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Page 16 The Skanner January 10, 2018 Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Study Reveals Inequality in Mexico, Disproving Its ‘Race-Blind’ Rhetoric Daniel Zizumbo Colunga Vanderbilt University (THE CONVERSATION) For centuries, the United States has been engaged in a thorny, stop-and-go conversation about race and inequality in American society. And from Black Lives Matter demonstra- tions to NFL players protesting police violence, public discus- sions on racism continue in full force today. That’s not the case in Mexi- co. Mexicans have divergent ancestry, including Spanish, African, indigenous and Ger- man. And while skin color in Mexico ranges from White to Black, most people — 53 per- cent — identify as mestizo, or mixed race. In Mexico, inequality, though rampant, has long been viewed as a problem related to ethnici- ty or socioeconomic status, not race. Our new report suggests that assumption is wrong. Pub- lished in November, “Is Mex- ico a Post-Racial Country?” reveals that in Mexico darker skin is strongly associated with decreased wealth and less schooling. Indeed, race is the single most important deter- minant of a Mexican citizen’s economic and educational at- tainment, our results show. Unequal in every wayThe study, published last month by the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University, or LAPOP, drew on data from the university’s Americas Barometer, a poll of 34 nations across North, Cen- tral and South America, as well the Caribbean. To capture information on race, which is often not reflect- ed in Latin American census data, the pollsters themselves categorized respondents’ face skin tone on a standardized 11-point scale that ranges from darkest to lightest. We were fascinated to see that the Mexico data clear- ly showed people with white skin completing more years of schooling than those with browner skin – 10 years ver- sus 6.5. That’s a stunning 45 percent gap in educational achievement between the darkest- and lightest-skinned Mexicans. Darker-skinned Mexicans surveyed had also completed fewer years of schooling than the survey’s average nation- wide finding of nine years. Wealth, we found, similarly correlates to skin color. The average Mexican household income in the LAPOP study was about US$193 a month. Cit- izens with lighter skin report- ed bringing in more than that — on average, $220 a month. Darker-skinned citizens, on the other hand, earned just $137 — 41.5 percent less than their white compatriots. Overall, populations identi- fied as having the lightest skin fall into the highest wealth brackets in Mexico, while those with the darkest skin are concentrated at the bottom. These dynamics, other stud- ies have found, seem to persist “ In Mexico darker skin is strongly associated with decreased wealth and less schooling across generations. Similar disparities emerged when we examined other mea- sures of economic well-being, such as material possessions — like refrigerators and tele- phones — and basic amenities. For example, only 2.5 per- cent of white Mexicans sur- veyed by Vanderbilt’s pollsters don’t have running water, while upwards of 11 percent of dark-skinned citizens said they lack this basic necessity. Likewise, just 7.5 percent of white Mexicans reported lack- ing an in-home bathroom, ver- sus 20 percent of dark-skinned Mexicans. Not a post-racial nationOur findings complicate the results of numerous prior studies showing that Mexicans do not perceive skin color as a mean- ingful source of prejudice in their lives. According to a 2010 nation- al survey on discrimination, Mexicans believe that age, gender and social class have a greater impact on their daily lives than race. This perception likely re- lates to the country’s tradition of celebrating its raza mestiza, or multiracial heritage. Just last September, President En- rique Peña Nieto declared el mestizaje – racial mixing – as “the future of humanity.” The data paints a much less rosy picture. Race, it turns out, has a greater impact on a Mex- ican’s human development and capital accumulation than any other demographic variable. Our results show that Mexico’s “skin-color gap” is two times the achievement gap docu- mented between northern and southern Mexicans, which is an inequality more often cited in Mexico. It is also five times greater than the urban-rural divide reported in the poll. We even found that skin color has a significantly greater impact on wealth and education than does ethnicity – that is, indig- enous versus White or mixed- race Mexican. Not an isolated caseOur re- sults add to a growing body of academic research highlight- ing a reality the government doesn’t want to admit: Racism exists in Mexico. Racial and ethnic biases have so far been documented in Mexico’s allocation of public resources, politics and, nota- bly, the labor market. A recent report from the Na- tional Institute of Statistics, for example, finds that White people comprise 27 percent of all white-collar workers and just 5 percent of the agricul- tural sector. Occasionally, some high-pro- file incident will bring Mexi- co’s racism to light. For exam- ple, there was outcry in 2013 when Aeromexico, Mexico’s most important airline, issued a commercial casting call say- ing that “nadie moreno” — no dark-skinned people — need to audition. More often, though, racism is ignored or explained away. Many Mexicans, for example, argue that dark-skinned Mex- icans tend to belong to ethnic, cultural and linguistic minori- ties and live in historically dis- See MEXICO on page 20
