vote, the most frequently cited reasons for not voting were "not interested in politics" (29 percent) and "voting makes no difference" (24 percent). More than one in four stated that language barriers were important in keeping them from registering to vote. Voter registration and turnout has generally increased for Puerto Ricans since 1990, especially in areas where governments are responsive to the needs of Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania played a decisive role in the reelection of one U.S. Representative.

Election to political office has been slow to come for Puerto Ricans on the mainland. Since the 1930's, Puerto Ricans have participated in Democratic Party politics in such states as New York and New Jersey, but until recent years that participation has usually been token. The first Puerto Rican American was elected to the New York State assembly in 1937; it would be fifteen years before another was elected. In 1965, Herman Badillo became the first Puerto Rican to be elected president of a New York City borough; six years later he became the first voting member of Puerto Rican background in the U.S. House. Since that time, the South Bronx has continuously had a Puerto Rican representative in Congress. Robert Garcia, who followed Badillo, played an important role in building political bridges between African Americans and Puerto Ricans in New York, noting that "blacks and Puerto Ricans are natural allies as defied by our common position on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder." In 1965, he and several other state legislators formed a black-Puerto Rican caucus in the New York legislature. More recently, a Congressional Hispanic Caucus was created to focus on issues of importance to the Hispanic community. In 1990 Jose Serrano was elected to fill Garcia's seat. Puerto Rican representation in the House tripled in 1992 with the election of Nydia Velazquez (D.-New York) and Luis Gutierrez (D. - Illinois) to fill seats created by redistricting following the 1990 census. All three were reelected in mid-1990's elections. Moreover, in 1997 the newly re-elected President Bill Clinton appointed Aida Alvarez as head of the Small Business Administration, the first Puerto Ricans to hold a cabinet-level position.
Puerto Ricans have served on a number of city councils and as mayors of small towns and a few cities. Miami, Florida had a Puerto Rican mayor from 1973 until 1985. Electoral success at the local level has created a foundation for representation in several state governments. In 1995, New York had four state senators (two male and two female) and seven state assembly members who were Puerto Rican. By the late 1990's, Puerto Ricans had won twenty-one elected positions in New York City. Moreover, in the mid 1990's, Illinois had one Puerto Rican state senator and two Puerto Rican state assembly members; Connecticut had four Puerto Rican state assembly members; Kansas had one Puerto Rican state senator and Pennsylvania and California each had one Puerto Rican state assembly member. The majority of these officials have been elected since 1990.

The long-term effects of institutional discrimination can be seen in state and city government employment, in which Puerto Ricans are significantly underrepresented. As a result many Puerto Ricans feel they are not part of the political system, and they often report being treated as non-persons by government and private agencies. Government officials serving them are usually not Puerto Rican and seldom speak much Spanish. Government services have historically been less accessible to Puerto Ricans, and job training and employment services have been slow in coming to numerous Puerto Rican communities. One exception to this pattern is the city of Paterson, New Jersey, where many Puerto Ricans are now employed in government jobs. With four Puerto Ricans, including three women, on the city's nine-member council in 1995, Paterson had the highest percentage of Puerto Rican representation in the nation.

Starting in the 1980's, the Midwest-Northeast Voter Registration Education Project, which operates in eighteen states with significant Latino populations, has conducted thousands of voter-registration campaigns and registered more than a million new voters, many of whom where Puerto Rican. In the late 1980's, the governor of Puerto Rico announced a campaign to register mainland Puerto Ricans to vote. At that time an estimated 400,000 eligible Latinos, mostly Puerto Ricans, in the New York City area alone were unregistered. Local leaders welcomed this unique intervention by a non-mainland Puerto Rican leader, which demonstrated the close political alliances between the mainland and island communities. The project, which was funded by the Puerto Rican government, was implemented in 1988 by the Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs in the United States, an agency that also provides information and referral for educational, employment, legal and other social services. By the time the project closed in the early 1990's, it had registered more than 84,000 new voters in New York City and Puerto Rican voter turnout in city council elections was increasing significantly. This resulted in an increase in the number of Puerto Rican members on the New York City council.

PROTEST In Puerto Rico

In Puerto Rico, the period of U.S. rule has periodically been punctuated with protest against the subordinate status that colonial domination entailed. Contrary to the stereotype of Latino docility, Puerto Ricans have fought hard to retain their language and culture and for self-determination. In the 1930's, large numbers of Puerto Ricans attacked the colonial government buildings in periodic protests, and in 1934 there were strikes in the sugarcane fields. The Nationalist party, led by a Puerto Rican hero, Harvard-educated Pedro Albizu Campos, began pushing for expanded freedom and for independence. In March 1937, Nationalist party marchers who had joined a legal march in Ponce were massacred. By bringing in two hundred heavily armed police, the U.S. colonial government set the stage for violence.
The police probably fired a shot and a pitched battle ensued with twenty dead and 100 injured, mostly marchers and bystanders.

In the fall of1950, police raided Nationalist party meetings and houses. This precipitated an armed revolt that spread to five cities. Hundreds of people were killed. Two thousand people were arrested for actively advocating independence. On the mainland, Puerto Rican nationalists seeking independence attacked the residence of President Harry Truman and members of the U.S. House while they were in session.

The future of Puerto Rico is a major political issue on both the island and the mainland. The platforms of both the Republican and the Democratic parties have supported statehood for Puerto Rico. Although on the island pro-statehood sentiment has increased over the last few decades, in a nonbonding plebiscite in 1993 voters in Puerto Rico narrowly favored continuing the island's commonwealth status (48 percent to 46 percent for statehood). A small percentage (4.4 percent) voted for independence. Significantly, in recent years several hundred Puerto Ricans have renounced their U.S. citizenship, viewing it as a colonial imposition.

In 1996 the pro-commonwealth party lost ground as the pro-statehood party received just over half the vote for its candidate for governor. The following year, nine U.S. senators introduced a bipartisan bill to set up a plebiscite in 1998 (and every four years, if necessary) on Puerto Rican statehood. A similar bill was approved overwhelmingly by the House Committee on Resources in the summer of 1997. Supporters of statehood argue that commonwealth status is a second-class status. In contrast, opponents fear the economic changes and loss of Puerto Rican culture that statehood might bring. Writing in the elite journal Foreign Affairs in 1997, Ruben Berrios Martinez, President of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, stated:

As a state, Puerto Rico is bound to pay the heaviest of prices:
cultural assimilation. In the American system the only way out
of an ethnic ghetto is through cultural assimilation into the Anglo-
American mainstream, which would subordinate the island's
Spanish language and distinct culture . . . In any case, assimilation
is unacceptable to Puerto Ricans, including statehooders."

One sign of the threat of cultural assimilation is the view of some mainland whites, including politicians, that Puerto Rico should not become a state unless it adopts English as its official language.

On the Mainland

Arriving for the most part desperately poor and already stigmatized by whites as inferior, Puerto Ricans on the mainland have developed community organizations to deal with discrimination and other problems. Some of the major organizations are the Puerto Rican Legal Project, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, the League of Puerto Rican Women, the Puerto Rican Teachers Association, the Puerto Rican Forum and the Puerto Rican Family Institute. The Puerto Rican Teacher Association has worked to increase representation of Puerto Ricans among teachers and principals and to expand bilingual programs. Puerto Ricans have been active in labor and union organizations on the mainland since the 1800's.

Protest activity increased in the 1960's and 1970's. In the spring of 1969, the Young Lords, a militant protest group patterned after the Black Panthers, occupied the administration building of McCormick Theological Seminary to publicize poverty in Chicago. They took over a church, opening a day-care center and school for the community. They protested the use of urban renewal land for a tennis club, and they set up a "people's park" on other urban renewal land.

A New York group formed a Young Lords political party. In December 1969 these Young Lords occupied the First Spanish Methodist Church in New York City for eleven days and organized the a day-care center, a breakfast program and a clothing distribution program. They created a newspaper, Palante (Forward) and led a local hospital. The Young Lords, which had begun as a Chicago street gang, developed their own protest style. Children of poor immigrants, they articulated a thirteen-point program for a democratic-socialist society. They called for "liberation and power in the hands of the people, not Puerto Rican exploiters." At the peak of their influence, the Young Lords had chapters in twenty cities. Militant Puerto Rican groups such as the Young Lords were subject to police repression, including infiltration of their own groups and prosecution of some leaders, sometimes in rigged trials. Other leaders were co-opted into government antipoverty programs. The Young Lords gradually disbanded in the early 1970's. In 1989, many former members celebrated the militancy of the group and the twentieth anniversary of its founding. Many former members are today influential Puerto Rican professionals and leaders in community organizations.

In the 1990's, many organizations in Puerto Rican communities have been working for a better quality of life and increased decision making in the political process. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Find has engaged in litigation in support of civil rights; an organization named Aspira has worked on improving education; the National Puerto Rican Forum has focused on employment and job training. The National Puerto Rican Coalition, representing more than 115 local organizations, has served as a liaison between Puerto Rican communities and federal government officials and lobbied for educational, health, economic and civil rights programs.

Community Protest

Puerto Rican communities have protested discrimination. For example, in Cleveland, Orlando Morales, community groups viewed a young man serving two life sentences as innocent. Much evidence indicated Morales did not commit the murder for which he was convicted. Many in the Puerto Rican community felt the twenty-two year old Puerto Rican had been railroaded and actively protested what they saw as discrimination in the criminal justice system. Three hundred angry Puerto Ricans engaged in a protest meeting at Cleveland's Spanish American Committee Hall. In addition, community organizations in Chicago have protested housing discrimination and police brutality. Police injustices targeting Latinos, including derogatory language and unwarranted arrests and searches, as well as the use of excessive physical force, have reportedly been common in Chicago. A major riot involving hundreds of Puerto Ricans occurred in Miami in 1990 after six police officers were acquitted in the fatal beating of a Puerto Rican drug dealer. Residents of the extremely poor Puerto Rican neighborhood said the violent uprisings had a lot to do with the sense of alienation and powerlessness in the Miami community. They pointed to factors as diverse as the scarcity of Puerto Ricans in powerful government and business positions and the absence of Puerto Rican music on the Spanish-language radio stations. "Cubans get everything. We get nothing." One resident stated.

Some protest movements have brought important changes. For example, pressures from Puerto Rican activists led to the founding of a community college in the South Bronx and helped cerate an open admission program at the City University of New York. City and state governments have provided more funds for community projects and hired more Puerto Ricans. Some public schools have added more Puerto Rican students and bilingual programs and hired more Puerto Rican teachers.

Coalitions of grass-roots organizations and older established groups were created in the 1980's, among them the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights. Through such mechanisms traditional and militant leaders have tried to bridge a long-standing gap between them and to improve the socioeconomic conditions of Puerto Ricans. In the 1990's, the leaders and members of several state braches of this National Congress pressed state and local governments for equal justice in courts and for better schools for Latino children; they participated in protest demonstrations, sometimes together with black organizations, against government indifference and police brutality. They have also been active in pressing the mass media for better reporting on Latino communities.

Annual parades honoring Puerto Ricans are now held in cities in New York and New Jersey. In the summer of 1997, a strong sense of Puerto Rican identity and a concern with discrimination could be seen during and following a large-scale parade by 200,000 people, which included elected officials and celebrities. A few days before this parade, a local white business leader urged area businesses to close their doors and protect their premises during the parade. In addition, a former New York columnist writing in a prominent British magazine, called Puerto Ricans, "Fat", "dusky" and "semi-savages". These actions, which triggered protests among Puerto Rican leaders, revealed continuing negative stereotypes of Puerto Ricans among white business and media elites.

RELIGION

Traditionally, most Puerto Ricans have been Catholic, but on the mainland they have generally been led by non-Puerto Rican clergy. The supportive framework that perishes gave to many previous Catholic immigrant groups has largely been missing. One exception to this dependence on non-Puerto Rican clergy has been the Bishop of Puerto Rico, who visits Puerto Rican parishes on the mainland.

Scholar Joseph Fitzpatrick has argued that Puerto Rican religion is more a religion of community than of the parish. Community celebrations and processions are important, as is reverence for the Virgin Mary and the saints. Formal church worship is less important than communal celebrations and home ceremonies. But many remain devoutly religious whether or not they attend mass regularly. On them mainland, Puerto Ricans have shared parishes with back and other Latino parishioners. Latino caucuses have developed within the Catholic Church to press for Spanish-language services and more priests of Latino background. In Fitzpatrick's words, "the principle demand of the Puerto Ricans and other Latinos is for a policy of cultural pluralism in the church that will provide for the continuation of their language and culture in their spiritual life and the appointment of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos to positions of responsibility." For several decades the Catholic hierarchy was not welcoming to the immigrants from the island, but gradually the Catholic Church has moved to integrate Puerto Ricans and other Latinos more centrally into parishes and leadership positions.

In the 1990's, the Archdiocese of New York has been estimated to be about 40 Latino. Yet only about 4 percent of the priests are Latino and this lack of leadership from Puerto Rican and other Latino groups is creating a serious problem for the Archdiocese. While the church has made significant attempt to reach out to the Latino poor, it has not yet developed sensitivity to Latino language and culture.

Many Puerto Ricans have left the Catholic Church for Pentecostal and other evangelical churches, which they feel offer a warmer reception and a community feeling. Protestant fundamentalism has made significant inroads into Puerto Rican communities, as it has in other Latino communities. Many of these communities now have numerous storefront evangelical churches. New York City alone is said to have 1,400 Latino Pentecostal and other Protestant churches.

ASSIMILATION OR COLONIALISM? Assimilation Issues

In an influential book on Puerto Ricans, Fitzpatrick uses an assimilation model to interpret Puerto Rican experiences. While in his 1964 book assimilation theorist Gordon found little assimilation of Puerto Ricans into the dominant culture and society, a few years later Fitzpatrick reported a significant degree of assimilation. Fitzpatrick noted substantial cultural assimilation, particularly for many mainland-born Puerto Ricans who have identified with U.S. society and adopted English as a second language. Yet other scholars, such as Walsh, have argued that this cultural adaptation is limited and gives a "false hope of inclusion in (the dominant) environment." Walsh found that Puerto Rican schoolchildren often deny knowing Spanish when speaking with non-Latinos, even if they use Spanish at home and in their community. Similarly, in Up from Puerto Rico, Padilla has argued that second-generation Puerto Ricans often have a different reference group, the mainland society rather than island society and as a result many hide their Spanish-language facility in an attempt to assimilate culturally.

The pressure to assimilate culturally has been intense, as Maldonado-Denis notes: "Regardless of what Glazer and Moynihan argue in Beyond the Melting Pot, the American ethic is a messianic one, and all ethnic groups are required to assimilate culturally as a condition for achieving a share in the material and spiritual goods of American society. For Puerto Ricans, these cultural assimilation pressures begin in Puerto Rico, where for decades the colonial government pressured Puerto Ricans on the island to assimilate to U.S. culture, such as by requiring the use of English in schools.

Today, there is evidence of significant cultural assimilation. In an early 1990's survey, Strategy research Corporation ranked the cultural assimilation level of Latinos on the basis of language use and behavioral, attitudinal and aspirational measures. The majority (59 percent) of the mainland Puerto Rican heads of household where classified as partially assimilated. However, fewer than 10 percent were ranked as highly assimilated, and 32 percent were considered relatively unassimilated.

There is significant Puerto Rican resistance to complete cultural assimilation. The Puerto Rican quest for identity "is taking the form of a strong assertion of the significance of Puerto Rican culture, including language and also the definition of Puerto Rican interests around militant types of political and community action.

Among Puerto Ricans themselves, some argue that Puerto Ricans in the Untied Stated must assimilate more thoroughly to the dominant culture in order to find better jobs and achieve a higher position in this society. Some even argue that this can be done with a minimum of soul selling - that is, with a strong persistence of cultural assimilation in terms of the identities of Puerto Ricans; they are concerned that assimilation in pressure, as with other subordination of racial and ethnic groups, will lead to rootlessness.

White schoolteachers are frequently engaged in an ongoing struggle with Latino students. The outcome of this struggle varies; students may become culturally assimilated, fully or to a lesser degree, or they may drop out. Researchers have found that favorable, or fair, treatment of Latino students in school increases their "difference" as perceived by the non-Latino teacher, decreases. For earlier white European immigrants, acculturation frequently resulted in some denial of ethnicity; differences became the source of fear, even shame, as noted by the Italian immigrant Leonardo Covello:

We soon got the ideal that Italian meant something inferior and
a barrier was erected between (children) of Italian origins and
their parents. This was the accepted process of Americanization;
we were becoming Americans by learning to be ashamed of our
parents.

For people of color, however, full cultural assimilation and loss of racial ethnic identity are impossible; the differences are usually too visible and too important in the racial judgments made by powerful whites. Rather than becoming de-racialized or de-ethnicized "Americans", Puerto Ricans and other people of color remain distinctive and subordinate.

Today, there seems to be some decline in blatant discrimination against Puerto Ricans in jobs but the level of discrimination remains substantial. In addition, blatant and subtle forms of mistreatment continue in other areas such as the renting and purchasing of housing. For the most part, the level of assimilation in this regard is relatively low. Moreover, secondary-structural assimilation at the level of higher-paying white-collar jobs has been slow; there remains a disproportionate concentration of Puerto Ricans in blue-collar service and lower-wages white-collar jobs, as well as among the unemployed. Problematical too has been the relatively low level of participation of Puerto Ricans in mainland political institutions. Here too there has not been substantial assimilation.

Structural assimilation of Puerto Ricans at the primary-group level and martial assimilation have not reached levels comparable to those of white immigrants. A New York study of 400 Puerto Ricans found "almost incessant interaction between the parents and their married children."
In spite of or perhaps because of, their wrenching experiences of migration to the mainland and three decades there, the first generation of immigrants has maintained a high level of social integration with their children and grandchildren. The better jobs and educations of many in second generation have not broken up this family integration. However, out-marriage seems to be more significant for the second generation. Over half of the U.S.-born Puerto Ricans who are married have a Puerto Rican spouse, compared with more than 80 percent of the island-born migrants. Out-marriages, however are typically to other Latino and to African Americans rather than to non-Latino whites.

Generational conflict has been a problem for Puerto Rican families. Children grow up in the mainland culture and pick up values that often conflict with traditional values. For instance, the traditional chaperoning of girls has given way to the less restrictive mainland dating patterns. The street life of boys in large barrios is more difficult to supervise. Moreover, identificational assimilation has come slowly for Puerto Ricans. Most, whether island-born or mainland-born, still see themselves as Puerto Rican. One study of two generations of Puerto Rican families in New York City found that both generations had acculturated to some extend to the mainland culture, "but internally in the symbolisms linking them to the island, they experienced less change." Even those born on the mainland retained strong symbolic ties to the island of Puerto Rico. More than half of the first generation of migrants to the mainland and 45 percent of their children saw themselves as solely Puerto Rican in terms of values. The rest saw themselves as partly Puerto Rican and partly "North American". Not one of the four hundred persons in the sample identified himself or herself as purely "North American" in terms of values. The second generation apparently had as strong an allegiance and sense of identity with Puerto Rico as the first generation.

Power-Conflict Views

Power-conflict analysts would agree that there has been heavy Anglo-conformity pressure on Puerto Ricans, but they would stress how colonized Puerto Rican Americans remain. Assimilation into the economic and political mainstream has been rather slow, which suggests that non-European migrants such as Puerto Ricans are not, contrary to the views of some assimilation analysts, just like the European immigrants in earlier periods of the twentieth century.

Issues of Puerto Rican identity and history surfaced in a late 1997 debate among some Puerto Ricans about a new Puerto Rican Barbie doll issued by Mattel Corporation in its Dolls of the World series. Critics argued that its appearance (skins and hair) was "too white" and did not reflect Puerto Ricans' strong Native American and African ancestries. Some also argued that the description of the island on the doll's box neglected the history as well as the colonial oppression of the island by the United States.

Puerto Ricans have had the distinctive experience of external colonialism. Unemployment in the U.S. "possession" of Puerto Rico has often been cited as a major reason for out-migration; the prosperity of the mainland economy has been cited as an important pull factor. But unemployment and mainland prosperity would not have created the long streams of migration from this Caribbean island without the long colonial relationship. The economic history of Puerto Ricans is grounded in the history of the colonial relationship between the United States and the island of Puerto Rico. After the war with Spain, the United States took the island by force as an external colony. Since that time, the inhabitants have been subject to U.S. economic and political intervention.

Indeed, it was the creation of a one-crop agriculture society dominated by absentee companies that originally created a large group of agricultural workers seeking other work. With later industrialization of Puerto Rico under the auspices of large U.S. firms, many Puerto Rican workers became part of a growing surplus labor population, one that often made its way to the industrialized northeastern cities on the mainland. These immigrants from an external colony became part of the internal colonialism of U.S. central cities. Puerto Ricans live, for the most part, in segregated communities. Colonialism theorists would argue that there is also today a co-opted Puerto Rican elite that has a social control function in keeping the Puerto Rican population from rebelling against oppressive conditions.

Internal colonialism could be seen in the Reagan and Bush administrations' "urban enterprise zone" proposals of the late 1980's and early 1990's, which significantly reduced taxes and regulations on corporations that opened plants in urban poverty areas, thus recognizing these Latino and black communities as areas for economic exploitation. Frank Bonilla and Ricardo Campos have compared this "puertoricanization" of central-city communities to the economic colonialism of Operation Bootstrap, Puerto Rico's poverty and low wages became its main assets in attracting U.S. multinational corporation.

In the case of Puerto Rico, corporations were encouraged by various incentives to come in and profit from exploiting cheap labor. The "puertoricanization" of certain central-city areas makes them corporate havens of profitability similar to the island of Puerto Rico. Various government urban-renewal schemes, new and old, for exploiting Puerto Rican and African American workers show the logic of modern capitalistic expansion, which leads to "not only to the introduction of the peoples and problems of colonialism into the metropolis, but also to the transfer there of colonial 'solutions' (such as urban enterprise zones) and practices."