Are Puerto Ricans a Race or Ethnic Group?

Many Puerto Ricans are often confronted with the statement "But you don't look Puerto Rican" And usually the one making the statement is baffled when you insist that you are.

Puerto Ricans in general vary in how they look..They can be anywhere from pale white, to black in skin color, to all variations in between. This includes hair textures and facial features.

So what are Puerto Ricans? Are they a race or just another ethnic group. Well, it's a bit more complicated and like everything else, you must go to the historical roots in order to make sense of it.
DNA studies have shown that the racial ancestry mixture of the average Puerto Rican is about 64% European, 21% African, and 15% native Taino.

And even a small sample study of self identified White Puerto Ricans and self identified Black Puerto Ricans showed that they all carried a contribution from all three ancestral populations (European, African, and Indigenous Ameridian) Obviously, the proportion of each contribution varied. Correlating with their self identified race, European ancestry ranged to under 20% to over 80%, While African ancestry ranged from less than 10% to over 50%. Amerindian ancestry ranged between 5% and 20% irrespective of self identified race.

So basically, the overwhelming majority of all Puerto Ricans carry a contribution from all three ancestral populations in their DNA which explains the different variations in how we look.

#coquireport #puertorico #boricua

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