This article considers the entanglements of race, culture and place in Puerto Rico. I analyse two distinct constructions of blackness that sustain racial hierarchies intrinsic to Puerto Rican ‘racial democracy’. First, ‘folkloric blackness’ is a static, historicised version of blackness that represents Puerto Rico’s African heritage without compromising the whitening bias of racial democracy discourse. A second construction of blackness that I term ‘urban blackness’ also circulates throughout the island, but instead serves as the counterpoint to the rest of the presumably ‘whiter’ Puerto Rico. Both have been emplaced within distinct, bounded locations, and affiliated with certain cultural practices. I argue that these ‘emplacements’ that arise from the associations between race, culture and place produce specific constructions of blackness that appear contradictory, yet ultimately work together to maintain the racial hierarchies intrinsic to racial democracy discourses.
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