A Novel Approach and New Measure of Latino Ethno-racial Resentment

• In Event: Prejudice and Intolerance: New Models and Measures

Abstract

Extensive scholarship has established that racial resentment is a strong driver of anti-black attitudes (Kinder and Sears, 1981; Sears and Henry, 2003) and attitudes toward policies associated with African Americans (Gilens 1999; Tesler and Sears 2010; Tesler 2012). The scale has been adopted by hundreds of researchers and has become a staple measure in prominent national surveys such as the ANES and the CCES. Given its predicting power, the scale has also been used to account for prejudice and attitudes towards other ethnic minorities yielding mixed results (Segura and Valenzuela, 2010; Rock, 2016; Newman, Shah, and Collingwood 2018).

In this project, we develop a theory of Latino ethnoracial (ERR) resentment where we aim to identify and measure a belief system that individuals might have towards Latinos. Our theory identifies several themes that reflect a consistent internal logic about the status of Latinos in the U.S. These themes, we argue, are at the core of an anti-Latino belief system that drives racial prejudice toward Latinos and policies associated with or targeted toward Latinos. We develop a novel measure of Latino ERR comprised of 8 unique items that tap into this anti-Latino prejudice. We test these unique items among two nationally representative samples of white and black respondents in 2016 and 2019. This novel approach and new measure provides a needed contribution to broaden our understanding of racial attitudes and expands our existent theories to better understand how racial attitudes and opinions move beyond a white and black dichotomy.

Author

• Sergio I Garcia-Rios, Cornell University