Intersectional Perceptions of Racism and Discrimination: A Vignette Experiment (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Racism and Political Attitudes in Latin America

Abstract

We explore how people think about racial discrimination from an intersectional perspective, using an online survey experiment conducted in Colombia in 2020. Respondents were randomly assigned to a vignette describing a scenario of denial of opportunities in the workplace, motivated by race, ethnicity, or physical appearance. Respondents had to indicate whether this situation was fair or discriminatory, and what motivated it. Results of this survey show that a majority of respondents across racial and gender categories identify scenarios of unfair treatment of Black and Indigenous women as discrimination. However, preliminary analysis suggests that these assessments are shaped by modern racism attitudes (McConahay 1986). Individuals that express stronger levels of modern racism are less likely to classify the denial of opportunities in the workplace as discrimination in all cases, although the magnitude of this relationship differs by the race of the targeted individual in the vignette.

Authors

• Analía Gómez Vidal, Inter-American Development Bank

• Marcus Johnson