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Effects of Skin Color Bias in SES on Political Attitudes and Activities
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ABSTRACT: Skin color and appearance obviously matter in distinguishing among what Americans categorize as separate races and ethnicities. Skin color and appearance also matter within groups normally thought of as separate races and ethnicities; skin tone is deeply implicated in determining individuals’ life chances, identities, and political engagement. Our purpose in this paper, and in the larger project of which it is a part, is to bring the relatively unknown role of skin color in politics into public discussion so that one can determine how, how much, and why it matters.
Using four national surveys, we first show the relationship between skin tone and a
person’s education and family income among blacks and Latinos (there are no comparable data for Anglos and Asians). We then use the surveys to show a relationship between skin tone and perceptions of discrimination, belief in linked fate, political activity, and policy preferences. These bivariate relationships show a different pattern for African Americans than for Hispanics – and in both cases they largely, although not entirely, disappear in multivariate regressions. That is, the political impact of skin tone is mostly indirect, operating through the well-known relationship between SES and political attitudes and behaviors.
Finally, we analyze why skin tone has so little direct political impact given its importance
in individual’s emotional lives and in their socioeconomic status. Our answer is itself political: as a consequence of both internal ideological commitments and external policy choices, blacks and Latinos have moved increasingly toward ingroup identification over the past century. We close by speculating on the effects of skin tone as the demography of the United States changes in the twenty-first century.
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| | Authors: Hochschild, Jennifer., Weaver, Vesla. and Burch, Traci. |
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ABSTRACT: Skin color and appearance obviously matter in distinguishing among what
Americans categorize as separate races and ethnicities. Skin color and appearance also matter
within groups normally thought of as separate races and ethnicities; skin tone is deeply
implicated in determining individuals’ life chances, identities, and political engagement. Our
purpose in this paper, and in the larger project of which it is a part, is to bring the relatively
unknown role of skin color in politics into public discussion so that one can determine how, how
much, and why it matters.
Using four national surveys, we first show the relationship between skin tone and a
person’s education and family income among blacks and Latinos (there are no comparable data
for Anglos and Asians). We then use the surveys to show a relationship between skin tone and
perceptions of discrimination, belief in linked fate, political activity, and policy preferences.
These bivariate relationships show a different pattern for African Americans than for Hispanics –
and in both cases they largely, although not entirely, disappear in multivariate regressions. That
is, the political impact of skin tone is mostly indirect, operating through the well-known
relationship between SES and political attitudes and behaviors.
Finally, we analyze why skin tone has so little direct political impact given its importance
in individual’s emotional lives and in their socioeconomic status. Our answer is itself political:
as a consequence of both internal ideological commitments and external policy choices, blacks
and Latinos have moved increasingly toward ingroup identification over the past century. We
close by speculating on the effects of skin tone as the demography of the United States changes
in the twenty-first century.
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