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Skin Tone and Individuals’ Perceptions of Commonality and Competition with Other Racial and Ethnic Groups

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Abstract

Previous research has shown that skin tone influences how individuals perceive themselves and others. There is considerable variation in skin tone between and among whites, Latinos, and blacks, and considering the role of skin tone in shaping racial attitudes is potentially important. In this paper, we explore the effects of skin tone on perceptions of commonality and competition among whites, blacks, and Latinos. Simply, does skin tone shape how whites, blacks, and Latinos view each other? Using data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we explore the effects of individual self-perceptions of skin tone on racial attitudes. We find that skin tone has an effect only on blacks’ perceptions of Hispanics; light-skinned blacks are less likely to perceive commonality and more likely to perceive employment competition with Latinos, relative to blacks with darker skin tones. We also find some evidence to suggest that the effect of skin tone on blacks’ perceptions of commonality with Latinos is moderated by education.

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Notes

  1. We employ the terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” interchangeably in this study. We also employ the terms “black” and “African American” interchangeably.

  2. We suggest that respondents are likely to consider economic competition broadly to include competition with other groups for a wide range of possible economic benefits, including jobs, business success, investments, educational access, and affordable housing, among others. Because of the general nature of the question, we are unable to disentangle the specific types of economic competition to which respondents might refer.

  3. For the sake of brevity, we do not include estimates for the control variables in our model, though tables reporting these full results are available upon request.

  4. We also consider the effects of unemployment status for black respondents on perceptions of job competition with Latinos. The coefficient for unemployment status does not approach conventional levels of statistical significance in this model, nor is it significant in the models of commonality with Latinos. Moreover, the magnitudes of the coefficients for skin tone are unchanged in models that include unemployment status.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

    Betina Cutaia Wilkinson

  2. Department of Political Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803-5433, USA

    James C. Garand

  3. Department of Political Science and Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Johanna Dunaway

Authors
  1. Betina Cutaia Wilkinson
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  2. James C. Garand
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  3. Johanna Dunaway
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to James C. Garand.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6 and 7.

Table 6 Description of variables
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Table 7 Descriptive summary statistics for survey respondents
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Wilkinson, B.C., Garand, J.C. & Dunaway, J. Skin Tone and Individuals’ Perceptions of Commonality and Competition with Other Racial and Ethnic Groups. Race Soc Probl 7, 181–197 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-015-9151-8

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