Why Do People Identify as Mestizo, Indigenous, Black, and White in Mexico?

• In Event: 30420 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Racial Identity, Complexities, Hierarchies

Abstract

Nation-states, as well as survey researchers, have increasingly added ethnoracial questions to their censuses and other data collection efforts in an attempt to recognize minority identities, address discrimination, and combat inequality (Loveman 2014; Loveman 2021; Morning 2008). Self-identification has become the global standard for the collection of such data, which provide the basis for ethnoracial statistics and public policies. However, in many contexts where ethnoracial questions are relatively new, such as Latin America, it is unclear which sub-categories of people are identifying in particular ethnoracial categories and why they are identifying as such. Moreover, there is no universal method for how to ask about ethnoracial identification, and therefore little is known about the effects of various question phrasings on self-identification in multiple ethnoracial categories. To address this gap, we rely on a novel nationally-representative survey fielded in Mexico in the summer of 2021 of 1,499 Mexican adults. Respondents were asked if they identify as indigenous, black, white and/or mestizo in various formats. They were then asked, in an open-ended format, why they identified with a particular category or categories. In another part of the survey, respondents engaged in three separate experiments which tested the effects of various prompts and question wordings on ethnoracial identification. We leverage these mixed-methods data to conduct three sub-studies, which revolve around the following questions: 1) Why do respondents identify as indigenous, black, white, or mestizo in Mexico? (qualitative); 2) What predicts identification as indigenous, black, white, or mestizo in Mexico? (quantitative); 3) How does question wording affect identification as indigenous, black, white, or mestizo in Mexico? (experimental). In addition to their empirical contributions, our findings will shed light on empirical and theoretical puzzles that have recently surfaced in the literature on race and ethnicity in Mexico and will further understanding of ethnoracial identification in a key international context.

Authors

• Christina Alicia Sue, University of Texas-San Antonio

• Salvador Rivas, University of Luxembourg

• René D. Flores, University of Chicago