Isar Godreau
b. 1970
Anthropologist and leading scholar on race, colorism, and anti-Black racism in Puerto Rico
Isar Godreau (born c. 1970) is a Puerto Rican anthropologist and one of the leading scholars on race, colorism, and anti-Black racism in Puerto Rico. Her research has systematically documented how the ideology of 'mestizaje' (racial mixture) functions to erase Black identity and deny racial discrimination on the island.
As a professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, Godreau has produced groundbreaking work:
- 'Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico' (2015): Her major book examining how Puerto Rican national identity narratives use Blackness as a 'past' identity while denying its present reality
- Research on how schoolchildren learn racial hierarchies through education, media, and family
- Documentation of colorism in employment, housing, and social interactions
- Analysis of how the Puerto Rican census and racial self-identification reflect and reinforce racial ideology
Godreau's work is politically significant because it challenges the comfortable narrative that Puerto Rico is a 'racial democracy' — demonstrating with empirical evidence that anti-Black racism is systematic, not anecdotal. Her scholarship provides the intellectual foundation for the contemporary Afro-Puerto Rican identity movement.