ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some key racial discourses that Puerto Ricans have developed in the process of constructing a sense of “difference” vis-à-vis the US. They are a “benevolent” slavery; the Spanish whiteness of the nation; and race mixture. I argue that these discourses are instrumental for constructing a cultural nationalism in opposition or conversation with the colonial power, and attempt to make blackness a palatable and “folkloric” element of a nationalist discourse that privileges whiteness and fails to recognize racism.
