Nature and Impact of Intersectional Race/gender Stereotypes of Latinx Americans

• In Event: Social Identity and Beliefs on Welfare and Immigration

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the nature of white Americans’ intersectional stereotypes—that is, stereotypes that are based on the confluence of race/ethnicity and gender— and their impact on policy opinion. Specifically, we examine the content, structure, and emotional associations of stereotypes about Hispanic-American men and Hispanic-American women; compare those with non-intersectional stereotypes of Hispanic-Americans; assess their impact on whites’ opinions about immigration policy; and demonstrate that issue frames can connect different intersectional stereotypes with policy opinion.

Drawing on scholarship about the media construction of Latinx immigrants and on existing survey measures of stereotypes, we develop new measures of intersectional stereotypes of Hispanic women and Hispanic men that focus on sexuality, family orientation, violence, English competence, honesty, dependence, and laziness.

In several empirical studies using mTurk respondents, we first demonstrate that our measures are reliable and valid, and that non-Hispanic white Americans hold somewhat distinct beliefs about Latina women and Latino men. Hispanic men are particularly linked with violence and gang membership, and Hispanic women are seen as sexualized and/or hyper-fertile. The stereotypes about these two intersectional groups diverge in notable ways from stereotypes of the more general group, “Hispanic-Americans.” While all three are distinct, stereotypes about Hispanic-Americans overlap more with those about Hispanic men than about Hispanic women. We also find that the intersectional stereotypes are connected with—yet distinct from—broader measures of ethnocentrism, racism, and sexism.

Next, in a series of survey experiments we show that frames evoking either (1) anger at immigrants taking jobs, or (2) fear of immigrant crime have the greatest impact when a Latinx man – rather than a Latinx woman, or white man or woman – is the object of that anger or fear. Meanwhile, a frame cueing disgust at immigrant fertility has its largest effects when a Latinx woman – rather than a Latinx man, or white man or woman – is the object of disgust.

Thus, we demonstrate that stereotypes that cue race and gender simultaneously influence policy opinion in ways that go beyond the impact of those that operate along each axis of marginalization independently. Moreover, these stereotypes operate through distinct emotional pathways.

This project contributes to several literatures: first, we add to the very limited body of political science work on intersectional stereotypes, which has focused largely on stereotypes about black women’s sexuality and the “welfare queen” in the context of welfare policy debates. Second, we speak the social psychology literature on the relationship among stereotypes about more- and less-specific groups, which has focused largely on beliefs about subgroups of men (e.g., jocks, business men) and of women (e.g., working women, housewives), but generally not on stereotypes about subgroups within racial and ethnic categories. Finally, we speak to the connections among stereotypes, frames, and emotional reactions, both generally and in the context of immigration specifically. Different emotional reactions—cued by different immigrant race/gender categories—motivate notably different opinion and behavioral reactions. We conclude with discussions of the implications of our findings for the study of intersectionality, which has focused largely on interactions among systems of oppression and on intersectional in-group identities; for the political psychology of prejudice and discrimination; and for the place of intersectional stereotypes in current policy debates about immigration.

Authors

• Nicholas Winter, University of Virginia

• Rachel Smilan-Goldstein