Adding to this, this is precisely why conversations about race in the region have to emphasize the violence of colorism and featurism, both phenomenons that help explain why the entire Hispanophone Caribbean has racially inaccurate census that underestimate the Black populations. https://twitter.com/MuseWendi/status/1302181914283999232

You can be light-skinned, even outright white-skinned to the point of being the same color as a white person (down to being ginger or blonde,) but still be considered evidently and obviously Black — The Hispanophone Caribbean has a term precisely for that: "jabao / jabá."

"Jabao" isn't a term that will appear on any census. It is, like many other categories in the region, exclusively colloquial. They benefit from colorism as all light-skinned people do but oftentimes suffer antiBlack violence because of the obvious Blackness of their features.

Historically, they were classified as white, Black or mixed depending entirely on who was filling the form.

From what I've seen in Puerto Rico and learned from conversations with people from other places like Cuba and Venezuela, it's quite common for someone jabao to identify as white even when growing up in a Black family because of the social mobility to be gained from it.

Worth noting: jabaísmo =/= what in the US is oftentimes referred to as being light-skinned. Growing up in Puerto Rico, "jabao" has always meant a phenotype best described as "negro despintao." The Blackness HAS to be obvious even if the color is little. https://twitter.com/bad_dominicana/status/1251581021977542657?s=19