White Puerto Ricans

White Puerto Ricans are Puerto Ricans who self-identify as white due to a rubric of laws like the Regla del Sacar or Gracias al Sacar dating back to the 1700's where a person of mixed ancestry could be considered legally white so long as they could prove that at least one person per generation in the last four generations had also been legally white. Therefore, people of mixed ancestry with known white lineage were classified as white, the opposite of the "one-drop rule" in the United States.^[3] In the 2020 United States census, the number of people who identified as "White alone" was 536,044 or 16.5% of all Hispanics with an additional 24,548, for a total population of 560,592.^[4]

Aside from Spanish—largely Canarian—settlers, additional Europeans of many families from France, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia, among others, immigrated to Puerto Rico when the island was an Overseas Province of Spain, particularly during the 1800s due to the Royal Decree of Graces of 1815, where Spain encouraged immigration from other European countries to Puerto Rico.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}