Puerto Rican citizenship
On March 2, 1917, the Jones–Shafroth Act was signed, collectively making Puerto Ricans United States citizens without rescinding their Puerto Rican citizenship. In 1922, the U.S. Supreme court in the case of "Balzac v. Porto Rico" ruled that the full protection and rights of the U.S constitution do not apply to residents of Puerto Rico until they come to reside in the United States proper. Luis Muñoz Rivera, who participated in the creation of the Jones-Shafroth Act, gave a speech in the U.S. House floor that argued in favor of Puerto Rican citizenship. He declared that "if the earth were to swallow the island, Puerto Ricans would prefer American citizenship to any citizenship in the world. But as long as the island existed, the residents preferred Puerto Rican citizenship." The Jones Act allowed locals to renounce the United States citizenship and remain exclusively Puerto Rican citizens, at the cost of being stripped of the right to vote. Despite these arbitrary limitations, 287 residents completed the process to forfeit the statutory recognition.
Puerto Ricans in the United States
According to the 2010 US census, of the stateside Puerto Rican population, about 53.1% self-identified as white, about 8.7% self-identified as black, about 0.9% as American Indian, about 0.5% as Asian, and 36.7% as mixed or other. Though over half self-identified as white, the Puerto Rican population is largely made up of multi-racials, most Puerto Ricans are mixed to varying degrees, usually of white European/North African, black West African, and indigenous Taino ancestry. The average genomewide individual ancestry proportions have been estimated as 56% European, 28% West African, and 16% Native American. However, there are significant numbers of (pure or nearly pure) blacks and whites within the Puerto Rican population as well. Historically, under Spanish and American rule, Puerto Rico underwent a whitening process, in particular, the island had laws like the "Regla del Sacar", in which people of mixed-race origin were identified as "white", the opposite of the one-drop rule in the United States.