A tale of two cultures

Abstract

I was born in 1944 in St. Albans, New York, and schooled in the boldly democratic belief in civil rights and racial equality. At times, however, it was hard to shrug off the shadow of inferiority that showed up where and when it was least expected. Eventually, my family left St. Albans for San Juan, Puerto Rico, a small island in the Caribbean. Despite the journalism prizes I had earned as a journalist for the San Juan Star and the acceptance achieved among prominent leaders of Puerto Rican society, in the late 1980s I was still vulnerable to prejudice by virtue of my skin color and being female. To this day, not many visibly black individuals, male or female, hold public positions of power. Many black people in Puerto Rico remain in the background or are invisible.