Liberalism and Identity Politics: Puerto Rican Community Organizations and Collective Action in New York City

This book is a recollection and analysis of ethnic identity in Puerto Rican politics in New York City between 1960 and 1990. The book argues that Puerto Rican politics at the community level was a politics of identity rooted in liberal democratic values. Puerto Ricans provided an example, from the ground up, that transcended the alleged incompatibility between liberalism and identity politics. This relationship was not free of problems but it was workable, contrary to what other scholars have claimed. The book deploys its evidence in the form of a historical collage to suggest that through strategic and demand-protest activities Puerto Ricans articulated and promoted a liberal form of identity politics in which ethnic identity and the idea of group rights provided a platform for the production of both individual and collective goods. The book illustrates how Puerto Ricans in New York City sought participation, recognition, redress of grievances, and inclusion along liberal democratic lines. In other words, their community politics blended liberalism and group rights, in-group identity and out-group commonality, not naturally but empirically, emphasizing the affirmation of difference and a commitment to legitimate institutional norms and values. Thus, the Puerto Rican record of community organization and collective action is a kernel of identity politics cum cultural citizenship within the shell of liberal democratic politics. In this account, the Puerto Rican addition of an identity component to social liberalism stands as a reminder of the ways in which identity politics can be a sustaining force for liberal democratic values.