This summer, Jennifer Lopez turns Jennifer Lopez is many things: Singer , actress , producer, mom , health and fitness enthusiast, the list goes on and on. Starting as a Fly Girl dancer on Fox's In Living Color sketch show, she officially rose to stardom with her breakthrough starring role in the Selena biopic and While Lopez's work speaks for itself, her origin story has always been a significant part of her personal brand, cemented by the lyrics from her hit " Jenny From the Block ": She used to have a little, now she has a lot; no matter where she goes, she knows where she came from the Bronx!
As recognizable as J. Lo's become, the mixed reactions to her Motown tribute at the Grammys underscored the fact that not everyone's in complete agreement about her racial identityβand the fact that it's technically none of their business did nothing to stem the tide of Tweets and Reddit threads debating the issue. That Jennifer Lopez is not a Black woman is a fact nothing save for a surprising 23andMe result could call into question.
But whether she's white is another matter entirely. So, what is Jennifer Lopez's race? Any attempt to answer that question has to start with the difference between "race" and "ethnicity.
Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U. So, in short: Lopez is Puerto Rican. But "Puerto Rican" is an ethnicity, not a race. Because it's a Caribbean island that historically served as a major port for other countries in Europe, especially , one can be Puerto Rican and of one or several different mixed races. The rest self-declare as "mixed race," and again, any further parsing would require a DNA test. With the Latino community, I am theirs. While Lopez deems herself Latina because of her Puerto Rican heritage, the term "Latina" βlike its masculine-form counterpart "Latino," and the gender-inclusive " Latinx "βis not a racial category.
It's actually a diverse ethnic and cultural umbrella term used to describe a person who hails from a Latin American country or territoryβsuch as Puerto Rico, Mexico, or Cubaβor has ancestors who did. She's recorded in both English and Spanish since her debut album, On the 6 , and her first Spanish language album, 's Como Ama una Mujer , was co-written and co-produced by Latin music superstar Marc Anthony , her husband at the time.
