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