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A growing body of literature finds evidence of “colorism” around the world (Dixon and Telles 2017). This concept is closely related to racism but focuses on the effects of skin color on outcomes—effects that may extend beyond those associated with racial or ethnic self-identification (Glenn 2009). Studies find that skin tone can affect wages (Goldsmith, Hamilton, and Darity 2006), educational attainment, perceived attractiveness (Hersch 2006), and health outcomes (Monk 2015). Scholars have suggested that such social inequalities based on skin color have the potential to be catastrophic for a democratic political system (e.g., Houle 2015). However, little is known about the political consequences of social differences tied to skin pigmentation. Does inequality tied to skin tone translate into dissatisfaction with the political system that allows these inequalities to persist?
We use recent Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) surveys to answer two questions about the relationship between skin pigmentation and political life in Latin America. That survey project has included the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America (PERLA) Color Palette on most surveys conducted since 2010. The item asks the interviewer to record the skin tone of the respondent by referring to a carefully designed, numbered color palette. We leverage this extensive pool of datasets to improve our understanding of the social and political consequences of skin pigmentation in Latin America.
We begin by documenting the clear pattern across countries in this region where those with darker skin attain systematically lower levels of education and wealth. These relationships hold after controlling for other demographic characteristics—including, notably, self-reported race. The negative relationship between the darkness of skin tone and socio-economic standing is strong and emerges in the analysis pooling across countries as well as in each of the 18 individual countries we consider.
We then consider the political implications of these fundamental social inequalities. Do the deleterious social consequences of skin pigmentation lead to decreased satisfaction with the way the political system operates? We examine the relationship between pigmentation and three attitudes about the political system: (1) satisfaction with the state of democracy in the respondent's country, (2) external political efficacy, and (3) respect for political institutions. Surprisingly, our pooled analysis suggests that, if anything, darker pigmentation is associated with more positive assessments...