ABSTRACT
Discrimination against Puerto Ricans by the mass media takes three main forms: Exclusion, Dehumanization, and Job discrimination. Negative images of Puerto Ricans represent written and visual expressions of white superiority and Puerto Rican inferiority. They are historically constituted. These stereotypes existed even before the mass migration of Puerto Ricans to the US Puerto Ricans, as a multi-racial people, were a natural target for the racial purists. Our ancestors are Tainos, Spaniards, and Africans. The Puerto Rican community in New York had attracted the attention of government officials, academics, journalists, and a handful of novelists. The limiting of Puerto Rican characterizations and images to crime films effectively linked the already-established images of "otherness" and "racial inferiority" with the "modern" stereotype of criminality. Puerto Ricans made a brief appearance in the 1949 movie, City across the River. The association between Puerto Ricans, juvenile delinquency, and rock and roll continued with the success of the vocal group Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.
