The Last Vestige of Racism

Over the course of my lifetime it has become far less acceptable to be racist in public in the United States. And even when I was young, overt racism was already looked down on for the most part—there was plenty of it, and it often passed without objection, but it was far less acceptable than it had been 20 or 30 or 40 years before. Of course I realize Trump has unleashed a new wave of racism, but that's confined mostly to the conservative movement. Relatively few liberals say racist things in public, and when they do they're generally forced to apologize quickly.

I have to say, though, that there is one glaring exception, and it's distressingly common on both ends of the political spectrum. This is racism against Puerto Ricans. I can't count the times I've seen people refer disparagingly to "Puerto Rican people" (usually abbreviated as "PR people"). "Did some P[uerto ]R[ican] person draft this?" "You sound like a P[uerto ]R[ican] person right now." "Oh great another P[uerto ]R[ican]-drafted statement instead of full disclosure and an honest apology."

As I understand it, the "joke" is that Puerto Ricans often use English in a somewhat stilted or indirect way, deflecting blame and issuing non-apology apologies. It's a weirdly specific racist thing to say or to believe, and I hope it goes the way of all other flagrantly racist tropes.