Black Men, Puerto Rico

Then he said, “but you being White probably don’t understand.” He continued angrily, “There’s NO WAY you can know what it’s like to be a Black man in a White man’s business!-Hell, in a White man’s WORLD!” Take a few minutes to contemplate this scenario. What stereotypes of Black men might emerge in your mind after this interaction? How would you deal with them? What would you feel? How would you respond to Marvin? One option would be to say something like this, “You’re right, there’s no way I can truly understand what it’s like for you, but I’d like to try. Can you tell me more about being Black in your place of work?” What would a question like this accomplish? What other responses might you try? Putting It in Practice 13.3Hispanic American Cultures . . . it was the American phenomenon of ethnic turnover that was changing the urban core of Paterson, and the human ?ood could not be held back with an accusing ?nger.

“You Cuban?” the man asked my father, pointing a ?nger at his name tag on the navy uniform-even though my father had the fair skin and light brown hair of his northern Spanish family background and our name is as common in Puerto Rico as Johnson is in the United States.

“No,” my father had answered, looking past the ?nger into his adversary’s angry eyes. “I’m Puerto Rican.” “Same shit.” And the door closed.

-Judith Ortiz Cofer, Silent Dancing For the purposes of this chapter, we take our meaning for the term Hispanic from Marin and Marin , who indicate that Hispanic people are “individuals who reside in the United States and who were born in or trace the background of their families to one of the Spanish speaking Latin American nations or Spain” . This term is not perfect, in that some Mexican Americans prefer the term Latino because it does not harken back to the conqueror, Spain . However, Hispanic is the term most commonly used at present, so it is our choice for this section.