(Page 9 of 32) - Identity, Perceptions of Discrimination and Political Engagement: The Causes and Consequences of Reactive Identity Among Latinos authored by Schildkraut, Deborah.

Overall, the results show that for the most part, non-controversial acculturation measures

such as how long one’s family has been in the United States and how well one speaks English,
increase the likelihood of self-identifying primarily as American. People who are older and have
more education are also more likely to identify as American than as Latino or as a member of
one’s national origin group, reflecting the likelihood that older and more educated respondents
are more integrated into mainstream American institutions and society.

The main results of interest, however, are in the first two rows. As expected, the

perception that one has personally been mistreated due to one’s race or ethnicity does not affect
how one self-identifies, whereas the perception that Latinos as a group are mistreated is a strong
predictor of opting for a Latino identity over an American identity. People who feel that Latinos
as a group are discriminated against are not, however, more likely to identify with their country
of origin. Identifying with one’s country of origin is related more to acculturation than it is to
perceived treatment by the host society. At a minimum, these results indicate that in our efforts
to understand the relationship between perceptions of discrimination, identity, and political
outcomes, we should be careful to distinguish between group-level and individual-level
perceptions on the one hand and between pan-ethnic and national origin identifications on the
other. Conflating the different levels at which people perceive discrimination and the groups with
which they identify can hinder our attempts to decipher the dynamics of political behavior in our
continuously diversified society.

The impact of perceptions of discrimination and self-identification on political engagement

The remainder of the analysis takes us beyond the identification question and turns our

attention to the impact of reactive ethnicity on political engagement. Here, I distinguish two
forms of political engagement: behavioral and attitudinal. Behavioral aspects of political
engagement concern acts of political participation such as voting, whereas attitudinal aspects of
political engagement concern the extent to which people feel connected to (or alienated from)
government and elected officials. It is generally agreed that citizens in a healthy democratic
society display high levels of both kinds of engagement, yet there are reasons to expect that
reactive ethnicity affects the behavioral and attitudinal aspects of political engagement
differently. As I explain in more detail below, it is possible that reactive ethnicity promotes
behavioral engagement on the one hand and diminishes attitudinal engagement on the other.

Reactive ethnicity and behavioral engagement

Turning first to the behavioral side of political engagement, existing scholarship suggests

that self-identification on its own (i.e., absent perceptions of discrimination) should not be
especially consequential. Recall the optimistic findings from Citrin and from de la Garza, which
show that how one self-identifies does not necessarily affect levels of pride in the U.S. or
patriotism. Moreover, Miller et al. (1981) argue and confirm that “there is no theoretical reason
to expect a simple direct relationship between group identification and political participation” (p.
495). These earlier studies, however, could not distinguish between pan-ethnic and national
origin self-identifications. It is possible that self-identification, on its own, will indeed have
implications for political behavior. For example, it could be that national origin identifications