If We Really Cared About Puerto Rico, We'd Give Them Representation

The occupant of the White House has made it abundantly clear that black lives and brown lives dont matter. Charlottesville, Trumps hate speech in Alabama, and now his neglect of and overt hostility to Puerto Rico tell us which lives matter and which dont. But Trump is merely doubling down on the historical facts of official racial discrimination is embedded in our government and our semi-democracy.

To Trump, Puerto Rico is an island from which he extracted almost $1 million in management fees for a golf course that went bankrupt. Most likely, he was unaware it was part of the United States. As he put it, Puerto Rico is an island sitting in the middle of an ocean. And its a big ocean; its a very big ocean. So he doesnt know about geography, and he certainly doesnt know about history. Puerto Rico is not in the middle of an ocean; it is smack dab in the Caribbean, between the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic. The distance from Miami to Puerto Rico is less than the trip from Miami to Washington DC.

And guess what? Spanish is the primary language in Puerto Rico. From 1493 until the end of the 19th century, Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony. Then the Spain declared war on the U.S. and in 1898, through this Spanish-American War, the U.S. invaded and took over Puerto Rico. So Puerto Ricans are American citizens. But they dont have the democratic rights enjoyed by the vast majority of other American citizens. They cant vote for President. They cant elect Senators and Representatives to Congress. As a territory, the federal government can override any law in Puerto Rico.

The 3.5 million American citizens living there are certainly not participants in nor beneficiaries of representative democracy. If they were full citizens of our country, the U.S. Senate would include two more Senators and Puerto Rico would have five Representatives. But then we would have to pay attention to them, and Donald Trump would have to reckon with Puerto Ricans electoral power and their elected delegation whenever he thought he needed to send off insults instead of aid.

This denial of democracy isnt new to our country. Since the establishment of our national capitol, Washington, D.C., residents of that city have been banned from elected representation in Congress. Those 700,000 Americans dont count. Is it a surprise that a majority of them are black? If the people in Washington, D.C. did get representation in Congress, they would expand our Senate with two more Senators and get a Representative in the House.

Put Puerto Rico and Washington DC together, and over 4 million people are denied the right to representative democracy in our country. That would be equal to denying the people of North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming, Montana, and Alaska, combined, the right to representatives in our federal government.

Can this be fixed? Certainly. It would only take a vote of Congress and the signature of the president. Why hasnt this happened? Well, ask yourself: whose lives matter? Who should partake of representative democracy? We may all say that black lives matter and brown lives matter, but our current Congress acts to keep the gates closed to democracy for the citizens of Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico.

The calculus is just too frightening. Black and brown lives just dont matter that much, not to Donald Trump, not to Paul Ryan, not to Mitch McConnell, and not to Congress. Do we want black and brown lives to matter? Then at least give them the vote.

Comments are the views of John Burbank, and do not necessarily represent the Economic Opportunity Institute.