We evaluated two distinct but not mutually exclusive scenarios for the underlying mechanism that prompted reclassification of individuals as white in the 1920 Puerto Rican census:

We evaluated two distinct but not mutually exclusive scenarios for the underlying mechanism that prompted reclassification of individuals as white in the 1920 Puerto Rican census: the movement of individuals across racial boundaries (boundary crossing) and the movement of racial boundaries across individuals (boundary shifting). The underlying boundary dynamics that drove racial reclassification in the 1920 census are illuminated by the results of our counterfactual multinomial regression analysis, which suggests that changes in individual characteristics account for roughly one-fifth of the whitening between 1910 and 1920, together with our cohort analysis, which reveals clustering of the white surplus population among children and young adults (especially women), and our analyses of trends in union formation and classification of children between 1910 and 1920. Our analysis of the unusual changes in union combinations suggests that individual boundary crossing, via union with a lighter spouse, was a likely trigger of reclassification between 1910 and 1920. Intergenerational boundary crossing via miscegenation, procreation, and acceptance as “white” of physically lightened offspring may have contributed to Puerto Rico’s gradual whitening trend in the first half of the twentieth century, but it does not appear significant to explain the unparalleled increase in the enumerated white population that took place between 1910 and 1920.

Mara Loveman and Jeronimo O. Muniz, “How Puerto Rico Became White: Boundary Dynamics and Intercensus Racial Reclassification,” American Sociological Review, Volume 72, Number 6 (December 2007). 934. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000312240707200604. (See also here.)

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