Tuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of Puerto Rican Television(Console-ing Passions)

About the Book

Tuning Out Blackness fills a glaring omission in U.S. and Latin American television studies by looking at Puerto Rican television. In exploring the political and cultural dynamics that have shaped racial representations in Puerto Rico's commercial media from the late 1940s to the 1990s, Yeidy M. Rivero advances critical discussions about race, ethnicity, and the media. She shows that televisual representations of race have belied the ideology of a racially mixed heritage that pervades Puerto Rico's national culture and positions the island's alleged egalitarianism in opposition to racial conflicts in the United States. White performers in blackface have often portrayed "blackness" in local television productions, while black actors have been largely excluded. Drawing on interviews and archival research, Rivero considers representations of race in Puerto Rico, taking into account how they are intertwined with the island's status as a U.S. commonwealth, its national culture, and its relationship with Cuba before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, as well as with the massive influx of Cuban migrants after 1960.She focuses on locally produced radio and television shows, particular television events, and characters that became popular media icons--from performer Ramon Rivero's use of blackface and "black" voice in the 1940s and 1950s to the battle between black actors and television industry officials over racism in the 1970s to the creation, in the 1990s, of the first Puerto Rican situation comedy featuring a black family. By the 1990s, all of the tv stations on the island were owned by U.S. and multinational corporations. Rivero suggests that in diminishing the role of local television productions in programming, this development threatens to erase a crucial forum for the expression and negotiation of racial tensions.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Translating Televisual “Blackness” 1
1. Caribbean Negritos: Ramon Rivero, Blackface, and Black Voice in Puerto Rico 22
2. Bringing the Soul: Afros, Black Empowerment, and the Resurgent Popularity of Blackface 67
3. The CubaRican Space Revisited 115
4. Mi familia: A Black Puerto Rican Televisual Family 147
5. Translating and Representing Blackness 185
Notes 199
Bibliography 235
Index 255

About the Author :

Yeidy M. Rivero is Assistant Professor of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Review :
"This book not only provides a cultural history of 'blackness' in Puerto Rican television, it also locates Puerto Rico as a critical blind spot in both Latin American and U.S. television studies, one that can offer new insights into the televisual representation of race, family, and nation."--Chon Noriega, author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema "Tuning Out Blackness offers an astute and very well informed analysis of Puerto Rico's unique 'racial' programming, which in turn provides a valuable look at the deep ambivalence at the heart of the country's sense of national identity in the shadow of U.S. ideological and cultural power."--Juan Flores, author of From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity "Ground-breaking and complex... Provocative... A rich, engaging, vital contribution to television history and popular culture studies, Puerto Rican and Latino studies, and racial and ethnic studies. Highly recommended."--S.A. Vega Garcia, Choice "In a work whose theoretical sophistication and historical breadth is matched by its cultural sensitivity, Yeidi M. Rivero explains how and why blackface comedy and imagery continued to be constructed and consumed as a valid form of popular entertainment in Puerto Rico as late as the 1990s."--Lillian Guerra, American Historical Review "Yeidy Rivero's Tuning Out Blackness provides a well documented cultural history of "blackness" in Puerto Rican television... She makes excellent use of participant observation, interviews, archival research, and textual analysis to critically analyze representations of race in local Puerto Rican television."--Dwight E. Brooks, Journalism History "Tuning Out Blackness provides a kind of 'missing link' in this area of television studies. It is a well-informed case study that paves the way for more comprehensive research." --Tomas Lopez-Pumarejo, CENTRO Journal