Who Are They? Skin Color, Race, and Discrimination’s Impact on Latino and Latina Identity

• In Event: 1255 - Section on Latina/o Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 4. Identity Formation and Experiences

Abstract

Current public rhetoric surrounding who does and does not belong in the United States has revealed a paucity of research on Latino and Latina national identity in the United States. Critical race theorists have long theorized that the American identity is inextricably tied to whiteness and that Latinos may perhaps one day be recognized as “honorary whites,” yet little empirical research has been done on the factors which contribute to Latino and Latina identity in the United States. This paper fills a gap in the literature by examining the relationship between racial identities, self-reported skin color, and discrimination as it pertains to Latinos sense of belong in the United States. Using the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS), a nationally representative sample of Latinos in the United States, this paper uses multinomial logistic regression to pose the following question: How does self-reported skin color, race, and discrimination affect the likelihood of identifying as American? The findings confirm previous research showing a relationship between whiteness and an American identity, yet fail to show a relationship between self-reported skin color and any identity. A unique, yet consistent, finding suggests that respondents who report being discriminated against are actually more likely to identify as American than either Hispanic/Latino or an ancestral country. This finding encourages further research on the relationship between American ethnic identities and understandings of race in micro-level interactions.

Authors

• Erick Axxe, Ohio State University

• Ashley Wright, The Ohio State University