This Italian looks like your average Puerto Rican.

[k5125]

From NY I mean. Doesn't he?

[Wadaad]

not puerto rican, but middle eastern levantine

[k5125]

This pic is better. What about in this pic? Looks more puerto rican doesn't he?

[Wadaad]

well yeah, one of those lighter Puerto Ricans...he certainly looks more ethnic than Ricky Martin, almost looks North Indian in that photo

[k5125]

Looks ultra Rican here. His real name is Michael Imperioli. I wonder what part of Italy his ancestors are from. I bet they are Sicilian.

[wade]

he looks like a lighter lebanese.

pretty much resembles this guy who is lebanese. you see him?

[k5125]

Yeah I could see that.

[wade]

k5125 said:

Yeah I could see that.

anyway what made you say puerto rican over, levantine?

[Yankel]

Man, Puerto Ricans are a combination of three different races. He doesn't look multi-racial to me.

[Ponto Hardbottle]

Where I lived in the States there weren't many Spanish speaking ethnics, actually more East Asians. Think Washington State near BC. When I think Puerto Ricans I don't visualize someone like Mr. Dinarid. I visualize someone who looks like Halle Berry, a mulatto type, even Jennifer Lopez type, someone with some negroid features. Mr. Dinarid looks rather Greek to Lebanese. I find nothing negroid about him especially the nose, brows, eyebrows and chin.

[nockwasright]

I think he looks very Med and has the combination chin+nose that makes the most typical southern Italian profile (as already said in another thread).
His surname is almost surely from Lazio, Centre South Italy:
gens.labo.net/it/cognomi/genera.html

[Drooperdoo]

Actor Benicio Del Toro is Puerto Rican and appears in a bad movie entitled "Excess Baggage" with Italian-American Nick Turturro--and Del Toro is far, far lighter than Mr. Turturro. There's a scene in the film where they're side by side.
So, no, not all Puerto Ricans are "tri-racial mulattos".
Likewise with ex-Menudo singer Ricky Martin. Or Oscar winner Jose Ferrer [who attended Princeton at the age of 15.]
These are examples of white Puerto Ricans.

Americans tend to have a darker image of Puerto Ricans because most of those who immigrate to the mainland United States are the poor--hence blacker--ones. The welathy white ones [i.e., the ones who can afford to send their kids to Princeton] usually stay back on the island . . . or they're so white that they go unnoticed: Like the aforementioned examples.
Cuba has the exact opposite dynamic: All its whites fled to the US, and the blacks remained. [Racially, however, Puerto Rico has a far, far, FAR higher Caucasian population--whereas Cuba was more of a plantation colony--with 80% blacks and 20% whites.)
But no matter.
If you had asked a Frenchman or German in the 1910s what an "American" looked like, they would have said "black," since most of the Americans emigrating were negro performers, singers, etc [who flocked to Europe because of its lack of Jim Crow laws and more tolerant view of race.]
There's a bad Richard Burton movie called "Bluebeard," where a white American woman goes to Germany and a German says, "She's American? --But she looks so white!" [Because to the German, American = black.]
But no matter.

[sergio]

While I agree with you regarding mainland Puerto Ricans vs. island Puerto Ricans, I disagree about what you stated was the composition of Cuba's population. Never in Cuba's history have blacks made up 80% of the total. Even today, when there is an obvious non-white majority, it is a majority that includes both mulatoes and blacks.

Up until the late fifties, whites were the majority of the population in all of Cuba, more so in the western region. Back in 1898 under American occupation, right after the Spanish defeat, the population was 68% white and 32% black and mulato. That census was taken by the Amercian authorities. After 1902, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards made Cuba their home, followed by thousands of other Europeans, as well as Syrians, Lebanese, Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews etc. During the xix century, many French also settled in Cuba. As a result, by 1943, the Caucasoid population had increased its share to 75%, but over 80% in some western provinces.

One thing is certain, Cuba had more pure blacks than Puerto Rico and slavery was abolished there much later than in PR. Spanish inmigration into Cuba was also heavy during the xix century, particularly from the Canary Islands whose people settled a lot of the Cuban country side, in particular the tobacco growing regions. Cuba was always a settler colony, even at the height of the slave trade, during the first half of the xix century, when the country's economy tilted towards the sugar plantation and hundreds of thousands of slaves were brought in, the combined black and mulato population was about 58%, never 80%. Nor is it true that "all whites left Cuba" under Castro. Most white Cubans in the US still have relatives in Cuba to whom they send money. Remittances from Cuban Americans are estimated at one billion a year. Relatively few blacks have money sending relatives in the USA. Again, today's Cuban population's make up resembles that of that period during the xix century when slavery was at its peak. It has certainly increased a lot in the last decades, no doubt about it.

Before I went to Puerto Rico, I also thought I would see a higher percentage of mulatoes and blacks. Instead, I saw many Puerto Ricans who did not fit this stereotype, I saw many whites, and in a lot of Puerto Ricans it was the indigenous admixture, if any, that was noticeable. While black admixture is present in many Puerto Ricans, it is more obvious among the US Puerto Ricans, and yes, the higher you go in the social scale, the whiter they tend to be. Also, the region has a lot to do with it. Coastal regions have more black ancestry than the mountains, for example, and some cities more than others. I am more familiar with Ponce and there I did not see many mulatoes or blacks. Honestly.

[Ponto Hardbottle]

So you are saying that you can't racially categorize a person as being Puerto Rican as they can be caucasoid, negroid, mestizo, and other mixtures. Well, why did k5215 think that a caucasoid Dinarid Italo American looked like a Puerto Rican?
I would really appreciate it if you all stopped mentioning that effing Turturro guy because he doesn't look like your stereotype of some Italo American. How do you know he is Italian descended anyway? He could be the descendent of some gypsy or South Asian who passed as Italian after he entered the States. You never know with Americans what is in their family tree.

[Drooperdoo]

Ponto,
Nick Turturro [brother of renowned American actor John Turturro] is half-Italian, half-Sicilian . . . both parents arriving in America from Europe.
So . . . sorry: He's not a gypsy or a Jew or a secret Arab. He's pure Euro-Mediterranean.
Just as I am.
While I'm not as dark as Turturro, I'm on the darker end--olive skin, black hair, etc. My father was born in Portugal and my mother in Spain. I have family--cousins and such--that emigrated to the New World: Some live in Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc.
The reason I had to mention that not all Puerto Ricans are tri-racial is the fact that, while I'm dark, my Puerto Rican cousin has blue eyes and fair hair. He's the Puerto Rican and I'm the European--and he's far lighter than I am.
So, no, he's not a secret mulatto or mestizo. Nor is Jose Ferrer, Ricky Martin, Raul Julia, Benicio Del Toro, etc. And mainland Puerto Rico looks far more like them than like mulatta Rosie Perez.
But it's the mulattos--who happen to be the poorest--who tend to flood the United States. [That's always the case, though. --It's the poorest of every country that leaves to search for a better life.]
As to Sergio's comment about Cuba--and separating categories "black" and "mulatto"--- How disingenuous can you be?
Why try to separate them? --What? --To artificially make the "black" percentage look smaller?
All blacks in the United States have white blood. In fact, on average they have far more Caucasoid admixture than Cuban blacks! --Yet we still call them "black".
Furthermore, the average US black has more white in him than the Cuban calling himself a "mulatto". Look at Colin Powell, for God's sake!
According to the CIA's world factbook--updated last month: Cuba's population is--mulatto 51%, white 37%, black 11%, Chinese 1% .
So when you add "mulatto" and "black" together, you get a country where blacks are 62% -- and whites a mere 37%
Puerto Rico's is, by contrast--white 80.5%, black 8%, Amerindian 0.4%, Asian 0.2%, mixed and other 10.9%
So Puerto Rico has a smaller black population than the United States [which is 12.9%]. And Cuba--like a photo-negative--has a vastly larger black population than it's white population: Which stands to reason--since it was a plantation colony with African slaves and a few white plantation owners. [Think: Ricardo Montalban in his white suit from Fantasy Island].
And yes, yes, yes--before you jump at the bait: Yes, there are "mixed" Puerto Ricans--just as there are mixed white Americans. One study suggested that up to 1/3 of white Americans have some black admixture. [See: Mark Shriver's study.] In similar genetic tests, they found that where white Puerto Ricans are mixed it's usually with Indians--not blacks. . . . Whereas in Cuba, the opposite is true.