Between Blackness and Africanness: Indexing Puerto Rican Identity Through Discourse

• In Event: 18.025 - (Un)Educating Diversity: Afro-Latinidad in the U.S. Educational Context

Abstract

Interrogating the boundaries of identity amongst Puerto Ricans, this study examines individual Puerto Rican’s subject positioning in relation to both historical legacies and contemporary iterations of blackness. In particular, I look at participants’ discourse around black identity explicitly and their discourse around hair - ‘pelo malo’ and ‘pelo bueno’. Using transcribed interview data, I explore how self-identified Puerto Ricans understand the relationship of Puerto Rico to Africa, and subsequently the relationship of being Puerto Rican to being black. This is put into conversation with how these same individuals then discuss hair as a site of blackness - in what ways does hair symbolically represent black identity and how does language about hair reveal underlying ideologies about blackness amongst Puerto Ricans? The analysis is focused on interview participants’ oscillation between ‘black’ or ‘blackness’ and ‘African’ ‘Africano’ or ‘Africanness’ as identity descriptors.

The paper begins with the ideological underpinnings of Africanness and blackness. I focus on Negritude, as it debunks the myth of black inferiority and debilitating stereotypes of people of African descent, while simultaneously creating an African identity that is celebrated and rooted in historical and cultural legacies (Césaire, 1939; Senghor, 1970; Vaillant, 1990). Similarly, I ground blackness in the work of Fanon (2008) and Fleetwood (2011) which brings into focus the black body as an object of both the visual and the oral; it is constructed through both the gaze of another, as well as, through the speech act. The fluid, intangible nature of blackness means that it only finds grounding and meaning through discourse. The paper then transitions to an explanation of methods used. I employ discourse analysis attending to the indexical nature of language (Ochs, 1992; Ochs, 1993), particularly, how language becomes the material through which we can grasps the dispositions, understandings, and competencies of the participants in relation to their surroundings. I then analyze and discuss selections of data to get a glimpse of how participants make sense of black/ness and African/ness.

My preliminary findings illuminate two salient themes: negritude moments and circulatory blackness. We can understand negritude moments to be instances when being black is acknowledged as rooted in the historical and cultural legacies of Africa. It captures the collective experience shared by those with African ancestry, recognizing the ‘African personality’ of those within the black diaspora. The second theme, circulatory blackness, describes moments where the meaning of blackness is contextually defined, situated in the discourse through which it is deployed; it encompasses the multiplicity of blackness. These themes allowed for nuance in how we understand the ways participants positioned ‘self’ in relation to both Puerto Ricanness and blackness as they explicitly discussed racial/cultural identity and hair (as a proxy for race). The results of this study allow me to consider the ways in which young people, who navigate the boundaries between Puerto Rican and black, can be better accommodated within schools. Ultimately it brings us closer to understanding how identifying as AfroPuerto Rican can be used towards the goal of liberatory education.

Author

• Krista L. Cortes, University of California - Berkeley