One big difference between Puerto Rico and here is race. I remember as a kid in Puerto Rico, a person was a person. In Puerto Rico, skin color goes from one extreme to the other. There are Puerrtoriquenos who are as black as midnight, Puerrtoriquenos who are as light as the clouds, and there are all the shades of colors in between. While I was living in Puerto Rico, I never referred to anyone other than as a person, it was either he or she, mister or missus. I never referred to anyone as the black man or the white lady. And that hit me like a ton of bricks when I came to the United States--it was a shock. That was a big adjustment for me. I had a problem referring to someone as black or as white. That was not in my way of thinking. It did not exist. So that was a big change.
Race later became an area of interest to me. When I did my doctorate, I chose that particular issue: when a family comes from Puerto Rico, it's possible that the children are of different colors. In my own family, I have uncles who are blacker than black and other family members who are different shades. But in the United States when parents come from Puerto Rico with two or more kids and walk into a school to register the children, sometimes they have been told Well, Mr. So-and so, or Mrs. So-and-so, we'll accept Johnny, but we can't accept Susie. And the parents say, "What are you talking about?" "Well, Johnny is black, but Susie is not black, and we only can accept black kids in order to balance the racial makeup."
That's devastating to Puerto Rican parents who say, "They're both my kids, they're brother and sister." The concept of desegregation does not exist in the same way in the minds of Puerto Rican parents in Puerto Rico as it exists here. For example, busing in the United States in some cases, is used to desegregate schools: the school district will take a group of Latino or black kids, who live in one neighborhood, put them on a school bus, and take them to another neighborhood in order to integrate or desegregate the population in a school. That doesn't exist in Puerto Rico. The only purpose of busing in Puerto Rico is for trips.
Another difference is this: in Puerto Rico when you go into a classroom, no matter where on the island, you're going to see students who are different shades and color, but there's one thing they have in common: they are all Puerto Ricans.
I experienced something personally here--I didn't know who I was.
I knew that I wasn't black, as you know black to be. I didn't speak
the language, I didn't have the same customs, the same habits. I
knew I wasn't white. But I didn't know there was something called a Latino
or Hispanic and I was exposed to a school environment that was either black
or white so I was growing up with those two perspectives, but I didn't
know who Jose Lebron was. That was a bad experience, because I think
it is very important for everyone to know who he or she is, where they're
coming from, what they have to offer in terms of what their history is,
and their heritage. You need to know that, you need to know that your ancestors
have made a contribution to society. Every different ethnic group
in one way or another at one time or another has made a contribution to
society. And I didn't know that. I didn't know who I was.