Abstract
Aside from what exists in the U.S. there is another layer of complexity in Latin American racial stratification systems. They include three racial strata, which are internally designated by “color.” In addition to skin tone, phenotype, hair texture, eye color, culture, education, and class matter is the phenomenon known as pigmentocracy, or colorism. Pigmentocracy has been central to the maintenance of White power in Latin America because it has fostered: (a) divisions among all those in secondary racial strata; (b) divisions within racial strata limiting the likelihood of within-strata unity; (c) mobility viewed as individual and conditional upon “whitening;” and (d) white elites being regarded as legitimate representatives of the “nation” even though they do not look like the average member of the “nation.” A related dynamic in Latin American stratification is the social practice of “Blanqueamiento,” or whitening, not a neutral mixture but a hierarchical movement wherein valuable movement is upward. Racial mixing oriented by the goal of whitening shows the effectiveness of the logic of White supremacy. As a Latin America-like society, the United States will become a society with more, rather than less, racial inequality but with a reduced forum for racial contestation. The apparent blessing of “not seeing race” will become a curse for those struggling for racial justice in years to come. We may become “All Americans,” as commercials in recent times suggest, but paraphrasing George Orwell: “some will be more American than others.”
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Notes
- 1.
Few Latin Americans object to the fact that most politicians in their societies are “white” (by Latin American standards). Yet, it is interesting to point out that Latin American elites always object to the few “minority” politicians on racial grounds. Two recent cases are the racist opposition in the Dominican Republic to the election of black candidate José Peña Gómez (Howard 2001) and the opposition to mulatto President Hugo Cesar Chavez in Venezuela by the business elite.
- 2.
When pushed to choose a racial descriptor, many Latin Americans self-describe as White or highlight their white heritage no matter how remote or minimal it might be. For example, according to a recent study in a community in Brazil, a third of the Afro-Brazilians there were registered as Whites and a large proportion of the remainder were registered as pardos (Twine 1998, p. 114). For a similar discussion on Puerto Ricans, see Arlene Torres (1998).
- 3.
To be clear, our contention is not that the black-white dynamic ordained race relations throughout the United States. Instead, our argument is that at the national macro level, race relations have been organized in the United States along a white-nonwhite divide. This large divide, depending on contexts, included various racial groups (Whites, Blacks, and Indians or Whites, Mexicans, Indians, and Blacks or other iterations), but under the white-nonwhite racial order, “whites” were often treated as superior and “nonwhites” as inferiors.
- 4.
We are adapting Antonio Negri’s idea of the “collective worker” to the situation of all those at the bottom of the racial stratification system. See 1984, Marx beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse, edited by Jim Fleming. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
- 5.
Rockquemore and Arend (2002) have predicted, based on data from a mixed-race student sample (one Black and one White parent), that most mixed-race people will be honorary whites, a significant component will belong to the collective black, and a few will move all the way into the White strata.
- 6.
We acknowledge that the United States has never had a monolithic racial order. Historically, areas that had “Latin American-like” racial situations, like South Carolina, Los Angeles, and other parts of the west coast, have more pluralistic racial orders. However, varieties of racial orders and exceptions to the national trend do not mean they replace the larger macro dynamics. We claim that the more plural racial orders in the U.S., which are due to five or six different demographic and political elements, are not becoming part of the national macro level trend.
- 7.
The apparent exceptions in Table 1 (Bolivians and Panamanians) are examples of self-selection among these immigrant groups. For example, four of the largest ten concentrations of Bolivians in the U.S. are in Virginia, a state with just 7.2 percent Latinos (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2005). Whereas the Bolivian Census of 2001 reports that 71 percent of the Bolivians self-identify as Indian, less than 20 percent have more than a high school diploma, and 58.6 percent live below the poverty line, 66 percent of Bolivians in the United States self-identify as white, 64 percent have 12 or more years of education, and have a per capita income comparable to that of whites (Censo Nacional de Población y Vivienda 2002). Thus, this seems like a case of self-selection because Bolivians in the United States do not represent Bolivians in Bolivia.
- 8.
The concentration of Puerto Ricans in the lower occupational categories is slightly below 50 percent. However, when one subdivides the category “Sales and Office,” where 20.46 percent of Puerto-Ricans are located, one finds that Puerto-Ricans are more likely to be represented in the low-paying jobs.
- 9.
For some of the limitations of this index, see Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Gianpaolo Baiocchi (2001), “Anything but Racism: How Sociologists Limit the Significance of Racism,” Race and Society, 4, 117–131.
- 10.
The dissimilarity index expresses the percentage of a minority population that would have to move to result in a perfectly even distribution of the population across census tracts. This index runs from 0 (no segregation) to 100 (total segregation) and it is symmetrical (not affected by population size).
- 11.
The exposure index measures the degree of potential contact between two populations (majority and minority) and expresses the probability of a member of a minority group meeting a member of the majority group. Like the dissimilarity index, it runs from 0 to 100, but, unlike it, it is asymmetrical (it is affected by population size).
- 12.
Researchers on residential segregation have documented that when neighborhoods reach about 7 percent blacks, a process of “white flight” begins. However, the real big “white flight” accelerates when the proportion black reaches 20 percent (Gladwell 2000).
- 13.
Data on Latinos and blacks from website of Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research, http://www.albany.edu/mumford/census/index.html.
- 14.
- 15.
A powerful alternative explanation to many of our preliminary findings is that the groups we label “honorary whites” come with high levels of human capital before they achieve honorary white status in the United States, that is, they fit this intermediate position not because of their color or race but rather because of their class background. Although this is a independent effect in this process (Kasinitz et al. 2001). It is also important to point out that, even when some of these groups may do “well” objectively, comparison of their returns to their characteristics shows how little they get for what they bring to the fore (Butcher 1994). And, as Waters and Eschbach (1995: 442) stated in a review of the literature on immigration, “the evidence indicates that direct discrimination is still an important factor for all minority subgroups except very highly educated Asians.”
- 16.
Latin America-like does not mean exactly like Latin America. The 400-year history of the American “racial formation” (Omi and Winant 1994) has stained the racial stratification order forever. Thus, we expect some important differences in this new American racial stratification system compared to that typical of Latin American societies. First, “shade discrimination” (Kinsbrunner 1996) will not work perfectly. Hence, for example, although Asian Indians are dark-skinned, they still will be higher in the stratification system than, for example, Mexican American mestizos. Second, Arabs, Asian Indians, and other non-Christian groups will not be allowed complete upward mobility. Third, because of the 300 years of dramatic racialization and group formation, most members of the non-white groups will maintain “ethnic” (Puerto Ricans) or racial claims (e.g., blacks) and demand group-based rights.
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Bonilla-Silva, E., Dietrich, D.R. (2008). The Latin Americanization of Racial Stratification in the U.S.. In: Hall, R.E. (eds) Racism in the 21st Century. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-79098-5_9
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