Who’s in conflict? Racialization of Puerto Ricans in relation to other Latinxs in the New York Times, 2010–2015

ABSTRACT

Puerto Rican migration to the United States has skyrocketed as a result of various political and economic factors faced in Puerto Rico. I focus my attention on how Puerto Ricans are represented in newspapers through narratives of belonging, exclusion and/or perceived threat. I seek to answer is: how are Puerto Ricans and other Latinx groups framed in relation to each other in the New York Times? To answer this query, I perform a content analysis of the paper of record, the New York Times. I argue that Puerto Ricans are not only framed as in conflict in relation to other Latinos, while also being framed as possessing some sort of colour capital that can be transferred over to particular spaces. The NYT constructs boundaries that reinforce while also transform what groups are perceived as threats.

KEYWORDS:

• Puerto Ricans
• racism
• color-blind racism
• racialization
• media
• threat

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Emma Gonzalez-Lesser for her in-depth input on this manuscript. I would also like to thank Matthew W. Hughey and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The data are inclusive of editorials, opinion pieces, responses, news articles (both local and national) and feature articles.