Colorism, discrimination are a 'very big problem' in Latino community, survey finds

A majority of Latinos experience discrimination in the United States, according to a new study, but those with a darker skin tone suffer more negative effects.

Nearly half of the 3,375 adults surveyed in March for the Pew Research Center's National Survey of Latinos said discrimination based on race or skin color is a "very big problem."

The Latino community reflects a broad range of ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds. About 62% of Pew survey respondents said darker skin hurts people’s ability to get ahead and a similar number (59%) agreed with the reverse: that a lighter skin shade offers a comparative benefit.

Denise Diaz, a Black Latina who is co-director of worker rights advocacy organization Central Florida Jobs with Justice, sees the responses on discrimination reflected in her own life. 

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"Within the Latinx community, my identity oftentimes gets challenged … on how well I speak Spanish or because I am darker, am I really Latina? I sense a level of those microaggressions and discriminations at times," said Diaz, who is of Puerto Rican heritage. "But also in non-Latinx spaces, experiencing microaggressions and wondering what piece of my identity – Was it my race, my ethnicity, my class? It's more layered and more straightforward, but in those spaces as well I've encountered it."

Overall, according to the Pew survey, the influence of skin color is pervasive, with 57% of respondents saying it affects their daily experience.

“It was very significant to see how skin color really shapes Latinos’ lives and how a majority say that having a darker skin color hurts their ability to get ahead,” said Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, a Pew senior researcher and one of the report’s authors.

Latinos discriminate against each other based on skin color

Although anti-Latino prejudice has long existed, the likelihood of bigotry rose in recent years with "the most anti-Latino presidential administration in our history," said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "When you have someone like Donald Trump, almost daily, spouting lies and bias against Latino immigrants, against Latino people generally, you're going to see an uptick in discrimination." 

The Pew findings reveal the effects of colorism, a form of discrimination against those with darker skin, usually within the same racial or ethnic group. It’s different from racism, but also a form of bigotry.

Nearly two-thirds of Latino adults who identified as having a darker skin color (64%) reported experiencing discrimination in the year leading up to when they were surveyed, according to the Pew study. A slightly smaller percentage of lighter-skinned respondents (54%) also reported an incident of discrimination in the previous year. The offense cited most often by both groups was being treated as if they weren’t smart.

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Those responses show no group is immune to bias, even if percentages vary. Saenz noted he's experienced bigoted behavior when people didn't realize his heritage.

"I don't fit most people's stereotypes as a Latino, so that means that in my life I have had to experience people not putting on a filter and sharing openly in my presence anti-Mexican jokes," he said. "It's a different kind of discrimination, but it's still discrimination."

The percentage of people who reported discrimination coming from within the Latino community was almost as large as the number reporting discrimination coming from someone who isn’t Hispanic (31%). The skin color of those involved in the incidents of discrimination isn't included in the report.

“We found (it) remarkable that Hispanics were just as likely to report having been discriminated against by a Hispanic as they were to report having been discriminated against by a non-Hispanic,” Gonzalez-Barrera said. “So, it just shows you that discrimination is pervasive even within the community.”  

Among darker-skinned Latinos, the gap was even smaller, with 42% citing discrimination by a non-Latino person and 41% experiencing it from a fellow Latino.

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Such evidence of internal conflict shows the Latino community is not the monolith it is still too often perceived to be, said Fordham Law School professor Tanya K. Hernández, author of an upcoming book that deals with the topic, "Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality." 

"What the Pew report supports is a growing body of research, including the new book I'm putting out, that traces the ways in which we are not this homogeneous racial utopia," she said, adding that it has long been "taboo" to discuss anti-Black bias and racial stereotypes within the Latino community. "There's an understood pecking order, but we're not supposed to acknowledge it." 

Hernández, among others, credits the Black Lives Matter movement and related social-justice protests of 2020 with encouraging more conversations about race, especially among socially aware younger people, and providing an opportunity for a long-neglected group, Afro-Latinos, to have a greater voice. (That played out in pop culture in June with criticism from Afro-Latinos over the lack of representation in major roles in the film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda's "In the Heights," which portrays everyday life in the heavily Black Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York City's Manhattan borough.)  

"Afro-Latinos have been given more space to raise their concerns, (when they) may otherwise have been told, 'Be quiet. We're all Latinos. Let's not air the dirty laundry,' " she said. "Now that there's more space to talk about race in general, there's an opportunity for these otherwise silenced voices to be heard."

Historically, there has been "a level of understanding within the Latinx community that the more you can associate or assimilate into the status quo in whiteness that you’ll experience less discrimination and can advance in society," said Diaz, of Central Florida Jobs with Justice. "Some of it is conscious and some of it is subconscious."

She said the conversation within the Latino community in the last couple of years "has really evolved around anti-Blackness, around colorism. ... More people are deepening their understanding."

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Ángel L. Vélez, associate director of diversity and inclusion at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, has experienced race- and color-based transgressions both externally and internally. Vélez, 35, an Afro-Latino man, immediately felt different treatment because of race when he moved from Puerto Rico to Chicago at 16.

"When I was walking down the street, I would be stopped by the police on the assumption that I was a gang member and a lot of that has to do with the color of my skin. That has followed me through my entire career and journey," he said.

At the same time, he has felt "an invisibility of Blackness" within the Latino community. "Not long ago, I was in a group … and another Latino said, 'Your Spanish is great. Where did you learn that?' I asked him, 'Why did you assume that I wasn't Latin American?' " he said. "It's almost like Blackness falls outside the purview of Latinidad."

Racial discrimination within the Latino community must be confronted, but it is a challenging task, Vélez said. First, there has been historical reluctance to discuss race in Latin America, with its colonial history. The United States, for all its racial problems, is "30 years ahead" in talking about race relations, he said.

And, since Latinos as a whole face discrimination from the larger American society for a variety of reasons, including race, ethnicity, color and language, there can be a reluctance to acknowledge similar internal issues, he said. 

"This is a two-fold process. Latinos get discriminated in U.S. society, but we ourselves also do the discriminating," he said. "I see it as two different issues that need to be tackled. This is not an either-or type of situation. We need to ensure that we have less racism and that we fight for changing policies that affect Latinos in general. But, also, we've got to do our own work in our communities to look at how we might be doing injustice to members in our own community."

Fewer Latinos identify as 'white'

The 2020 U.S. census shows a substantial decline in the number of Latinos saying they are white compared with the 2010 count, along with a corresponding rise in those saying they are more than one race. 

Saenz said the increase in people identifying as more than one race results from an awkward two-question format for determining race and Hispanic ethnicity. But UCLA law professor Laura E. Gómez sees this as evidence of "a much stronger race consciousness among Latinos."

Gómez credits two opposing events - Trump's bigotry toward Latinos, and the huge protest movement that followed the killings of Black people, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, by police - as catalysts.

"My opinion is that, in that moment, many Latinos saw it as a choice: Where am I casting my lot? Am I casting it with people of color or am I casting it with whites?" she said.

Gómez credits the Black community with a willingness to discuss colorism, but she sees hints of progress in the Latino community, especially in talking about the lack of representation for Afro-Latinos. Indigenous Latinos, another large group, are also not receiving the attention they deserve, she said.

Colorism, "for Latinos, is beginning to be talked about more," she said. "And this is a really good thing."