July 3, 2020
Both on-air personalities and elected officials have defensively rationalized
their use of the N-word and other racist behavior
In the course of the last few weeks in Puerto Rico, TV show host “La Comay” ridiculed black Puerto Rican leader Ana Irma Rivera Lassén by using a servile voice, and recently fired radio commentator Luis Dávila Colón used the N-word on air. A Puerto Rican legislator, Representative Luis “Junior” Pérez Ortiz, then went on to use the N-word on the House floor in Puerto Rico, where legislators passed a resolution honoring Dávila Colón’s career only days after he was fired.
When opposition legislator Representative Manuel Natal introduced a motion to strike the N-word from the official record, the majority of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives shamefully voted him down, and thus the slur remains in the official legislative record. Then, adding insult to injury, Puerto Rico gubernatorial candidate and former Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi issued a statement saying he did not support discriminatory comments but then defended Pérez and Dávila Colon’s intentions, claiming they were being taken ‘out of context’ and victims of a ‘double standard.’
In Puerto Rico, as in the continental United States and the world, part of eschewing accountability is keeping comments and acts in a bubble. Contrary to what allies of these individual personalities and leaders have said, there is no acceptable context for using the N-word. The N-word, loaded with an entire racial history and system of violent oppression, is not simply one of many insults. Sadly, the conversation and statements issued were defensive instead of reflective of why the N-word is deeply painful and why racism and colorism in Puerto Rico must be challenged.
Many Puerto Ricans, wherever they are, would never allow the term S—c to go unchallenged. We understand that the use of that ugly term meant that we were/are unwelcomed and beneath others; the word dirty often came before it. We know that it was uttered in gang chases of us in Chicago, in classrooms and on train platforms in New York City, and by police officers in Philadelphia. As such, when a community soundly rejects a white supremacist term applied to it, we must stand firm with them by denouncing the use or justification of the use of the N-word in any context.
We encourage all Puerto Ricans and non-Puerto Ricans alike to listen to the reflections offered this week by people like actor Modesto Lacen and journalist Ana Teresa Toro and to consider a petition being circulated as ways of concretely taking action against racism and also bringing others along.
###