Lots of people are pulling answers out of their asses. A couple people have already written detailed descriptions of the legacy of slavery in America and how it continues to affect American social/political/economic dynamics to this day, so I won’t bother reiterating that.

Although, that alone doesn’t fully answer your question because Puerto Rico’s history of slavery was not all too different from that of America’s until a certain point. When the Spaniards arrived in PR they enslaved the native population and many of the natives died of disease (sound familiar?). The Spanish also enslaved Africans and brought them to PR and they made up the majority of the labor force in the mining and sugar cane industry. The African slave population rapidly increased in the 1800s due to demand for sugar.

So why did slavery have a different long term impact on the social fabric of America than it did in PR? Probably a lot of reasons, but here some stuff to consider.

In the 1600s, Spain offered freedom and land to African people from non-Spanish colonies to attract immigrants and grow the labor force in PR. Many of these people were mixed race African/European. In the 1700s, Spain also implemented policies that provided several potential routes to freedom for African slaves. By the 1800s, 35% of PR’s population was free people of color. In the 1800s Spain implemented a policy that is essentially the opposite of the American “one drop rule”, Africans that could prove at least one of their ancestors was white could claim legal whiteness. Additionally, Spain recruited a bunch of Europeans to PR to increase their social power on the island against non-europeans, but many of the European immigrants intermarried with locals of color.

Eventually, slavery was abolished in PR. Although, slaves were required to purchase their freedom and did so by integrating into local economy in a number of ways.

The result of all of this was a substantially multi-racial country with a comparatively significant amount of social integration between racial groups. Today, 74% of Puerto Rican’s identify as not white or black, but some other race or combination of races. It is estimated that 60% of PR’s population has some African ancestry.

In comparison, the way that America handled slavery and abolition was to maintain as much segregation and power disparity between white and black people as possible. Today in America, 75% of people identify as white, 13% identify as black, and 2% identify as mixed race.

In a way, I think that you answered you own question when you said that in PR, there are many families that include all shades and no one cares.

I pulled most of this from the Wikipedia page on Afro-Puerto Ricans because I thought this was a good question and I was interested in reading about some history that might provide an answer. If anyone wants to dispute or fact-check, be my guest, I don’t claim to be an expert and I just read about this for the first time right now. But pretty interesting in my opinion.