Telles & Bailey (2013)

Understanding Latin American Beliefs about Racial Inequality
Author(s): Edward Telles and Stanley Bailey

Source: American Journal of Sociology , May 2013, Vol. 118, No. 6 (May 2013), pp. 1559-
1595
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Understanding Latin American Beliefs about
Racial Inequality1
Edward Telles
Princeton University
Stanley Bailey
University of California, Irvine
Scholars argue that Latin American ideologies of mestizaje, or racial

mixing, mask ethnoracial discrimination. We examine popular expla-
nations for indigenous or Afrodescendant disadvantage in Bolivia,
Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico,
and Peru using the 2010 AmericasBarometer survey. Findings show
that numerical majorities across all countries endorse structural-
disadvantage explanations and reject victim-blaming stances; in seven
of eight countries, they specifically recognize discrimination against
ethnoracial minorities. Brazilians most point to structural causes, while
Bolivians are least likely to recognize discrimination. While educa-
tional status differences tend to be sizable, dominant and minority
explanations are similar. Both are comparable to African-American
views and contrast with those of U.S. whites.
As a region, Latin America has a diverse racial and ethnic composition

and, like the United States, a history of European colonization of indige-
nous peoples and the subsequent importation of millions of Africans as
slaves. Of Latin America’s roughly 500 million people today, indigenous
peoples account for 40 million or more, and Afrodescendants are at least
1
Direct correspondence to Edward Telles, Department of Sociology, Princeton Uni-
versity, 151 Wallace Hall, Princeton, New Jersey 08544. E-mail: [email protected]
© 2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0002-9602/2013/11806-0003$10.00
AJS Volume 118 Number 6 (May 2013): 1559–95 1559

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American Journal of Sociology
120 million ðDel Popolo and Oyarce 2006; Antón et al. 2009Þ.2 At the same
time, Latin America has the highest level of income inequality among
world regions ðWorld Bank 2004Þ. Even more than in the United States,
indigenous and Afrodescendant peoples are concentrated at the bottom
of the region’s highly uneven class structure ðPsachoropolous and Patrinos
2004; Paschel and Sawyer 2008Þ, and racial and ethnic discrimination con-
tinue to significantly structure the life chances of Latin Americans ðFlórez,
Medina, and Urrea 2001; Ñopo, Saavedra, and Torero 2007; Villarreal
2010Þ.
Although racial hierarchies in Latin America and the United States are
roughly similar, Latin American national projects of mestizaje, or racial and
cultural mixing, stand in stark contrast to the United States’ historic em-
phasis on segregation and white racial “purity” ðDavis 1991; De la Cadena
2005; Wade 2005Þ.3 Historically, these ideas of mestizaje often began as
elite-led projects to unite the frequently divided and scattered black, in-
digenous, white, and mixed-race populations during the nation-making pe-
riods throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries. In many contexts, es-
pecially in Mexico and Brazil, the mixed-race individual was heralded as
the symbol of the nation and the hope of its future ðSkidmore 1974; Knight
1990Þ. These myths replaced earlier emphases on whitening; today they are
often credited with blurring racial distinctions and thus softening relations
among people of different colors. Higher rates of intermarriage and residen-
tial proximity, and the integration of African and indigenous cultural ele-
ments into national folklore and culture, also offer evidence of greater racial
tolerance in Latin America as compared with the United States ðTelles 2004;
Wade 2009Þ. In sum, the racial common sense in Latin America, presumably
guided by ideas of mestizaje, has been very distinct from that in the United
States.
However, although seemingly progressive in contrast to the historic U.S.
ideology, mestizaje has also been roundly criticized. Scholars point to its role
in encouraging mixture to further whitening ðMallon 1992; Wade 2005Þ, in
denying black and indigenous identities and cultures by homogenizing the
nation ðNascimento 1979; Bonfil Batalla ½1987 1996Þ, in weakening racial
and ethnic distinctions necessary for antiracist mobilization ðTelles 2004;
Paschel 2010Þ, in masking persistent racial discrimination and underlying
racial hierarchies ðPaschel and Sawyer 2008; Beck, Misjeski, and Stark
2
These figures are based on the cited sources that we update using new census figures
available since the time of their publication. Where census data are not available, we
include estimates based on the 2010 AmericasBarometer survey.
3
We use here the Spanish Latin American term mestizaje to also represent the Portuguese
Latin American notions of mistura and mestiçagem. While recognizing these notions
differ somewhat due to contextual and historical particularities, their similarities allow a
careful bridging. See French ð2004Þ and Alonso ð2005Þ.
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Latin American Beliefs about Racial Inequality
2011Þ, and, as in the Dominican Republic, in romanticizing mixture with in-

digenous populations to the detriment of African people ðHoward 2001;
Hooker 2005Þ. From this perspective, state- and elite-promoted ideologies
of mestizaje, far from being progressive, may serve to further the advantage
of white and mestizo elites, thus preserving the racial and ethnic status quo
ðHolt 2003Þ.
In the past two decades, many Latin American nations have undergone a
shift in terms of state approaches to racial and ethnic diversity ðAndrews
2004; Telles 2004; Hooker 2005Þ, which may have further altered the racial
common sense. Nearly all Latin American countries have at least basic
democratization, often accompanied by domestic black and indigenous so-
cial movements and an expanding international human rights regime; more
recently, many Latin American countries have declared themselves “multi-
cultural” or “plurinational,” especially with regard to indigenous populations
ðVan Cott 2000; Yashar 2005; Paschel and Sawyer 2008; Schilling-Vacaflor
2011Þ.4 This shift to multiculturalism includes constitutional recognitions of
indigenous and, sometimes, Afrodescendant peoples and indigenous forms
of organization,5 data collection on indigenous people and Afrodescendants
in national censuses,6 and stated intentions of racial reform. However, this
multiculturalism has not yet lead to significant public policies to redress
minority disadvantage, except perhaps in Brazil and Bolivia.
An expanding literature on the relationship between public policy and
ideology suggests that public support for policies to combat inequality may
depend in part on how the public understands the causes of inequality
ðKluegel and Smith 1986; Sears, Sidanius, and Bobo 2000; Hunt and Wil-
son 2011; Bobo et al. 2012Þ. Although the existing literature mostly con-
cerns the U.S. case, it provides clear evidence of an association between
support for anti-inequality strategies and “stratification beliefs” ðKluegel
and Smith 1986Þ. These beliefs generally fall into two broad categories:
structuralist and individualist accounts. The former locates the root of in-
equality in features of the broader social structure, such as discrimination
and poor educational systems; the latter looks to individuals themselves, for
4
Plurinationality, emergent, e.g., in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, attempts to over-
come some perceived deficiencies of previous “neoliberal multiculturalism”; it seeks “ro-
bust redistributive social rights rooted in a strong state alongside equally robust indige-
nous rights” ðGustafson 2009, p. 991; Schilling-Vacaflor 2011Þ.
5
As of 2005, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guate-
mala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela had adopted
ethnoracial collective rights in statutory or constitutional law, especially regarding indige-
nous people ðHooker 2005Þ.
6
In their most recent national censuses, all countries but Cuba and the Dominican Re-
public identify indigenous peoples and most now identify Afrodescendants ðSchkolnik
and del Popolo 2008; Antón et al. 2009Þ.
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instance, to a lack of motivation or cultural deficiencies. Research on the

United States reveals that individuals holding structural accounts are more
likely to express support for anti-inequality public policy than those who at-
tribute minority disadvantage to individual causes ðKluegel 1990; Bobo and
Kluegel 1993Þ.
Moreover, an individual’s racial identification strongly influences his or
her stratification beliefs ðBobo and Hutchings 1996; Tuch and Hughes
2011Þ. Where there is racial inequality, dominant and disadvantaged racial
populations may be expected to differ in explaining that inequality, the
former offering individualist accounts and the latter structuralist accounts
ðBobo and Kluegel 1993; Hunt 2007Þ. These conflicting attitudinal stances
set the stage for minority challenges to the status quo ðBobo and Hutchings
1996Þ. However, where ideological hegemony is firmly established, as may
be the case in Latin America ðHanchard 1994; Sidanius, Peña, and Sawyer
2001; Wade 2005Þ, members of dominant and disadvantaged racial popu-
lations may both support individualist accounts, thereby furthering the
status quo ðSidanius and Pratto 1999Þ. It follows that understanding strat-
ification beliefs in a given society could help gauge that context’s ripeness
for possible challenges to the status quo and provide some insight as to why
public policy initiatives have or have not occurred ðTuch and Hughes 2011Þ.
In Latin America, public opinion survey research on racial ideologies has
been scant, with few exceptions ðe.g., Bailey 2002, 2004, 2009; Beck et al.
2011Þ. Thus, ironically, we do not know if the changes associated with re-
cent democratization in the region, such as declarations of multiculturalism,
really reflect or resonate with public opinion. In particular, we know very
little about how official and elite-led race ideologies filter down to the gen-
eral population. How do Latin Americans, socialized in hegemonic mestizaje
understandings of race and indigeneity, understand racial inequality in their
countries? To address that knowledge gap, we examine the ways Latin Amer-
icans in eight multiracial countries explain racial stratification. Using novel
data from nationally representative surveys conducted in 2010, we explore
the determinants of those explanations, placing special emphasis on differ-
ences between racial/ethnic minority and dominant populations within and
among countries.
MESTIZAJE IN LATIN AMERICA

In the early 20th century, mestizaje ideologies were successfully used to
promote national unification in several Latin American nations. Mestizaje’s
centrality to the Latin American “political imaginary” ðAlonso 2005Þ stands
in contrast to its absence as a trope for early nation building in the United
States ðHolt 2003; Wade 2005Þ, where group-based exploitation and seg-
regation were written into the country’s very Constitution and policies
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ðNobles 2000Þ. The ideological contrast is sometimes attributed to their

respective interpretations of contemporary scientific trends. In the United
States, elites favored a combination of Mendelian genetics and eugenics
that suggested that racial mixing between whites and blacks created a de-
generate stock of hybrids or mulattos, thus providing partial scientific sup-
port for systematic nonwhite exclusion and the policing of interracial mix-
ing ðStepan 1991; Nobles 2000; Zuberi 2003Þ.
While also understanding blacks, indigenous, and mulattos as inferior or
degenerative, Latin American elites mostly embraced the French-led neo-
Lamarckian theories of heredity, which posited that the environment, and
thus human action, could mediate the effect of genetic inheritance ðStepan
1991; Zuberi 2003Þ. Accepting these neo-Lamarckian ideas, rather than
the implication that their mostly nonwhite populations were condemned to
backwardness, also allowed these largely nonwhite countries to promote
whitening through mixture ðSkidmore 1974Þ. By proposing “constructive
miscegenation,” they could effectively reverse antihybrid arguments ðDe la
Cadena 2001, p. 17; see also Stepan 1991; Holt 2003Þ.
By the 1930s, as scientifically endorsed ideas of nonwhite inferiority and
degeneracy were becoming discredited, Latin American elites would turn
mixture into a positive symbol of their nations, making them unique and
morally superior to the United States and similar systems ðSkidmore 1974;
De la Cadena 2001Þ. Mestizaje as central to nation building generally took
the following form: “Latin American states developed a mode of governance
based on a unitary package of citizenship rights and a tendentious premise
that people could enjoy these rights only by conforming to a homogenous
mestizo cultural ideal. This ideal appropriated important aspects of Indian
culture—and of black culture in Brazil and the Caribbean—to give it ‘au-
thenticity’ and roots, but European stock provided the guarantee that it
would be modern and forward-looking” ðHale 2004, pp. 16–17Þ. Hence,
although seemingly progressive in reversing the “thesis of racial degenera-
tion” ðHale 2004, p. 17Þ, mestizaje ideologies in reality constituted a “racial
project” ðOmi and Winant 1994Þ that forced the assimilation of indigenous
populations, and the marginalization of all those who refused, and that
ignored formerly enslaved Afrodescendants.
It is important, however, to recognize differences in the development and
outcome of these projects across Latin America. Elites in countries like
Argentina, for example, largely rejected mestizaje and explicitly pursued
whiteness, longer than others in the region through massive European im-
migration, although recently they have declared themselves multicultural
ðHelg 1990; Hooker 2005Þ. Despite Guatemala’s large mixed-race and
indigenous populations, elites there generally opposed mestizaje and pro-
moted the idea of two nations, one Ladino and another Maya ðindigenousÞ,
although ideas of mestizaje have also emerged in that country recently
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ðGrandin 2000; Hale 2006Þ. Even though they tended to disfavor notions of
white racial superiority, elites in some Andean countries developed ideas of
cultural and biological mestizaje that were clearly mixed with earlier ideas
of whitening ðMallon 1992; Wade 1993; Larson 2004; Beck et al. 2011Þ.
Dominican elites promoted the idea that Dominicans could hail their in-
digenous, and especially Spanish, ancestors proudly, although they tended
to purge Africans—arguably the largest ancestral component—from na-
tional origin narratives due to their negative association with neighboring
Haiti ðCandelario 2007Þ.
Perhaps the strongest mestizaje ideologies emerged in 1920s and 1930s
postrevolutionary Mexico and Vargas-era Brazil, where progressive elites
designed and promoted “the cosmic race” and “racial democracy.” In Mex-
ico’s version, José Vasconcelos ð1925Þ saw spiritual redemption through a
mestizaje that would improve humanity. In Brazil’s adaptation, Gilberto
Freyre ð1933Þ claimed that Brazilians of all colors and races were birthing
a new people, a meta-race of moreno or mixed populations that would con-
stitute the nation’s strength and ensure its future place as a modern nation.
Vasconcelos and Freyre’s homogenizing racial visions were later incorpo-
rated into ideologies of national identity, although they are inconsistent
with persistent racial inequality and discrimination in their countries ðKnight
1990; Telles 2004Þ. In Mexico and Brazil, whitening ideas were generally
muted in official mestizaje narratives and these two states had greater ca-
pacity to dessiminate these narratives through cultural and educational
campaigns ðVasconcelos 1925; Freyre 1933; Knight 1990; Telles 2004Þ.
A Turn to Multiculturalism
Although divergent racial ideologies in the United States and Latin Amer-
ica supported contrasting nation-building projects, both contexts began to
shift dramatically in the second half of the 20th century. At that time, the
United States was still embroiled in de jure discrimination and segrega-
tion. However, the harsh racial climate and the “bright” racial boundaries
ðAlba 2005Þ stimulated ethnoracial mobilization that challenged state op-
pression, perhaps most significantly resulting in the Civil Rights movement
and red power protests ðe.g., Marx 1998Þ. In Latin America meanwhile,
ethnoracial mobilization, as such, was more sporadic even though racial
inequality and black and indigenous marginalization were pervasive.7 Be-
ginning in the 1980s and 1990s, however, significant indigenous mobiliza-
tion occurred throughout the region ðVan Cott 2000; Yashar 2005Þ, while
7
Social movements involving indigenous peoples were often expressed as peasant ðcam-
pesinoÞ movements ðKnight 1990; Yashar 2005Þ.
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Afro Latin American social movements also emerged in countries like Brazil
and Colombia ðAndrews 2004; Telles 2004; Paschel 2010Þ.
Today, the idea of ethnoracial group-based identities and rights are part
of official discourse throughout most of Latin America. As noted, the Latin
American shift from official ideologies of mestizaje to multiculturalism and
ethnoracial group rights likely emerged from a combination of sources
linked to the recent formal democratization throughout the region. Several
scholars have documented how indigenous movements, in the face of neo-
liberal economic and political reforms and aided by an international hu-
man rights regime, have been able to pressure governments to institute multi-
cultural reforms ðVan Cott 2000; Safa 2005; Yashar 2005Þ. In Brazil and
Colombia, small but very effective black organizations working as political
interest groups were essential to the recognition of ethnoracial rights ðTelles
2004; Paschel and Sawyer 2008; Paschel 2010Þ. In all of these national con-
texts, international organizations such as the World Bank and international
funding agencies, as well as a growing international human rights infra-
structure supported by the United Nations,8 were important for promoting
indigenous and black rights and recognition ðBrysk 2000; Van Cott 2000;
Telles 2004Þ. Taking a different view, Hale ð2004Þ and Safa ð2005Þ claim that
multiculturalist reforms were largely aimed at co-opting identity politics. In
any case, the multicultural reforms, for which many civil society organiza-
tions and minority social movements struggled, are arguably more popular
and democratic in contrast to the earlier elite-led mestizaje projects.
Effects of The Myth of Mestizaje

Although the tide may be turning toward multicultural affirmation in much
of Latin America, some scholars have suggested that the hegemony of the
mestizaje myth has been central to retarding ethnoracial mobilization and
challenges to the racial status quo, both in the past and today ðHanchard
1994; Paschel 2010Þ. As illustration, Wade ð2003, p. 275Þ writes: “So long as
mestizaje discourse is prevalent, it will be hard to link racial identity to
citizenship and rights” in Latin America. In a similar vein, Safa ð2005, p. 317Þ
remarks: “Because of the co-optive strategy of mestizaje, which convinced
mulattos they were more like whites than like their black brothers, there is
also a reluctance to create ½in Latin America confrontational racial blocs
such as exist in the U.S.” The fact that many Afrodescendants and indig-
enous peoples were gradually absorbed into amorphous national mestizo
populations, and that blackness and indigeneity were systematically ig-
8
This includes UN international conventions that seek compliance of member states
through international pressure and the participation of a new set of global elites com-
prised of international experts and institutions ðVan Cott 2000; Telles 2004Þ.
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nored, provides a partial explanation for Latin America’s scant record

of multiculturalism ðMarx 1998; Paschel and Sawyer 2008Þ.
The widespread denial of systematic disadvantage suffered by racial and
ethnic minorities is another important mechanism through which, scholars
argue, mestizaje retarded ethnoracial mobilization and antiracism policy.
Latin American mestizaje racial ideologies obfuscated the structural causes
of ethnoracial inequality, leading to “color blindness” ðPaschel 2010, p. 729Þ
or “false consciousness” ðWinant 1999, p. 99Þ that “denies the existence of
any racism” ðSidanius et al. 2001, p. 826Þ, even in the minds of nonwhites
themselves ðTwine 1998, p. 8Þ. Beck et al. ð2011, p. 106Þ write that, in Ec-
uador, “mestizaje, and the wide swath of people who clearly identify as
mestizo, produces a perceptual prism in which it is quite easy to ignore, hide,
downgrade, and ultimately deny processes of prejudice and discrimina-
tion.” Perhaps clearest in connecting myths of mestizaje with a claim that
nonwhite Latin Americans are colorblind, Warren and Sue ð2011, p. 50Þ
write that, across Latin America, “nonwhites” have “scant understanding
of how race, both its contemporary and historical forms, is directly linked
to the particular configurations of the labor market, social welfare, taxation
policies, housing, educational opportunities, and so forth.” Using ethno-
graphic research, these authors conclude: “In short, like U.S. whites, they
½Latin American nonwhites do not link race to economic and social mar-
ginalization” ðp. 50Þ.
While noting the assimilationist core to these mestizaje myths in Latin
America, we contend that their role as hegemonic ideologies blinding Latin
American populations to racial discrimination and disadvantage, that is,
conditioning their stratification beliefs, is an empirical question needing
further examination. While most research to date on mestizaje has been
based on qualitative methods, large-sample survey data may be uniquely
suited to exploring generalized attitudinal orientations; to date, the absence
of those data and analyses using advanced survey methods constitute a gap
in the literature. New survey data may simply confirm earlier ethnography,
extending its explanatory power; survey data could also reveal new pat-
terns that complicate localized perspectives. With the goal of bringing the
lens of survey research to the study of Latin American racial attitudes, we
look first at general framings for understanding the effects of hegemonic
racial ideologies on explanations for racial inequality before laying out a se-
ries of hypotheses about the Latin American context.
THEORETICAL FRAMINGS OF STRATIFICATION BELIEFS

Two competing frames characterize much of the literature on racial atti-
tudes and explanations for racial inequality or stratification beliefs: socio-
cultural theories and variants on realistic group conflict theory. The U.S.
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case dominates this literature, although applying these theories to Latin

America is plausible based on Anglo and Latin America’s similar histories
of conquest, colonization, and slavery involving European, African, and
indigenous populations. Furthermore, in both contexts, and as a result of
those histories, racial and ethnic distinctions continue to structure inequal-
ity. However, important differences, most centrally concerning Latin Amer-
ica’s myths and practices of mestizaje, may act to structure Latin Ameri-
can beliefs about racial inequality differently.
Sociocultural Theories
Sociocultural approaches hold that racial attitudes develop through a grad-
ual socialization process that can result in negative affect toward out-groups
ðKinder and Sanders 1996; Tuch and Hughes 2011Þ. These perspectives
posit that children develop racial prejudice that is normative in their social
environment, later carrying a solid core of prejudice into adulthood as neg-
ative affect. Symbolic racism ðKinder and Sears 1981Þ, the sociocultural
frame that predominates in the United States, for example, explains whites’
attitudes toward black disadvantage as a blend of racial prejudice with the
view that blacks do not fully embrace “the kind of traditional American
moral values embodied in the Protestant Ethic” ðKinder and Sears 1981,
p. 416Þ. Hence, this framing posits that childhood-nurtured prejudice and
a perception of cultural gaps between dominant and minority populations
lead dominants to individualist explanations for racial inequality, or to
“blaming the victim”; this in turn leads dominants to oppose policies de-
signed to combat inequality. Gilens ð1999Þ, for example, asserts that white
opposition to “welfare” programs is rooted in negative racial stereotypes,
specifically, the perception of blacks as lazy and unmotivated. Because the
targeted minority population generally views this racial prejudice and ste-
reotyping differently, dominant/minority divides on individualist explana-
tions develop ðSears et al. 2000Þ.
Group Conflict Theories

Variants on group conflict theory comprise the second approach to racial
attitudes ðBobo and Hutchings 1996; Sidanius and Pratto 1999Þ. These
framings posit broadly that material interests, not prejudice, structure ra-
cial attitudes. In the United States, this frame suggests that whites perceive
blacks as competitive threats for valued social resources and defend their
privileged position by blaming blacks for racial inequality, thereby justi-
fying their opposition to, for example, affirmative policy intervention ðBobo
and Kluegel 1993Þ. In contrast to dominants, racial minorities generally
hold structuralist explanations of inequality due to their experience of sys-
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tematic discrimination; moreover, this asymmetry between the attitudes

of dominants and minorities forms the basis for conflict-based attitudes,
which may favor challenges to the status quo ðBobo and Hutchinson 1996Þ.
Thus, conflict theories generally posit dominant/minority divergences on ex-
planations, which some scholars term the “ideological asymmetry hypothe-
sis” ðSidanius and Pratto 1999, p. 235; Sidanius et al. 2001Þ. Nonetheless, in
situations of ideological hegemony, subordinates may agree with dominant
interpretations of inequality, victims of a type of “false consciousness” ðSi-
danius and Pratto 1999, 106Þ. This latter variant of group conflict theory
posits “symmetry” between racial ideologies of dominants and minorities,
where both populations adopt individualist explanations for racial inequal-
ity.
In sum, the consensus of scholarship on the United States is that “racial
attitudes are structured across racial groups” ðDawson 2000, p. 350Þ, re-
gardless of whether those attitudes are explained through prejudice or race-
based interests. Furthermore, those group-specific attitudes that comprise
explanations for racial inequality are associated with attitudes toward race-
targeted public policy ðKluegel 1990; Bobo and Kluegel 1993; Tuch and
Hughes 2011Þ. We now turn to the Latin American context, parsing the
structure of stratification beliefs in that region and exploring hypotheses on
their make-up and effect.
HYPOTHESES
Scholars of Latin American ethnoracial dynamics maintain that the mes-
tizaje myths have had a decisive influence on the region’s stratification
beliefs. More specifically, many scholars judge that these myths have led the
minority populations to deny the structural causes of their own inequality
ðHanchard 1994; Twine 1998; Sidnaius et al. 2001; Beck et al. 2011; Warren
and Sue 2011Þ. This denial positions minorities in Latin American along-
side dominants, whose rejection of the structural causes of minority disad-
vantage is taken as a given ðdue to out-group prejudice or diverging material
interestsÞ. This attitudinal symmetry ði.e., both dominants and minorities
reject structural explanationsÞ goes against much of the general literature on
stratification beliefs, which, as previously noted, holds that dominants and
minorities disagree on the causes of racial inequality ðe.g., Sears et al. 2000Þ.
Bailey ð2002, 2009Þ explored stratification beliefs in Brazil using survey
data from 1995 and 2000. He found no widespread denial of the structural
causes of inequality. Instead, Brazilians overwhelmingly endorsed discrim-
ination as an explanation for black disadvantage. In this study, we examine
stratification beliefs using more recent, expanded, and nuanced survey data
on seven other Latin American contexts in addition to Brazil. Moreover, we
extended the analysis beyond attitudes about Afrodescendants to four na-
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tional contexts where indigenous are the principal minority population.

Hence, our first set of hypotheses:
HYPOTHESIS 1.—Ideologies of mestizaje in Latin America condition a
denial of the structural causes of minority disadvantage.
HYPOTHESIS 2.—Both dominant and minority populations in Latin
America deny the structural causes of minority disadvantage.
Because Latin America’s ethnoracial dynamics are not homogenous ðe.g.,
Hooker 2005Þ, examining stratification beliefs across various Latin Amer-
ican contexts is highly informative. Stratification beliefs may differ, for
example, depending on whether the target population is indigenous or
Afrodescendant and on the prevalence of national antiracist mobilization
and discourse. Regarding the former, sociocultural theories suggest that
perceptions of culture gaps between dominant and minority populations
can stimulate individualist explanations for minority disadvantage on the
part of dominants, as discussed above ðe.g., Kinder and Sears 1981Þ. In
Latin America, cultural differences may be seen as more characteristic of
indigenous populations than Afrodescendants. This is partly because the
cultural distinctiveness that distinguishes indigenous communities from
dominants is maintained in rural settlements and through language, dress,
or other traditions. In contrast, Afrodescendants are almost always Span-
ish/Portuguese monolinguals and often urban. In fact, recent research sug-
gests that many indigenous populations, struggling for collective rights un-
der new “multiculturalist” citizenship regimes, have been helped in their
struggle precisely by this perception of their cultural distinctiveness ðHooker
2005Þ. At the same time, scholars argue that Afrodescendants have been
hampered in their inclusionary struggles by their general inability to claim
cultural distinctiveness ðHooker 2005; French 2009; Paschel 2010Þ.9 In
sum, perceptions of culture gaps between indigenous and dominants com-
pared to between Afrodescendants and dominants may condition stratifi-
cation beliefs. Hence, our third hypothesis:
HYPOTHESIS 3.—Indigenous poverty is more likely to be explained by
culture-based individualist accounts than Afrodescendant disadvantage.
With respect to the prevalence of antiracism discourse and mobilization,
we would expect awareness of the structural sources of racial inequality to
be higher among Afrodescendants in Brazil, given the widespread public
discussion of racism and the adoption of affirmative action policies there
over the past decade. In contrast, we would expect dominants in Brazil to
adopt individualist explanations due to a perceived threat to their material
9
To the point, in those cases where Afrodescendants can claim indigenous-like cultural
specificity, they have made strides toward state recognition and collective rights. Ex-
amples include the Garifuna in Honduras and coastal Afrodescendants in Colombia
ðHooker 2005; Paschel 2010Þ.
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resources that race-targeted public policy may represent. Bolivia, too, has
experienced a very significant shift in the ethnoracial status quo with the
election of its first indigenous president in 2005. The Bolivian government
made combating racism a priority, although this is part of a more general
political and cultural transformation toward indigeneity and plurinational-
ism ðSchilling-Vacaflor 2011Þ. This shift is referred to as the proceso de
cambio ðprocess of changeÞ and has been conflict ridden ðGarcía Linera
2010; Gustafson and Fabricant 2011Þ. Indeed, it has produced a veritable
“social earthquake” ðMamani Ramirez 2011Þ that has lead to discourses
of “reverse racism” among certain sectors of that society ðGustafson and
Fabricant 2011, p. 12; Hale 2011Þ. Hence, in Bolivia too we might expect
heightened awareness of structural racism for indigenous and a dominant
backlash through adopting individualist stances and denying discrimi-
nation. In contrast, individualist explanations may be more likely for both
dominants and minorities in countries like the Dominican Republic and
Mexico where racism remains relatively uncontested and is rarely discussed
ðSidanius et al. 2001; Sue 2010Þ. In these two countries, for example, the
national census is marked by the absence of data on racial composition,
suggesting some indifference to racial dynamics in general ðHoward 2001;
Candelario 2007; Antón et al. 2009Þ.10 Hence, our final hypothesis:
HYPOTHESIS 4.—Stratification beliefs differ significantly across Latin
American countries, with minority populations in Brazil and Bolivia espe-
cially likely to hold structuralist beliefs in contrast to dominants, and mi-
norities in Mexico and the Dominican Republic the least likely to do so,
joining with dominants in denying the structural bases of inequality.
DATA AND METHODS

In this analysis, we examined eight countries using data from the 2010
AmericasBarometer survey, which were collected a product of the Latin
American Public Opinion Project ðLAPOPÞ based at Vanderbilt Univer-
sity.11 The 2010 AmericasBarometer conducted nationally representative
face-to-face surveys of adults in 18 of the 19 countries in Latin America ðex-
cept CubaÞ. In the eight countries we examined—Bolivia, Brazil, Colom-
bia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru—the Amer-
10
In addition to cross-national differences, some literature highlights differences in racial
attitudes among regions in a single country. For example, Boza-Golash ð2010Þ distin-
guishes an urban/rural divide among Afrodescendants in Peru, whereas Gustafson and
Fabricant ð2011Þ point to the difference in attitudes toward indigeneity between “tropical
east and Andean west” ðp. 11Þ.
11
We thank LAPOP and its director Mitchell Seligson. We also thank its major supporters
ðUSAID, UNDP, IDP, and Vanderbilt UniversityÞ and the Ford Foundation and Prince-
ton University for funding the ethnicity module.
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icasBarometer incorporated an ethnicity module, which was developed by

the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America ðPERLAÞ at Princeton
University. The countries chosen for the additional ethnicity module were
those with a significant mix of black and indigenous populations. The sam-
ple size for most of these countries was about 1,500, with larger samples
taken in Ecuador ðabout 3,000Þ and Brazil ðabout 2,500Þ.
The ethnicity module includes two items addressing respondents’ ex-
planations for black or indigenous disadvantage ði.e., stratification beliefsÞ,
which we used to create our dependent variables. The first survey item,
which begins with a clear affirmation that race/ethnicity structures socio-
economic outcomes, asks respondents to explain why that is so:
According to the Census, indigenous persons/black persons/darker skin
persons are poorer. What do you think is the main reason for that? ½Read
options ½Allow only one response
1. Because they do not work hard enough
2. Because they are less intelligent
3. Because they are treated unfairly
4. Because they have a low educational level
5. Because they do not want to change their culture.12
In Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru, this item refers to the poverty
of indigenous persons ðindígenasÞ; in Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador, to
black persons ðnegrosÞ; and in the Dominican Republic to dark-skinned per-
sons, since Dominicans sometimes understand black to reference Haitians.
In this first question, options 1 ðinsufficient work effortÞ, 2 ðless intelligenceÞ,
and 5 ðcultural complacencyÞ are considered individualist attributions for
minority poverty.13 Options 3 ðunfair treatmentÞ and 4 ðlow educationÞ rep-
resent structural explanations.14 We first collapse the individualist versus
structuralist options and present the frequency distributions as percent-
12
In Spanish: “Según los datos del Censo de Población, la gente negra/indígena/más
oscura es más pobre. ¿Usted cuál cree que es la principal razón de esto? ½Leer opciones
½Permitir solo una respuesta ð1Þ Porque las personas negras/indígenas/más oscuras no
trabajan lo suficiente ð2Þ . . . son menos inteligentes; ð3Þ . . . son tratadas de manera
injusta; ð4Þ . . . tienen bajo nivel educativo; ð5Þ . . . no quieren cambiar su cultura.”
13
See Kluegel ð1990Þ on motivational individualism ðoption 1Þ and traditional indi-
vidualism ðoption 2Þ; see Kinder and Sanders ð1981Þ and Gilens ð1999Þ on cultural at-
tributions ðoption 5Þ.
14
See Kluegel ð1990Þ and Hunt ð2007Þ. Unfair treatment of racial and ethnic minorities
references direct structural discrimination. The educational explanation was designed
and tested to signal the poorer provision of schooling that disproportionately affects
minorities in Latin America; it references indirect structural discrimination ðMassey and
Denton 1993Þ. Schuman et al. ð1997Þ assert that this joint conceptualization rests on the
assumption that “discrimination and education explanations are structural in empha-
sis,” pointing more toward external constraints than individualist explanations ðp. 161;
emphasis addedÞ.
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ages by country and by dominant and target minority population; we then

present the same across all five options. Following past research, we sub-
sequently use the collapsed categories as the dependent variable in a bi-
nomial logistic regression to model the choice of structural ð5 1Þ versus
individualist ð5 0Þ explanations for racial inequality in each of the eight
countries.
We used another survey question from the ethnicity module to create our
second dependent variable, narrowing the scope of possible explanations
for black and indigenous disadvantage due to unequal treatment ði.e., dis-
criminationÞ. The question reads: “Do you believe that indigenous persons/
black persons/darker skin persons are treated ð1Þ much better, ð2Þ better,
ð3Þ the same, ð4Þ worse, or ð5Þ much worse than white persons?”15 We
collapsed options 1 ðmuch betterÞ, 2 ðbetterÞ, and 3 ðthe sameÞ to index the
lack of belief that indigenous or black persons suffer discrimination and
options 5 ðworseÞ and 6 ðmuch worseÞ as recognition of discrimination.
This question challenges respondents to register their opinions on the ex-
istence of direct discrimination. It contrasts with the previous survey item
where respondents chose between discrimination or the education-based
structural explanation; the latter may only indirectly reference race or re-
mit to class ðSchuman et al. 1997Þ. As with the first question, we present
results of the collapsed categories by country and by dominant and target
minority populations. The two collapsed categories form the dependent var-
iable in a second set of binomial logistic regressions in country-level models.
In our analysis, we employed standard logit regression and adjusted for
clustering at the level of the primary sampling unit.
In our statistical models of both survey items we used the same inde-
pendent variables. Our independent ethnicity variable capturing domi-
nant versus target minority populations was based on the following survey
item: “Do you consider yourself white, mestizo, indigenous, negro, mulato
or other?”16 In all countries, the first part of the question ½“Do you consider
yourself . . .” was the same, but the response categories differed in the Do-
minican Republic, Guatemala, and Brazil. In the Dominican Republic, in-
dio ðliterally Indian, but Dominicans often interpret it as copper-colored;
see Candelario 2007Þ was included in the same category as mestizo ðmestizo/
IndioÞ, and the indigenous category was excluded.17 In Guatemala, the re-
sponse categories were ladino ða term roughly referring to whites and mes-
15
In Spanish: “Usted cree que las personas negra/indígena/más oscura son tratadas mu-
cho mejor, mejor, igual, peor, o mucho peor que las personas blancas?”
16
The question in Spanish: “¿Usted se considera una persona blanca, mestiza, indígena,
negra, mulata u otra?”
17
Popular racial categories in the Dominican Republic are unique. Dominicans commonly
associate “blackness” with Haitians as a result of their complicated history with neigh-
boring Haiti ðSafa 2005; Candelario 2007Þ.
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TABLE 1
Definitions and Percentages of Groups
Dominant Target Minority All Others

Brazil . . . . .. White ð37Þ Pardo, preto ð57Þ Indigenous, other ð6Þ
Colombia . . .. White, mestizo ð85Þ Negro, mulatto ð10Þ Indigenous, other ð5Þ
Dominican
Republic . . . White, mestizo/indio ð77Þ Negro, mulatto ð21Þ Other ð1Þ
Ecuador. . . . . White, mestizo ð93Þ Negro, mulatto ð5Þ Indigenous, other ð2Þ
Bolivia. . . . . . White, mestizo ð26Þ Indigenous ð73Þ Negro, mulatto, other ð1Þ
Guatemala . . . Ladino ð61Þ Indigenous ð36Þ Negro, mulatto, other ð3Þ
Mexico. . . . . . White, mestizo ð88Þ Indigenous ð7Þ Negro, mulatto, other ð4Þ
Peru. . . . . . . . White, mestizo ð80Þ Indigenous ð16Þ Negro, mulatto, other ð4Þ
NOTE.—Descriptive statistics are weighted to adjust for sampling design. Nos. in paren-
theses are percentages, reflecting size and composition of the country’s dominant group.
tizos collectivelyÞ, indigenous, negro, mulato, and other. In Brazil, the response
options ðin PortugueseÞ were those of its national census: branca ðwhiteÞ, preta
ðblackÞ, parda ðbrown or mixed raceÞ, amarela ðAsianÞ, and indigena ðindig-
enousÞ.
In all countries, the target minority referred to either indigenous or
Afrodescendants, which was referenced in the survey items used for the
two dependent variables. The group chosen in each country was the larger
group in the sample, as shown in table 1.18 A small residual category, “all
others,” was also part of the comparison and included nontarget minorities
of each country as well as “others,” which are collectively represented in
the last column of table 1.
Our dominant category included whites and mestizos, the latter generally
understood as progeny of whites and indigenous.19 Although technically
nonwhite, mestizos are commonly considered part of the dominant popu-
lation in these countries, largely because of mestizaje ideologies ðSafa 2005;
Roitman 2009; Beck et al. 2011; Hale 2011Þ. Indeed, mestizos are the quin-
tessential national citizen in the national ideologies of mestizaje, a category
in which many elites place themselves. At the other side of the mestizo cat-
egory, the ethnic boundary between mestizo and indigenous is also fluid.
18
Although the dependent variables ask opinions about “blacks” in three countries and
“dark-skinned persons” in the Dominican Republic, we constructed the target minority
in those countries as persons that self-identified as negros and mulatos in Colombia,
Dominican Republic, and Ecuador, and pretos ðblacksÞ and pardos ðbrownsÞ in Brazil,
all of whom are often referred to as Afrodescendants in Latin America, especially in
official documents ðAntón et al. 2009Þ.
19
In the Dominican Republic, African ancestry is clearly part of the mestizo/indio cate-
gory, although it is denied in national narratives ðCandelario 2007Þ. Even in countries
like Mexico, African ancestry forms part of the mestizo genealogical mix, but it is also
downplayed.
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Some individuals may have self-identified as mestizo in the survey; how-

ever, they may be perceived as indigenous because of their language or
dress, or for other reasons, or they may self-identify as indigenous or in a
particular indigenous group in other situations. In her study of Peru, for
example, De la Cadena ð2001Þ refers to such persons as “indigenous mes-
tizos.” Following the custom of national censuses of Bolivia, Guatemala,
Mexico, and Peru ðSchkolnik and Del Popolo 2008Þ, and to clarify the
indigenous-mestizo boundary, we also used additional language and ethnic
group identifiers ðe.g., Maya, AymaraÞ to construct the indigenous/target
minority variable.
For the regression analyses, the other independent variables were edu-
cation, sex, age, and urban/rural residence. Education was a three-category
variable, age was continuous, and gender and rural/urban were dichoto-
mous. We included an attitudinal variable tapping one dimension of the
multifaceted mestizaje orientation. The survey item reads: “The mixing of
races is good for ½name of country. To what extent do you agree or dis-
agree with this statement?” Responses were measured on a 1–7 scale, with 1
indicating strongly disagree and 7 indicating strongly agree. We believe
that this item may reflect nationalist “originating” myths that retell the
histories of these countries as beginning from separate “racial stocks” and
later moving toward mixed-race populations ðe.g., Rahier 2010Þ.
FINDINGS
Table 2 shows the distribution of structuralist versus individualist expla-
nations for Afrodescendants or indigenous disadvantage and of opinions
on the existence of discrimination in each of the eight countries, by domi-
nant and target minority population. We focus first on column 1, which pre-
sents total population percentages of those who endorsed structural accounts
by country. At the high end, fully 89.1% of Brazilians offered structural-
ist interpretations for Afrodescendant poverty, followed by Peru, where
81.3% adopted the structuralist account for indigenous poverty. At the low
end, we find Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, at 62.7% and 65.8%,
respectively. Totals for the survey item that focused narrowly on the rec-
ognition of unfair treatment, or discrimination, show that the highest per-
centages recognizing discrimination were in Peru and Mexico at 81.6% and
80.7%, respectively, followed by Brazil at 72.1%. Bolivia was clearly at the
low end, with only 31.5% of the sample responding that indigenous were
treated worse than whites.
Overall, these first bivariate results show that, despite some variation,
robust majorities of Latin Americans across all eight countries preferred
structural explanations, including both discrimination and education, for
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TABLE 2
Distribution ðWeightedÞ of Explanations for Minority Group Poverty
STRUCTURAL EXPLANATIONS BELIEF IN DISCRIMINATION

TARGET MINORITY GROUP Total Dominant Minority Total Dominant Minority
AND COUNTRY ð1Þ ð2Þ ð3Þ ð4Þ ð5Þ ð6Þ
Afrodescendant:
Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . 89.1 85.6** 90.9** 72.1 68.0 74.4
Colombia . . . . . . . . . 75.2 74.7 80.4 59.9 60.2 61.7
Dominican Republic . 65.8 65.6 67.2 63.6 62.2 68.4
Ecuador . . . . . . . . . . 62.7 62.7* 71.5* 68.7 68.9 71.5
Indigenous:
Bolivia . . . . . . . . . . . 70.6 67.1 72.1 31.5 30.6 31.9
Guatemala . . . . . . . . 77.2 74.5** 82.1** 57.9 57.5 58.7
Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . 76.4 76.7 74.8 80.7 81.6* 69.2*
Peru . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81.3 80.6 84.9 81.6 82.6 80.2
NOTE.—Nos. in table are percentages. P-values are measuring whether the differences be-
tween the dominant (cols. 2, 5) and target minority groups (cols. 3, 6) are statistically signif-
icant.
* P < .05 ðtwo-tailed t-testÞ.
** P < .01.
*** P < .001.
minority disadvantage. Moreover, in seven out of eight countries ðexcept

BoliviaÞ, robust majorities specifically recognized discrimination toward
racial or ethnic minorities. These findings clearly contradict our hypothe-
sis 1, in which we predicted widespread denial of inequality’s structural ba-
sis, including discrimination.
Results in table 2 also speak to hypothesis 2, in which we predicted atti-
tudinal symmetry between dominants and minorities in denying structural
explanations for minority disadvantage. As shown in columns 2 and 3, mi-
nority group members showed a small preference for structural explana-
tions compared to dominant group members, but this difference was not
statistically significant in over half of the countries.20 In Brazil, fully 90.9%
of Afrodescendants ð pretos and pardosÞ preferred structural explanations
for Afrodescendant poverty compared to 85.6% of whites. At the other
end, only 62.7% of Ecuadorian whites and mestizos preferred structuralist
explanations, while 71.5% of Afro-Ecuadorians did. As regards unequal
treatment ðcols. 4–6Þ, we found a significant dominant/minority difference
only in Mexico; dominants were actually more likely to recognize discrim-
ination than the indigenous minority, at 81.6% and 69.2%, respectively.
Hence, there was near symmetry between minorities and dominants in all
eight countries on the “explanations” outcome, and in seven out of eight on
20
The small “all others” category is not shown.
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the “belief in discrimination” outcome. However, the symmetry we found

ran counter to our predictions, by embracing structural explanations and
belief in discrimination, not by denying them.
Concerning belief in discrimination, however, the pattern was quite dif-
ferent in Bolivia. In that context, we did find support for our second hy-
pothesis: there was symmetry between dominants and subordinates in a
majority denial of discrimination. A closer look at the distribution of re-
sponses on this question reveals just how different Bolivia is compared to
the other seven countries. Table 3, with the disaggregated choices regarding
the treatment of minorities, from “much better” to “much worse,” provides
that look. Results show that about one in three Bolivians ð6.9% and 24.2%
endorsing the “much better” or “better” options, respectivelyÞ claimed that
indigenous are actually treated better than whites, thereby seeming to es-
pouse reverse racism. However, Bolivians’ most popular single response was
that indigenous are treated the same as whites, chosen by 37.4% of the sam-
ple. The prevalence of the reverse racism stance clearly sets Bolivia apart
among our eight country cases, as we will discuss further.
In hypothesis 3 we predicted that respondents would be more likely to
explain indigenous disadvantage by culture, an individualist stance, than
structure, based on perceptions that indigenous peoples are more culturally
specific in comparison to Afrodescendants. In order to isolate that differ-
ence, table 3 presents percentage distributions for the subcategories that
make up the structuralist versus individualist accounts, the latter includ-
ing culture ðcol. 5Þ. Results did not support our hypothesis: the percent-
ages choosing culture as the primary cause for minority disadvantage did
not vary by type of minority population, that is, whether in reference to
Afrodescendant or indigenous people. The lowest percentage choosing cul-
ture was in Brazil, at 8.6%; percentages in the other cases ranged between
12.1%, in Peru, to 22.2%, in the Dominican Republic. These percentages
suggest that the perception of cultural differences does affect the views of
significant segments of these countries’ populations; however, blaming cul-
ture is not a majority stance in any country.
Interestingly, respondents in the Dominican Republic, where the target
minority is Afrodescendant, were most likely to use culture to explain why
“dark skin” people are poor. This could reflect an understanding that “dark
skin” refers to Haitians, despite our strategy to preempt that connota-
tion by avoiding the word negro in that country’s survey. On the other
end of the spectrum, Brazilians were least likely to view culture as ex-
plaining Afrodescendant poverty, which seems consistent with the view
that Afro-Brazilians are integrated into a national-level culture ðSansone
2003; Telles 2004; Bailey 2009Þ. As to the other individualist accounts,
few Latin Americans believed that lower intelligence explains minorities’
poverty ðcol. 4Þ, although the Dominican Republic again showed the high-
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TABLE 3
Percentage Distribution ðWeightedÞ of Preferred Explanations for Minority Poverty Treatment
EXPLANATION FOR MINORITY POVERTY

Structural Individual MINORITY TREATMENT
Discrimination Education Work Intelligence Culture Much Better Better Same Worse Much Worse
ð1Þ ð2Þ ð3Þ ð4Þ ð5Þ ð6Þ ð7Þ ð8Þ ð9Þ ð10Þ
Afrodescendant:
Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76.9 12.2 1.7 .7 8.6 1.0 2.5 24.5 60.4 11.7
Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . 57.3 18.1 8.5 2.0 14.1 .7 4.1 35.5 51.8 7.9
Dominican Republic . . . 42.4 23.4 4.4 7.6 22.2 .6 3.2 32.7 54.6 8.9
Ecuador . . . . . . . . . . . . 47.0 15.7 19.5 3.2 14.6 .4 2.8 28.0 56.5 12.2
Indigenous:
Bolivia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.3 39.3 6.6 3.7 19.2 6.9 24.2 37.4 28.2 3.4
Guatemala . . . . . . . . . . 40.0 36.8 5.0 2.6 15.6 2.1 6.9 33.5 49.7 7.9

Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47.1 29.3 4.0 1.8 17.8 1.3 4.6 13.9 56.7 23.5
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Peru . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35.4 45.9 3.4 3.2 12.1 1.2 1.4 16.1 62.7 18.7

NOTE.—Nos. are weighted percentages. Data are from the 2010 AmericasBarometer survey.
est percentage ð7.6%Þ for this belief. Finally, fully 19.5% of Ecuadorian re-
spondents named laziness ðinsufficient work effortÞ, a sociocultural victim-
blaming stance, as the primary reason for black poverty compared to less
than 10% of respondents in the other seven countries.
Table 3 also shows the variation among countries between the two
structural explanations, discrimination versus poor schooling. Although the
preferred explanation in most countries was discrimination ðcol. 1Þ, more
than three-quarters of Brazilians ð76.9%Þ preferred that explanation in
contrast to roughly a third of Bolivians ð31.3%Þ and Peruvians ð35.4%Þ.
On the other hand, almost half of Peruvians ð45.9%Þ and over a third of
Guatemalans ð36.8%Þ chose poor schooling ðcol. 2Þ to explain minorities’
poverty. These results suggest that structural explanations are sensitive to
Afrodescendant/indigenous target group distinctions. Explanations based
on poor schooling seem to be especially strong in reference to indigenous
people, who may more obviously lack access to quality schools, while dis-
crimination was invoked more often to account for the poverty of blacks.
Turning to our regression analyses, table 4 presents the means for the
independent variables for each of the eight countries for both of our out-
come measures. We present odds ratios from logistic regression models for
each of the eight countries for both outcome variables, explanations for
inequality ðtable 5Þ and belief in discrimination ðtable 6Þ. A first important
finding from these models concerns minority versus dominant group dif-
ferences. In line with our bivariate analysis in table 2, the general lack of
significance of the ethnicity variable across models in tables 5 and 6 sug-
gests that ethnoracial divergence on stratification beliefs are exceptional,
not common, in Latin America. That is, attitudes about the existence and
causes of ethnoracial inequality are not robustly contoured by ethnoracial
group status. Even when separating mestizos and whites in an analysis
ðnot shownÞ so that the dominant category was comprised only of whites,
the general lack of significance of the ethnicity variable held in all but one
case in a single model.21 Hence, group conflict and sociocultural theories pre-
dicting robust, dominant versus minority cleavages on stratification beliefs
are clearly inadequate framings in these Latin American contexts.
There are a few exceptional outcomes, however. Regarding the first de-
pendent variable, table 5 results reveal that targeted minorities in Brazil
and Guatemala were more likely to hold structuralist explanations at sta-
tistically significant levels than dominants. The odds of targeted minori-
ties using structure to explain minority disadvantage compared to domi-
nants in Brazil and Guatemala were 1.5 and 1.7 times greater, respectively.
In comparison, table 6 shows that only in Brazil was the target minority
21
Regarding the “belief in discrimination” outcome, only in Ecuador were whites signifi-
cantly less likely than mestizos to express belief in discrimination against Afrodescendants.
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TABLE 4
Means for the Independent Variables ðWeightedÞ in Eight Latin American Countries
AFRODESCENDANT TARGET MINORITY INDIGENOUS TARGET MINORITY

Brazil Colombia Ecuador Dominican Republic Bolivia Mexico Guatemala Peru POOLED SAMPLE
INDEPENDENT VARIABLES ð1Þ ð2Þ ð3Þ ð4Þ ð5Þ ð6Þ ð7Þ ð8Þ ð9Þ
Ethnicity:
Dominant . . . . . ... .37 .85 .93 .77 .26 .88 .61 .80 .65
Target minority. ... .57 .10 .05 .21 .73 .07 .36 .16 .32
All others . . . . . ... .06 .05 .02 .01 .01 .04 .03 .04 .03
Education:
Low . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 .28 .28 .33 .24 .33 .49 .16 .31
Medium . . . . . . . . . .58 .18 .47 .50 .49 .52 .40 .43 .45
High. . . . . . . . . . . . .09 .54 .25 .17 .27 .15 .11 .41 .25

Female. . . . . . . . . . . . .52 .50 .51 .51 .50 .50 .50 .50 .51
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Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39.5 37.2 39.4 41.2 37.1 39.4 38.5 39.0 38.9

Urban . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 .74 .76 .73 .69 .77 .47 .77 .73
Belief in mestizaje . . . 6.3 5.9 5.5 3.8 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.5 5.4
N. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,442 1,455 2,968 1,483 2,966 1,461 1,460 1,467 15,702
TABLE 5
Odds Ratios from Logistic Regression Analyses of Structural versus Individualist Explanations
for Minority Poverty in Eight Latin American Countries

INDEPENDENT VARIABLE Brazil Colombia Dominican Republic Ecuador Bolivia Guatemala Mexico Peru
Ethnicity ðdominant is
omitted variableÞ:
Afrodescendant . . . . . . . 1.537** 1.432 1.033 1.428
ð.249Þ ð.411Þ ð.169Þ ð.299Þ
Indigenous . . . . . . . . . . 1.15 1.733** .913 1.433
ð.109Þ ð.298Þ ð.215Þ ð.386Þ
All others . . . . . . . . . . . 1.486 1.112 .675 .381** .759 .968 .869 1.103
ð.368Þ ð.488Þ ð.435Þ ð.119Þ ð.365Þ ð.417Þ ð.265Þ ð.427Þ
Education ðlow is omitted
variableÞ:
Medium . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.066 1.282 1.653*** 1.309* .860 1.842*** 1.530* 1.454
1580
High. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .752 1.902*** 2.217*** 1.485** .786* 1.436 2.991*** 1.547
Female. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.178 1.349* 1.119 1.254*** .96 1.214 .882 .815

Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .994 .992 .995 .983*** .998 .993 .994 1.001
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Urban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.026 1.147 1.237 1.297* .855 1.117 1.249 1.251
Belief in mestizaje . . . . . . 1.175* 1.118 1.051 1.200*** 1.044* 1.114* 1.167** 1.017
Pseudo R2 . . . . . . . . . . . . .019 .031 .026 .050 .005 .034 .041 .008
N. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,125 1,334 1,140 2,636 2,517 1,189 1,330 1,287
NOTE.—Dependent variable: 1 5 structural explanations, 0 5 individualist explanations. Nos. in parentheses are SEs.
* P < .05 ðtwo-tailed testÞ.
** P < .01.
*** P < .001.
TABLE 6
Odds Ratios from Logistic Regression Analyses of Belief about Discrimination in Eight Latin American Countries

INDEPENDENT VARIABLE Brazil Colombia Dominican Republic Ecuador Bolivia Guatemala Mexico Peru
Ethnicity ðdominant is omitted variableÞ:
Afrodescendant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.455* 1.078 1.221 1.135
ð.222Þ ð.257Þ ð.199Þ ð.231Þ
Indigenous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.069 1.172 .494** 1.110
ð.087Þ ð.157Þ ð.123Þ ð.256Þ
All others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.322 .769 1.260 .619 0.932 1.086 1.025 .445*
Education ðlow is omitted variableÞ:
Medium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.109 1.226 1.571** 1.031 .833* 1.483** 1.626** .966
High. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .890 1.629** 2.749*** 1.223 .802* 1.258 1.860* 1.375
1581
Female. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.288* 1.103 1.324** 1.337*** 1.068 .971 1.093 1.121
Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .995 .999 .998 .982*** .997 .995 .999 1.000

Urban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.056 1.153 1.015 1.153 .942 1.374* 1.039 1.851*
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Belief in mestizaje . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.054 1.037 1.012 1.070 .937* 1.063 1.106 1.062

Pseudo R2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .012 .013 .027 .025 .004 .018 .023 .024
N. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,297 1,394 1,399 2,741 2,646 1,301 1,353 1,338
NOTE.—Nos. in parentheses are SEs.
* P < .05 (two-tailed test).
** P < .01.
*** P < .001.
more likely than the dominant population to recognize the unequal treat-
ment of the minority population ð1.5 odds ratioÞ; and only in Mexico was the
targeted minority actually less likely than dominants to point to discrimi-
nation against the minority ðodds ratio of .5Þ.
The effects in Brazil for both outcome measures contrast with Bailey’s
ð2002, 2009Þ findings from 1995 and 2000, where significant racial differ-
ences were not present. We believe this key difference may be explained in
part by the country’s recent widespread embrace of targeted policies for
Afrodescendants and public discussion of racism. Those policies may be
highlighting Afrodescendants’ and whites’ conflicting racial interests and
thereby stimulating conflict-based attitudes by way of racial attitudinal
cleavages ðBobo and Hutchings 1996; Hunt 2007Þ, lending some support
to hypothesis 4 that predicted minority and dominant divergence in that
context. Hence, Brazil may be uniquely situated in reconfiguring attitudi-
nal stances reflecting divergent racial group interests, although the accep-
tance of structural explanations and the explicit recognition of unequal
treatment are relatively high for both the dominant and minority popula-
tions.
In Guatemala, indigenous people were much more likely than ladinos to
embrace structuralist accounts ðtable 5Þ. Ethnic polarization seems to be
particularly acute in this context, perhaps reflecting the history of indige-
nous segregation and displacement, including a national narrative, unique
in Latin America, of opposition to mestizaje and support for separate la-
dino and Maya ðindigenousÞ nations ðGrandin 2000; Hale 2006Þ. We ex-
pected a similar cleavage in Bolivia, as stated in our fourth hypothesis, but
it did not occur.
The finding on Mexico indicating that dominants are significantly more
likely than the minority population to recognize discrimination ðtable 6Þ
is anomalous in terms of existing theoretical framings; no scholar, to our
knowledge, has posited that minorities would be less likely than domi-
nants to endorse structuralist accounts. Even with this statistically signifi-
cant cleavage between dominants and indigenous on the one survey item,
robust majorities of both populations nonetheless endorse structural ac-
counts and point to discrimination; this contradicts hypothesis 4, where we
predicted that minorities would join dominants in Mexico in denying the
structural basis of minority disadvantage. That hypothesis was also contra-
dicted in the Dominican Republic, where we found no significant difference
between minority and dominant populations ðtables 5 and 6Þ; agreement be-
tween these two populations, however, was in an embrace of structural ac-
counts and the recognition of discrimination. Overall, our findings suggest
that ethnoracial divides regarding stratification beliefs are exceptional in Latin
America, making that region quite different from the United States, where
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those divides appear firmly ensconced in that country’s racial and ethnic
landscapes ðDawson 2000; Sears et al. 2000Þ.22
A second important finding from these models on both outcomes suggest
that, in most countries, class ðas indexed by educationÞ is more strongly
associated with attitudes toward racial and ethnic disadvantage than race/
ethnicity. Again, this stands in contrast to studies in the United States that
find racial group membership transcends major social class divisions in
forming racial attitudes ðKinder and Sanders 1996; Sidanius and Pratto
1999Þ.23 The Dominican Republic and Colombia, for example, present
some of the clearest evidence of the importance of class over ethnicity/race
for understanding stratification beliefs. For Dominicans, the odds that an
individual with a college education would explain black poverty struc-
turally and recognize unequal treatment were both more than two times
greater compared to an individual with a primary education ðodds ratios of
2.2 and 2.7, respectivelyÞ.
In four countries, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and
Mexico, the most educated persons were more likely than the least educated
to prefer structuralist explanations, and in three of those four countries
ðexcepting EcuadorÞ, the same was true regarding the recognition of dis-
crimination. Only in Bolivia, where such explanations are more unpopular
overall, were the most educated actually less likely than those with a pri-
mary education to recognize discrimination against the target minority.
This finding may reveal again the significant reorganization underway in
Bolivian society ðGarcía Linera 2010Þ. The effects of those changes appear
to reverberate more clearly along class cleavages as opposed to ethnoracial
ones. Besides being indigenous, the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, was
a union leader more versed in labor union struggle than indigenous ones;
his rise was backed by a combination of lower- and middle-class leftist, na-
tionalist, indigenous, and labor organizations. As head of the Movement to
Socialism, the ruling leftist party, he leads a broad democratic challenge
to entrenched elite interests ðGustafson and Fabricant 2011Þ. A class threat
felt by the Bolivian elite, then, may help to explain the negative correla-
tion between education and recognition of discrimination in that context.
In Brazil, the lack of significance for the educational level variable along-
side the significance of the ethnicity variable is particularly interesting. This
22
In Ecuador, the “all others” category was significant in table 5, as it was in Peru in table 6.
In both cases, these populations were actually less likely than dominants to embrace
structuralist accounts ðin EcuadorÞ or recognize unequal treatment ðin PeruÞ. However, due
to the heterogeneous makeup and smaller number of cases in these categories, drawing
substantive conclusions may not be warranted.
23
Scholars argue that minority experiences in the United States trump social class di-
vides due in part to a strong sense of linked collective fate and robust group identifi-
cation ðe.g., Hunt 2007Þ.
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finding further contrasts with the earlier research on Brazil ðdata from 1995
and 2000Þ that showed race made no difference for explanations of racial
inequality, but that class was determinant ðBailey 2002, 2009Þ. We now find
the opposite, and thus it seems that race has become a salient cleavage mark-
ing racial attitudes, while class has receded. Our divergent results may pro-
vide further insight into the changing racial climate during the past decade
in Brazil.
Our models’ controls, gender, age, and urbanicity, showed significant
effects in a few cases. Younger persons in Ecuador strongly preferred struc-
tural explanations for minority group disadvantage and were more likely to
recognize unequal treatment. For example, the odds of a 20-year-old indi-
vidual recognizing the unequal treatment of minority populations were 51%
greater compared to a 50-year-old ð.017 30; table 5Þ. These results may
suggest a trend toward increasing recognition of discrimination in that con-
text. Ecuador has gone through a significant shift toward multiculturalism,
as reflected in both its 1998 and especially 2008 constitutions ðRahier 2010Þ.
Whether an age or a cohort effect, a negative association between age and
both endorsing structural explanations and recognizing discrimination in
Ecuador suggests a gradually changing attitudinal context for antiracism.
Finally, views on the value of racial mixing as “good for one’s country”
ðindexed by our variable on mestizaje beliefsÞ were positively associated
with accepting structuralist beliefs in five of the eight cases ðtable 5Þ, but
were not positively associated with recognizing discrimination in any of the
models. One could argue that, while this measure captures the positive and
most obvious idea of mestizaje, mestizaje is a more complex belief structure
that includes, and hides, the idea of black and indigenous assimilation or
disappearance. Apart from this specific measure, the general acceptance of
structural explanations and the specific recognition of discrimination de-
spite the overarching mestizaje ideology are notable.24
In Bolivia, however, the mestizaje attitudinal variable was negatively
associated with recognizing discrimination ðtable 6Þ. This exceptional result
may reflect the tension in this context where the great majority of the pop-
ulation is indigenous at the same time that the president, who is deeply
challenging the structures of privilege, including that of a mestizo class, is
also indigenous ðGustafson 2009Þ. Only in Bolivia, then, are those who en-
dorse a view of mestizaje as positive for the nation more likely to deny in-
digenous disadvantage. The scholarly view on the negativity of mestizaje
for stratification beliefs ðWinant 1999; Sidanius et al. 2001; Paschel 2010;
Beck et al. 2011; Warren and Sue 2011Þ, then, finds some echo in the Bo-
livian context.
24
In models ðnot shownÞ without the mestizaje variable, the general magnitude and
direction of the coefficients for the other variables were the same.
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Overall, our results show that, in the eight countries we examined, Latin
Americans generally accept structural explanations and recognize discrimi-
nation. Moreover, both dominants and minorities embrace these stratifica-
tion beliefs. Hence, contrary to the literature, our findings suggest that Latin
America’s ideological context does not necessarily lead to masking the struc-
tural causes of racial and ethnic disadvantage, including direct discrimination.
In this way, our article challenges the field to move toward a more nuanced
understanding of the racial common sense in Latin America, at least as re-
vealed through large-sample surveys.
DISCUSSION
We began this exploration of racial attitudes in Latin America noting a
historic difference between racial ideologies that have shaped that context
in contrast to the United States. In Latin America, an embrace of mestizaje
has characterized the racial common sense over most of the 20th century,
while an emphasis on racial purity and segregation held sway for much of
the same period in the United States. Both ideologies arguably continue to
be well entrenched in national psyches, and they are indeed “racial myths”
ðOmi and Winant 1994, p. 63Þ in the sense of being popularly held beliefs
about skin color and ancestry that help individuals and groups explain
significant dimensions of everyday life.
In the United States, dominated by the myth of racial purity, anti-
miscegenation laws “guarded” whites from racial mixing, which was con-
sidered dangerous. In contrast, elites have promoted mestizaje discourses in
many Latin American nations since the early 20th century. In the later
decades of the 20th century, the United States saw African-American mo-
bilization that created a public demand for countering white racial oppres-
sion, setting a progressive agenda for race relations. Meanwhile, beginning
in some Latin American countries in the 1980s, the progressive character
of mestizaje came under scrutiny. Many social movement actors and aca-
demics began questioning its progressive value, viewing it instead as a
common-sense ideology that furthered white racial interests in large part
through masking the role of race in structuring disadvantage.
Based on public opinion surveys for eight Latin American countries, our
results complicate and challenge that characterization of the effects of mes-
tizaje myths. We arrived at this conclusion through a detailed analysis of
explanations for racial inequality, including a direct assessment of the rec-
ognition of unequal treatment of ethnoracial populations. The general lit-
erature led us to assume that, as in the United States, minorities in Latin
America would embrace a structuralist stance, and dominants, an individ-
ualist orientation ðBobo and Hutchings 1996Þ. Nonetheless, Latin American
scholarship, much of it based on ethnographic studies, led us to hypothesize
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that both dominants and subordinates would endorse an individualist stance

ðTwine 1998; Beck et al. 2011; Warren and Sue 2011Þ. Contrary to these key
assumptions, we found that robust majorities of Latin Americans across these
eight countries, and both dominant and minority populations, supported
structuralist explanations for racial inequality. In addition, numerical ma-
jorities in seven of eight countries explicitly recognize the unequal treatment
of ethnoracial minorities.
The Brazilian and Bolivian results are notable in that they reveal het-
erogeneity among Latin American countries’ stratification beliefs. Even
though these two countries have arguably shifted the most from official
myths of mestizaje and toward an official embrace of multiculturalism and
the recognition of minority rights, their populations’ attitudes toward racial
discrimination diverge significantly. While Brazilians most robustly em-
brace structuralist understandings of racial inequality, with particularly
strong beliefs regarding antiblack discrimination, most Bolivians do not be-
lieve that indigenous people suffer direct discrimination. Moreover, in Bo-
livia, the idea of reverse racism was endorsed by 34.6% of that national
sample, whereas in Brazil, only 3.5% claimed the same. These Bolivia-Brazil
differences may have much to do with their divergent processes of transition
to multicultural citizenship regimes and the recognition of minority griev-
ances. In Brazil, the process was largely consensual and gradual, following
decades of official denial of racism ðTelles 2004Þ; however, the end result of
that process, although significant, has had relatively little impact on Brazil’s
racial hierarchy. In contrast, the Bolivian transition was considered revo-
lutionary ðGarcia Linera 2006Þ, leading to the election of an indigenous pres-
ident in a mostly indigenous country, who, despite his popularity in reduc-
ing inequality and on other fronts, quickly challenged entrenched interests
ðSchilling-Vacaflor 2011Þ. The more dramatic social reorganization in Bolivia
as a plurinational democracy has so deeply threatened racial and class hier-
archies to the point that his administration has been accused of discrimina-
tion against the nonindigenous population ðGustafson and Fabricant 2011;
Mamani Ramirez 2011Þ.
In a comparative lens, the General Social Survey ðGSSÞ has asked U.S.
respondents over many years if the lower socioeconomic level of “blacks”
was “due to discrimination,” using a stand-alone question format. Between
the years 2000 and 2008, while 59% of African-Americans responded “yes,”
only 30% of whites responded the same ðBobo et al. 2012, p. 64Þ. Our
findings show, then, that, like African-Americans in the United States, mi-
norities in Latin American generally recognize discrimination and prefer
structuralist accounts. However, in stark contrast to the United States, where
whites largely reject discrimination and structuralist explanations, domi-
nant populations in our Latin American country samples agreed with mi-
norities on these issues. For example, while only 30% of white Americans
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acknowledged discrimination in the United States ðBobo et al. 2012, p. 64Þ,

68% of white Brazilians and 58% of ladinos in Guatemala did so. Hence, in
the case of the “Americas,” our analysis suggests that U.S. whites stand out as
exceptional in holding almost asymmetrical attitudinal stances when com-
pared with minority populations.25
What explains these counterintuitive findings in Latin America? We posit
two related lines of inquiry; both consider the relative absence of condi-
tions amenable to stark attitudinal divides among dominant and ethno-
racial minority populations in Latin America. First, a key factor identified
in the literature as promoting attitudinal divides is the perception of con-
flicting racial group-based interests ðKinder and Sears 1996; Sears et al.
2000Þ. For decades of 20th-century U.S. society, white supremacy encoded
in law proscribed the most basic dignities and rights of African-Americans.
This contorted legal context no doubt promoted bright racial cleavages in
the perception of group-based interests and attitudes; blacks and whites saw
the world from different lenses in part because they lived in legally segre-
gated worlds. In addition to that legacy, highly racialized political and so-
cial discourses as well as high residential segregation in the United States
remain, perhaps contributing to the persistence of sharper group-based
interests and attitudes.
Except in mid-20th-century Cuba, Panama, and Puerto Rico, which
were controlled by the United States, race was not reinscribed in law or
generally stated in policy in Latin America, and ideas of mestizaje blurred
racial boundaries and thus perceived racial group-based interests and at-
titudes. Brazil is illustrative in this regard. After the abolition of slavery in
1888 and the formation of the republican country of Brazil in 1889, the
Brazilian state did not inscribe race into its constitution or laws regulating
the lives of its citizens. Although elite white interests dominated Latin Amer-
ican societies, the lack of an explicit/legal use of race, a mestizaje discourse,
and relatively moderate racial segregation may have mitigated the percep-
tion of contrasting racial interests and attitudes among the masses of poor
black, brown, and white Latin Americans.26 Hence, despite racial inequal-
ity and discrimination, racial attitudes in Latin America are not straightfor-
wardly racial-group specific as would be posited by group conflict framings.
25
The format of the GSS question differs from that of the items in our surveys. None-
theless, the similar substance of the questions holds. Regarding Bolivians, results show
that they also appear to embrace similar views to whites in the United States, as reflected
in the item on the recognition of discrimination. However, on the other survey item re-
garding explanations for racial inequality, Bolivians align with the other Latin Ameri-
can cases, where there is near symmetry between dominants and minorities in an em-
brace of structural explanations for racial inequality.
26
For example, Telles ð2004, p. 221Þ argues that in large part “white privilege in Brazil is
advanced through a defense of class interests.”
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A second line of inquiry that provides insight into our unexpected find-
ings concerns dominant views ði.e., both whites and mestizosÞ of the ra-
cialized “other” in many Latin American contexts. The embrace of mestizaje
means that large swaths of Latin Americans may view the racial or ethnic
“other” as part of themselves, if not through miscegenation, then through
national imagination ðDe la Cadena 2005; Wade 2005Þ. This dynamic of
overlapping or nested identifications is also suggested by the fluidity that
characterizes ethnoracial boundaries throughout much of Latin America
ðTelles and Sue 2009Þ. French ð2009, p. 175Þ, for example, writes in her
ethnography of Afrodescendant and indigenous populations in Northern
Brazil, “Each person . . . also self-identifies as simultaneously being Indian,
African, Dutch, Portuguese, Sergipano, and sertanejo. In fact, it is the very
perspective on heritage that permits them to be different and separate, yet
similar and related.” Wade ð2005, p. 257Þ too writes: “As I have tried to
show with Latin American examples, people are constantly thinking in terms
of roots and racial origins, and they may make inclusive spaces for these
origins within their own bodies and families.” Wade argues that while mes-
tizaje may be framed as an ideology, it is also a lived experience among the
masses in ways that a singular focus on ideology may miss.
From the perspective of the myth of racial purity, the “other” is never
within in the United States; the racial “other” is historically contaminating,
dangerous, and separate ðDavis 1991; De la Cadena 2001Þ. Consequently,
research reveals that those who most embrace the myth of racial purity in
the U.S. context, white Americans, are most strident in rejecting structur-
alist interpretations of racial hierarchy ðKluegel 1990; Hunt 2007Þ. In con-
trast, when we measured the embrace of mestizaje directly in our models,
those who most embraced racial mixing were often also most likely to en-
dorse structuralist accounts. We suggest, then, that the sociocultural con-
text of belief in white racial purity in the United States, which necessarily
excises the “other,” contributes to ethnoracial attitudinal asymmetry, thereby
contrasting with the symmetry of attitudes between Latin American ethno-
racial populations that we have documented here.
Do these findings suggesting an agreement on the structural causes of
minority inequality in Latin America speak to the possibility of growing sup-
port for anti-inequality policy measures in those countries? In the United
States, race-targeted policies are being challenged and largely dismantled due
in no small part to white opposition to them ðKluegel 1990; Tuch and Hughes
2011Þ. That opposition is expected through whites’ endorsement of individ-
ualist explanations for black inequality ðKluegel and Bobo 1993; Sears et al.
2000Þ. Social scientific theories on the relationship between stratification
beliefs and policy attitudes clearly suggest that agreement between dom-
inants and minorities in support of structural explanations could positively
affect the chances of future policy in favor of disadvantaged minorities in
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Latin America. Indeed, Bailey ð2004Þ documented a positive association

between structuralist stratification beliefs and support for the idea of race-
targeted affirmative action in the Brazilian context as early as 2000.27 Pro-
gressive policy changes may conceivably occur soon in several Latin Amer-
ican countries, and current policy redress may be expected to continue in
Brazil and Bolivia.
In contrast, over the past decades in the United States, black and His-
panic attitudes have shifted toward individualist explanations, increas-
ingly converging with the attitudes of non-Hispanic whites ðHunt 2007;
Bobo et al. 2012Þ.28 In the United States, then, there is evidence of a trend
toward symmetry between dominants and minorities, but in the wrong di-
rection for progressive racial reforms.29 Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich ð2008Þ
note this changing ideological context in the United States, labeled “color-
blind racism,” and express concern that it diffuses oppositional racial con-
sciousness, blinds Americans to discriminatory racial structures, and com-
promises the possibility of race-based social policy. These researchers point
to this ideological shift as part of a more complex restructuring of racial
stratification and white dominance in the United States from a biracial ðwhite
vs. nonwhiteÞ cleavage toward a Latin American triracial system. The latter
is characterized by the presence of intermediate or “mixed-race” categoriza-
tion and is noted as typifying the colorblind racial ideology increasingly sa-
lient in the United States. Although much of their “Latin Americanization”
thesis is beyond the scope of this analysis, our results suggest that, as mea-
sured through large-sample survey data on explanations for racial inequal-
ity, the broad association of a denial of discriminatory racial structuring with
Latin American racial ideologies is not supported.
27
The literature in the United States does note a “principles gap” in the attitudes of white
Americans ðKrysan 2000; Sears et al. 2000Þ. Namely, although whites endorse the prin-
ciple of racial equality, they do not embrace anti-inequality public policy. That “principles
gap” does not, however, extend to explanations for racial inequality: a majority of U.S.
whites do not support anti-inequality policy and they blame blacks for that inequality.
28
In the United States, 50% of non-Hispanic whites, 51% of Hispanics, and 45% of
African-Americans responded yes to a “lack of motivation or will power” as explaining
black poverty in a stand-alone question between the years 2000 and 2004 ðHunt 2007,
p. 400Þ.
29
Might our findings simply reflect social desirability bias, i.e., in the survey context
respondents feel pressured by politically correct discourse? Two points suggest otherwise.
First, survey subjects chose the best of five options on the “explanations” item, only one of
which may have seemed clearly politically incorrect ðthat blacks/indigenous are less
intelligentÞ; hence, the question content and format should have mitigated possible bias.
Second, evidence from the United States shows that regardless of the survey context,
whites readily reject structural explanations for black poverty and endorse individualist
accounts, as do significant percentages of minority populations as well ðHunt 2007Þ.
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CONCLUSION
Our findings on racial attitudes in Latin America contradict much of the
research on that subject. We find that Latin Americans tend to recognize
structural explanations for ethnoracial disadvantage, such as discrimina-
tion, and reject victim-blaming stances. Since much of that existing research
is qualitative, this could suggest a methodological divide, perhaps around
issues of case selection and generalizability or survey interviews versus
ethnography. Moreover, we also find evidence that mestizaje ideas them-
selves may support greater comprehension of the structural causes of minor-
ity disadvantage, which further challenges the literature. However, our re-
sults are compatible with the insights of some ethnographic research ðDe la
Cadena 2001, 2005; French 2004, 2009; Wade 2005Þ, which argues that far
from a wholly negative ideology, myths of mestizaje and racial democracy
may provide cultural tools for the struggle against racial inequality in part
through imagining equality and hence setting goals for racial inclusion ðSwid-
ler 1986; Sheriff 2001Þ. De la Cadena ð2005, p. 23Þ, for example, posits that her
research in Peru reveals that although mestizaje may be “despised by promi-
nent intellectuals,” it can simultaneously be “empowering for the working
classes” without necessarily denying indigeneity.
Is an end to mestizo ideologies the only way to move toward transforming
the racial status quo? The U.S. case, the paragon of racial/ethnic change in a
healthy democracy ðFrench 2009Þ, may suggest so ðsee Winant 1999; and
Warren 2001Þ. However, the recent racial reforms in Brazil and the pop-
ulation’s clear structural understanding of racial inequality may suggest
otherwise. While an embrace of mestizaje does not erase existing racial hi-
erarchies, neither does it necessarily lead to attitudes incompatible with anti-
racism, as our results suggest. In the end, both the myth of mestizaje and
that of racial purity are clearly double-edged swords in terms of the ability
for individuals and groups enmeshed in these ideological terrains to trans-
form their societies ðFrench 2004Þ.
Finally, Latin America’s turn to multiculturalism, as compared to the past
when mestizaje beliefs held greater sway, might account for greater con-
sciousness of the structural causes of inequality and thus our counterintui-
tive findings. However, we believe that our findings reflect attitudes that
may have predated multiculturalism, as the Brazilian case, the only country
for which we have earlier large-sample survey data on racial attitudes, re-
veals. Even before the strong shift in state discourse and the implementation
of race-targeted policies in that context, Brazilians overwhelmingly embraced
structuralist accounts for disadvantage,30 and this despite the presumed em-
30
Our results showed that 77% of Brazilians in 2010 chose discrimination as the primary
reason for explaining black disadvantage compared to a slightly smaller proportion ð72%Þ
based on a 1995 national survey ðBailey 2002Þ.
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brace of a racial democracy ideology that held there was little or no racial
discrimination in Brazil. The general absence of an age effect in our models
also supports the idea that the attitudes we tapped in our analysis may not
be simply the result of the recent shift toward multiculturalism. Overall,
recognition of the structural causes of inequality may have deeper roots in
the region than is commonly believed.
Moreover, even with the recent adoption of multiculturalism, scholar-
ship across many regions of Latin America continues to point to mesti-
zaje’s lasting dominance and generally assumes its destructive and ob-
fuscatory effects. Our results suggest that those scholarly descriptions may
be in need of some scrutiny ðWade 2005Þ. The fact that there is so little
survey research on how elite racial ideologies filter down to the Latin Amer-
ican masses puts scholarship at risk of top-down generalizing about atti-
tudes or of addressing general beliefs based on localized ethnography. So,
when we do finally get robust survey data, they are uniquely positioned to
surprise us.
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Understanding Latin American Beliefs about Racial Inequality

Author(s): Edward Telles and Stanley Bailey

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/10.1086/670268

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Scholars argue that Latin American ideologies of mestizaje, or racial

As a region, Latin America has a diverse racial and ethnic composition

© 2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

AJS Volume 118 Number 6 (May 2013): 1559–95 1559

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2011Þ, and, as in the Dominican Republic, in romanticizing mixture with in-

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instance, to a lack of motivation or cultural deﬁciencies. Research on the

MESTIZAJE IN LATIN AMERICA

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ðNobles 2000Þ. The ideological contrast is sometimes attributed to their

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Effects of The Myth of Mestizaje

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nored, provides a partial explanation for Latin America’s scant record

THEORETICAL FRAMINGS OF STRATIFICATION BELIEFS

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case dominates this literature, although applying these theories to Latin

Group Conﬂict Theories

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tematic discrimination; moreover, this asymmetry between the attitudes

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tional contexts where indigenous are the principal minority population.

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DATA AND METHODS

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icasBarometer incorporated an ethnicity module, which was developed by

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ages by country and by dominant and target minority population; we then

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Dominant Target Minority All Others

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Some individuals may have self-identiﬁed as mestizo in the survey; how-

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STRUCTURAL EXPLANATIONS BELIEF IN DISCRIMINATION

minority disadvantage. Moreover, in seven out of eight countries ðexcept

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the “belief in discrimination” outcome. However, the symmetry we found

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EXPLANATION FOR MINORITY POVERTY

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AFRODESCENDANT TARGET MINORITY INDIGENOUS TARGET MINORITY

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AFRODESCENDANT TARGET MINORITY INDIGENOUS TARGET MINORITY

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AFRODESCENDANT TARGET MINORITY INDIGENOUS TARGET MINORITY

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