Racial Rough Spot
How Skin Color Affects the Puerto Rican Community

By Jennifer Weil

Victor Ayala was only 9 when he realized that his black skin made him different. "That incident never left me," said Ayala, who was born to Puerto Rican parents in New York City and thus considers himself a black Nuyorican.

He was playing with his friend Ishmael, a light-skinned Puerto Rican, when Ishmael's mother interrupted them and took her son aside. Ishmael's mother, also a light-skinned Puerto Rican, admonished her son in Spanish, saying: "Que tu haces con ese moreno?" (What are you doing with this dark skinned person?) Ayala said he heard Ishmael reply: "But mom, it's Victor. He's my friend."

In that instant Victor and Ishmael's relationship changed. "I never went to his house again," said Ayala, now 39. "I felt uncomfortable. It was a chilly sensation, like where did this come from? I never grew up with that race mentality in my house."

As Ayala got older the racial incidents became more blatant. Ayala said he's had Hispanic storeowners tell workers in Spanish to watch him because he might steal something. Other times "they would say, 'look at the black m----- f----- coming into this country,'" he said. "I would say, 'Que tu dijiste?' (What did you say?). When they discovered that I can speak the language and I am of their ethnic group, they try and warm up to me and say, 'Oh what's up brother.' I'm not their brother. I mean you're trying to treat me a certain way based on my pigment. I mean I think that's very shallow and I have no use for it."

Ayala's accounts of differing treatment based on his skin color are not isolated. Three New Yorkers of Puerto Rican descent, varying in gender, age and skin color, were interviewed about how they believe their color affects the way they are viewed by friends, people within the Puerto Rican community and people within the Hispanic community. Each person's encounters with other Puerto Ricans and Hispanics varied, ranging from muttered racial slurs to having their identity questioned because they didn't look "Spanish enough" to facing family opposition when dating a Puerto Rican of a dark hue. But they share one conclusion: While not a hard and fast rule, light skinned Puerto Ricans receive better treatment within their own community and other Hispanic communities than do darker ones. This disparity, they say, is lessening but change is slow -- partly because, as experts note, skin-color attitudes are rooted in over 300 years of slavery in the Western Hemisphere.

Here are their stories:

Ayala, a Harlem resident, is a tape library supervisor at a New York based television network, which he declined to identify. He is one of almost 900,000 Puerto Ricans living in New York City, according to the 1990 Census, roughly 36,000 more than in 1980. Figures from Census 2000 will not be released until September 2001. He grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his parents and five siblings. "We are a rainbow of colors," Ayala said of his family. "We've got every shade."

However, he said, racism exists in the Puerto Rican community and throughout the Hispanic community because it has been "part of this country and many others since the beginning of time" and "we've pretty much incorporated a lot of it." The color lines reflected in Hispanics communities, he added, grow out a "Euro-centric racist mentality" and have been embedded in people's psyche. "If Elian was a black nappy headed Cuban, they would have sent him back on the same raft," Ayala said "We're dealing with a lot of people who are confused about their own identity."

Although Ayala has encountered racial slights among Hispanics, he said, "you can't generalize and say that they are all like that." In his experience, skin color was not an absolute bar to relationships among Puerto Ricans of differing hues. "It's not like they wouldn't be close friends or visit one another," he said. "There are those extremes, but as a rule, that's not the case."

Ayala also said that attitudes are changing. "I think it's getting better in the sense that more and more Puerto Ricans or Hispanics are becoming more aware of their Afro-centric roots," he said. "So that's kind of doing away with a portion of that mentality." Yet, he said, there still are "those old school die-hards," referring to people in their 60s who have been "indoctrinated into believing lighter skin is superior."

As for himself, Ayala said that he has white, black and Hispanic friends but the majority of the time he hangs out with African-Americans. "Their mind set," he said, better reflects "the reality of what's going on today in terms of the plight of blacks and Latinos."

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Sandra Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican-born singer, actress and educator who has lived in New York City since 1977, said that when she was little she thought that all Puerto Ricans were the same. It was only when she attended the University of Puerto Rico, dating a blond, blue-eyed Puerto Rican, that she noticed that her cinnamon colored skin, dark curly hair and hazel brown eyes made a difference to some people. "Someone asked him if he was dating a triguena girl (medium skinned colored person)," said Rodriguez, now 44. "I looked at myself in the mirror and asked myself, 'Am I triguena?'" Rodriguez didn't think she was, but it bothered her.

"Trigueno means that you are dark, and in society in general in Puerto Rico at the time I was growing up, having black blood was not good," she said. "Therefore, being triguena meant that I was not white." She recalled feeling "a sense of doom."

This attitude, she said, has to do with Puerto Rico's history of oppression. "Having power was white and not having power was black and Indian," she said. Because of this, she said, Puerto Ricans conform to an alien standard of beauty-American beauty. "Even though we love voluptuous," she said. "It's a double standard." Men want skinny long-legged blondes, said Rodriguez, who is 5 feet 3 inches and describes herself as short, round and dark. This ideal, she said, has been imposed by American culture and has "nothing to do with who we are."

When Rodriguez was in her late 20s she began dating a dark skinned Puerto Rican. His features were more black, she said, referring to her future ex-husband's nose, lips, forehead and kinky hair. "At the beginning I did have problems with the fact that he was dark," she said. When Rodriguez was younger she learned from her family that she should not date or marry anyone dark skinned. "You have to better the race" is what she remembers being told by one aunt, a light- skinned Puerto Rican with dyed blond hair. Later Rodriguez asked the aunt why she married her dark skinned uncle. The aunt replied that she was light skinned and could "afford it" but Rodriguez had darker skin and thus would have to "marry lighter."

Being involved with her ex-husband allowed Rodriguez to face her own prejudices and come to terms with what she had learned as a child. "Once I got over my own prejudice," she said. "I never had any doubts about marrying him. Nevertheless, I did worry about the baby's hair, if we were to have a child." Today, having a baby with dark features and kinky hair is no longer an issue for Rodriguez.

There were times, however, when Rodriguez's friends would tell her subtly that she should be with someone else. "When we walked down the street together in New York some of my friends would say 'You are too pretty for him.'" They were implying that Rodriguez would be better off if she were involved with someone lighter skinned. "To be honest, it felt good," she said. "I guess it had to do with having the upper hand in the relationship, and I guess feeling more attractive than him gave me some sort of control or an upper hand, especially since he spoke English with no accent and he was seven years younger than me." Rodriguez reminded her friends that she was with her husband because he was good to her.

Rodriguez received a similar reaction when her family met her husband. "'Sandra we imagined you marrying someone different,'" she said her relatives told her. "I knew exactly what they meant and they were light skinned Puerto Ricans." Eventually, she said, things changed. "They fell in love with him," she said. "But at first it was weird. It was not what my family wanted."

At about the same time of her marriage, Rodriguez began to consider herself a woman of color. While she was at City College she met a guidance counselor named Esperanza Martell, who later became a friend, sister and a mentor. "She introduced me to a new world in which I learned what it means to be a real strong, powerful woman who accepts herself and is happy with who she is, including skin color, she said."

Rodriguez has friends, male and female, of all colors and backgrounds, although the majority are Latinas. "We just accept each other," she said. "And consciously work through any differences and conflicts with an awareness that we may bring into the relationship some prejudices. We try hard to become aware of them and work through them. We accept our differences and we acknowledge those differences with joy and respect. That's what I call a celebration."

And while Rodriguez has long ago gotten rid of the belief that lighter is better, she said she's realistic. "My experiences, many of them very painful," she said, "have taught me that the lighter you are, at least in most countries in the Western Hemisphere, the better your chances are to move up in the world."

She added that although attitudes about skin color are changing, they are happening too slowly. "Racism and prejudice are here for a long time," Rodriguez said. "And it will take a lot of education…of people for them to start looking at hearts, souls, intelligence, spirit, potential instead of skin color."

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Natalie Molina, 23, a sales assistant who works at the Courtroom Television Network, describes herself as a light skinned Puerto Rican. She has straight dark hair and blue green eyes. "Most people don't think I'm Puerto Rican; they always think I'm mixed," she said. "People have asked me if I'm Jewish, Italian, South American, Argentinean, Spanish, Polish and Russian." Even most Hispanic people, she said, don't think she's a Latina.

Molina, who lived in Brooklyn until she was 12, said she always knew that Puerto Ricans did not all look alike. "My family all looked different," she said. "I mean we come in all shades and sizes." Her mother has long black hair, olive skin and strong native Indian features while her green eyed, dark curly haired sister is darker than Molina. Both her father and younger brother are blond with green eyes.

As a child, Molina wished she had darker skin. "I just thought that being darker with the dark hair and dark eyes would make me feel like a true Latina," she said. "I love being Puerto Rican and if I looked more like one, then I wouldn't feel so plain. I thought the way they looked was far more beautiful."

While she didn't dwell on this belief, Molina said, her feelings started to change when she became a teen-ager. "I realized that I am who I am and I better start loving me," she said.

At the same time, Molina, who lived in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, said she received "a lot of pretty hard core comments" about her appearance. "I've gotten people saying 'You're not Puerto Rican, you're not dark enough,'" she said. But she refused to react. "I'm not going to try to prove to them that I am Puerto Rican," she said, chalking up the comments to "mostly just pure ignorance."

Molina blames history for the prejudice light-skinned Puerto Ricans display toward darker-skinned ones. "The Europeans were the wealthy more 'civilized' people and the African and the native Indians were taught that they were not 'civilized' and that they were beneath the Europeans," she said. Vestiges of this belief still exist, she said, noting: "Let's remember, slavery was truly abolished a very short time ago."

She added, "when you come from a small place you tend to keep the views and opinions that have been around for a long time. Puerto Rico is a rapidly changing island so views have changed a lot but the older people still believe that lighter is better."

As far as Molina is aware, dark-skinned Puerto Ricans have not been an issue for anyone in her family except for her grandfather's sister. "She thinks they're ugly," Molina said. "She would say, 'I don't want you ever to bring someone in like this.' I think that goes back to the inferiority of dark skin versus light skin from the days of slavery." When she was younger, Molina said, her second aunt would show her off to her friends because she was so light skinned. "When I was 13, I was old enough to tell her to cut it out," she recalled. "But to be honest all I could say to myself was, 'What a hypocrite!'" After all, Molina said, her grandfather is dark and looks Indian. "I couldn't figure it out how she could dislike dark people so much when her own flesh and blood was dark and that is part of our heritage." She added that she hopes that her aunt's beliefs will change.

Molina is optimistic that with each new generation, racial attitudes will improve. "With proper education," she said. "Our children will grow up with the realization that we are all human, we just come in different flavors and colors."

* * *
The issue of race in the Puerto Rican community hasn't been addressed, one expert said, because "in the United States our main focus has been looking at Puerto Ricans as a racial ethnic group as opposed to looking at the internal divisions."

"The problem of race is still a serious problem," said Angelo Falcon, the senior policy executive at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Falcon is also director of the organization's Institute for Puerto Rican Policy.

He agreed with the three interviewees that race issues in the Puerto Rican community have a lot to do with the dominance of European society and the European colonization of non-white countries. Colonization, he said, rendered "whole groups of people powerless."

One clear sign that history has affected how Puerto Ricans view themselves is found in data released by the 2000 Census for Puerto Rico. Although 98.8 percent of the island's residents identified themselves ethnically as Hispanic, Falcon said that over 80 percent also identified themselves racially as white. "Most agree that's an overstatement," he said. Meanwhile, only 8 percent of Puerto Ricans identified themselves as black.

Still, Falcon thinks things are changing in the United States. "Young people are growing up in an environment where it's much harder to justify racial prejudices. In all the major cities the population's changing." Older people, he said, have a different framework. When they were growing up, racial issues were not dealt with, he said. Today, he said, the mass media, with both news programs and entertainment shows, are helping to alter that outlook.