Race and ethnicity  (Page 12/22)

Puerto Ricans, following the treaty that concluded the Spanish American War, became citizens of the United States, albeit citizens without suffrage. Therefore, Puerto Ricans, who are already citizens, have little incentive to assimilate and, like their Mexican counterparts, are physically close to their homeland, maintain a nearly continuous migration stream onto the mainland, and have a relatively high rate of return migration. Puerto Rico is a desperately poor colony of the United States populated primarily by Spanish-speaking, Hispanic-surnamed descendants of African slaves. Thus, entrenched intergenerational poverty, coupled with language difficulties and racism, have prevented assimilation. Most Puerto Ricans who live on the mainland live in poor, inner city neighborhoods in New York and Chicago. Neighborhoods that are not ethnic enclaves but are rather huge concentrations of the poor, poorly educated, and black underclass. Harrison, Roderick J. and Claudette E. Bennett. “Racial and Ethnic Diversity” in State of the Union: America in the 1990s Volume Two: Social Trends . Reynolds Farley, Ed. New York: Russell Sage 1995. 141-210. Current, Richard N. and T. Harry Williams, Frank Freidel, Alan Brinkley. American History: A Survey Sixth Edition . New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1987. Marger Martin, Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives: Fourth Edition . Wadsworth: Belmont CA. 1996.

African Americans differ dramatically from all other migrants. Many, probably most, African Americans have been Americans far longer than most whites. Many African Americans can trace their ancestry back more than seven generations. Those ancestors however were involuntary immigrants who were stolen from their homes, thrown into the bellies of slave ships, and brought to these shores as pieces of property—chattel—to work for the rest of their lives and for the rest of the lives of all their descendants in involuntary servitude as the slaves of white masters. No other people have involuntarily migrated to America in such vast numbers. No other people have been treated as property. No other people have suffered 350 years of slavery. No other people have been so vilely used, abused, mistreated, maltreated, and battered physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. It was not until the late 1860s that blacks were granted Constitutional rights in the United States and it was not until 1953, and then again in the middle 1960s through the mid 1970s, that real civil rights were finally established for African Americans. Until that time African Americans were second-class people who were often denied their political citizenship by being denied suffrage. Therefore, the opportunity for traditional assimilation for African Americans has not existed until very recently. Given the traditional assimilation pattern, African Americans for all practical purposes, are only second generation Americans regardless of how far back they can trace their actual ancestry in America. Ibid.