Racism and Political Attitudes in Latin America

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

In the last several decades since the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, we have witnessed a burgeoning political discourse around racism and discrimination in Latin America. Countries have adopted legislation to outlaw discrimination, amended their constitutions to expand Indigenous and Black citizenship rights, and adopted affirmative action quotas to address systemic racial barriers to social mobility. These institutional challenges to anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity have met popular and elite resistance and at times have culminated in the violent disruption of the democratic process. As Latin American countries reckon with historical and contemporary manifestations of racism and discrimination, it is critical to understand how Latin American citizens, at home and in the diaspora, think about discrimination, racism, and antiracism.

The papers on this panel pay much needed attention to the dynamics driving public opinion around discrimination, racism and antiracism. Our conversation will build on the growing attitudinal literature on racial attitudes in Brazil (i.e. Mitchell-Walthour 2018, de Micheli 2020) and Cuba (i.e. Clealand 2017) to consider racial public opinion in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Miami’s Cuban diaspora. Rather than taking for granted that the weak boundary-making institutions in Latin America have inhibited the emergence of racialized public opinion, the papers ask under what conditions these attitudes emerge. These papers uncover the complex, enduring, and at times counterintuitive ways that race has shaped public opinion in the region, with particular attention to the consequences for contemporary democracy and representation.

Specifically, the four papers on this panel take up key issues on who perceives racial discrimination and how antiracist and racist attitudes get activated. Vallejo Vera’s paper uses machine learning to examine the conditions under which Twitter users in Ecuador engage with and propagate racist content targeting the Indigenous community. Gómez-Vidal and Johnson use an original survey experiment in Colombia to examine how racial identities, gender and latent attitudes intersect to shape individuals’ perceptions of unfair treatment as discriminatory. Thomas takes a multi-method approach to examining the link between antiracist attitudes, social movement demands and policy responsiveness in Ecuador and Peru. Finally, Clealand’s paper uses oral histories to examine how migration and transnational identities have shaped discrimination perceptions and vote choice among in Miami’s Afro-Cuban community. Taken together, the papers on this panel uncover the complex ways that people across different countries in Latin America and the diaspora come to understand and practice discrimination, racism and antiracism. These papers also generate new insights into the formation and contours of ethnoracial politics in heterogeneous societies with weakly institutionalized ethnoracial boundaries.

Sub Unit

• Division 32: Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

Cosponsor

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• Rage Within the Machine: Activation of Racist Content in Social Media - Sebastian Vallejo Vera, Tecnologico de Monterrey

• Intersectional Perceptions of Racism and Discrimination: A Vignette Experiment (Pre-Recorded) - Analía Gómez Vidal, Inter-American Development Bank; Marcus Johnson

• Transnational Race and Political Attitudes Among Black Cuban Migrants - Danielle P. Clealand, University of Texas at Austin

• The Politics of Black Inclusion in Peru and Ecuador - John Thomas, University of Chicago

Chair

• Marcus Johnson UMD College Park

Discussant

• Andrew Janusz University of Florida