Posted on 10/06/2010 9:58:55 AM PDT by decimon
WASHINGTON, DC, October 6, 2010 — Despite the popular, state-sponsored ideology that denies the existence of prejudice based on racial or skin color differences in Mexico, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin provides evidence of profound social inequality by skin color.
According to the study, individuals with darker skin tones have less education, have lower status jobs, are more likely to live in poverty, and are less likely to be affluent.
Andrés Villarreal, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and the Population Research Center affiliate, published his findings in the October 2010 issue of the American Sociological Review.
He found a high level of agreement among respondents of a nationally representative survey of more than 2,000 participants about who belongs to three basic skin color categories (blanco/güero - or white; moreno claro - or light brown; and moreno oscuro - or dark brown). In addition, he investigated how skin color is associated with a person's socioeconomic status.
Respondents who are light brown have 29.5 percent lower odds of having a college education or more compared to those who are white, while those who are dark brown have 57.6 percent lower odds.
The difference in occupational status between light-brown and white respondents, and especially between dark-brown and white respondents, is substantially reduced once education level is introduced as a predictor. In other words, the disparity in access to education among respondents in different color categories may explain a large part, but not all, of the observed differences in occupational status.
Respondents in the lowest occupational categories, such as domestic workers, manual workers, drivers, and security guards, are much more likely to be in the dark-brown category and less likely to be in the white category than are respondents in the highest status occupations, such as office supervisors, professional workers, and employers. Only 9.4 percent of manual workers are considered white, compared with 28.4 percent of professionals. Light-brown workers have 25.2 percent lower odds of being a professional worker than whites, while a dark-brown respondent has 35.9 percent lower odds of being in the top two occupational categories than a white respondent.
"These differences in socioeconomic outcomes are, of course, insufficient to demonstrate the persistence of discriminatory practices against individuals based on the color of their skin," Villarreal says. "However, the fact that differences in occupational status across skin color categories cannot be fully explained by other factors, suggests that Mexicans with darker skin tones may in fact face discrimination in the labor market."
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The research article described above is available by request for members of the media. For a copy, contact Daniel Fowler, ASA's Media Relations and Public Affairs Officer, at (202) 527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org.
About the American Sociological Association and the American Sociological Review
The American Sociological Association (www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society. The American Sociological Review is the ASA's flagship journal.
For more information about the study, members of the media can also contact Michelle Bryant, Office of Public Affairs, (512) 232-4730 or mbryant@austin.utexas.edu, or Andrés Villarreal, Department of Sociology, (512) 471-8309 or avilla@prc.utexas.edu.
Mexico is racist to the hilt!
Wow. Big Surprise. Same is true for those who speak Indian language(s?) rather than Spanish, according to someone who has been there.
Wonder how much they paid to find this out.
I made the same observations doing business in Mexico City.
Everything would be OK of we darn Americans hadn’t imported our racist customs to poor, pristine Mexico.
are kidding? lol I’ve been down there a few times and observed it first hand as well. light skinned people get better treatment. don’t get me started on blondes... it is like a Mexican’s kryptonite! lol
Skin color is an indicator for whether you are of predominantly European descent, native American descent, or mixed.
Ever watch one of their TV shows (I use the term loosely) or a news broadcast? You would think it was coming from Madrid or Barcelona.
Mexico is incredibly racist. The descendants of the Spanish hate and lord it over the descendants of the natives. Take a look around the next time you drive by a day labor site...you won’t see a whole lot of light-colored European-descended Hispanics out there. They’re mostly darker and clearly native-descended. They’re the perpetual underclass in Mexico.
}:-)4
I thought the discrimination in Mexico was against those from the Southern border to Mexico and from the land to the North of Mexico’s border.
Why is the University of Texas using taxpayer money to fund a study of racism in Mexico?!!
Its been common knowledge since the Taco was invented that there is a clear separation of classes in Mexico. You have the lighter skin mixed European bloodlines that generally are in the higher income brackets, and who go about their lives very much the way we do here in the U.S. , and then there are those largely descended from North, Central, and South American Indigenous peoples, which have throughout time remained in the low to lower middle class. Not sure what more can be learned from a new study.
The older I get and the more I see of the world I am convinced that prejudice is as much a part of being a human being as love, hate, greed ,envy..etc. Go to any country and I defy anyone to not find a race or culture that is in that country purely to perform jobs or function in roles that the native will not do.
Madrid or Barcelona? Hah!
Actually it looks a lot more like Stockholm or Oslo on Univision, Telemundo and the rest of the Hispanic networks.
Don "Francisco", host of "Sabado Gigante", is actually Kreutzberger-Blumenfeld of German-Jewish descent. If you're looking for leggy white women with blonde hair and blue eyes on television, just watch one of the variety shows on a station targeting the Mexican audience. An English language network could never get away with that lack of diversity.
Honestly, I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Mexican television but I have never seen a single person of whom I would describe as one of the indigenous people.
Here in Texas, it's nigh impossible to miss a television broadcast targeted to the Mexicans (illegal and otherwise) in our state. The cable lineup in our area is such that channel surfing from ABC to ESPN takes one past at least 6 or 7 such outlets.
To your point, this link from the Washington Post appears to be dead (or scrubbed). The title, The Blond, Blue-Eyed Face of Spanish TV: Activists Decry Shows as Sexist, Stereotypical--and Absent Darker Hues is intriguing and supports your contention. I'd sure like to read the entire article.
So Mexico is a racist, class-ridden corrupt sh!t-hole. Wow. Who’d have thought it?
Shocked!
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