Taking Account of Blackness Among Latinos: Afro-Latino Oversample

Measuring the role of racial identity among US Latina/o/x communities is an ongoing challenge for scholars in the social sciences. Several datasets, including the US Census, demonstrate that self-identified Black Latinos are lower on socioeconomic indicators, homeownership, and poverty levels than the rest of the Latino population (Aja et al. 2019; Holder and Aja 2021; Martinez and Aja 2021; Ortiz and Telles 2012), despite higher high school and college graduation rates (Aja et al. 2019). Darker-skinned Latinos also have been found to experience higher discrimination at the workplace (Espino and Franz 2002). Racial differences among Latinos matter, and these gaps necessitate analysis. How do we measure racial identification among a multiracial population?

Table 1 Political Attitudes and Discrimination

Note: *Discrimination questions read: “In dealings with the police/immigration officers, have you experienced discrimination or exclusion because you are Black/Latino?” (Clealand 2024)

Table 2 Self-Identification and Racialization

Note: *Although trigueño was listed as a separate category in the survey, I present the results together with mulato/mestizo because they all represent the terms for mixed-race categories in different Latin American and Caribbean countries.

The Afro-Latino oversample of the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) represents an important step in upending the idea that Latinos are part of one “brown” category. It recognizes that they are racially diverse and must be studied with the same attention to race and racialization as other US racial and ethnic groups. Within the country’s racial hierarchy, Latinos do not occupy one space but instead fit according to a person’s race and skin color. Analyzing Latinos as brown—or what I term the “browning effect”—homogenizes Latinos into a singular position in our nation’s hierarchy (often in a position between Black and white Americans) without disaggregating by race, which invisibilizes Black and Indigenous populations.

The Afro-Latino oversample of the CMPS represents an important step in upending the idea that Latinos are part of one “brown” category. It recognizes that they are racially diverse and must be studied with the same attention to race and racialization as other US racial and ethnic groups. The presence of these data marks a clear turning point in our ability to analyze Blackness among Latinos and how race is perceived and experienced by this population.

Data-Collection Challenges

Compiling a sample of Afro-Latinos presents many challenges that likely are different than any other oversample in the CMPS. To collect data on Afro-Latinos, we needed to establish who is part of this population; self-identification as Black is not as straightforward as it may be with other Black populations. In Latin America, racial frameworks vary, and separate categories exist for those of mixed race that would be considered Black in the United States. Those of mixed race, therefore, often identify with these middle or intermediate categories, including mulato, pardo, mestizo, and moreno, rather than Black. ¹ As a result, if we add only those respondents who identify as both Black and Latino to the oversample, we omit a significant percentage of the Afro-Latino population. Moreover, national narratives in Latin America that emphasize racial mixing, or mestizaje, suggest that all people have a mix of European, African, and Indigenous ancestry to foment unity. This leads to challenges in making determinations about (1) who is Afro-descendant; (2) whether Afro-Latino is different than Black self-identification; and (3) whether we should include those who are not racialized as Black or even Latino but who self-identified as Afro-Latino in the survey.

Sample Demographics and Findings

In the 2020 CMPS Afro-Latino oversample (N=1,145), respondents were divided between the choice of Black and Hispanic/Latino as their primary race: 45% each. The CMPS used the term “Afro-Latino” in its screening question for the oversample, asking whether respondents identified as having Black and Latin American ancestry. They had the choice of self-identification, a parent who identified, and/or a grandparent who did. Respondents represented 48 states with the largest percentage from New York and New Jersey (17%), followed by Florida and California at 12% from each state. Among those who classified as Latino as their primary race/ethnicity, we were able to capture their national origin: 23.0% were Mexican, 22.0% were Puerto Rican, 11.5% were Dominican, and 6.4% were Cuban (Clealand 2024) Table 1 showst the oversample had higher levels of Democratic support (59%, including support for President Biden) than the primary Latino sample (50%) but not as high as respondents from the primary Black sample (64%). Afro-Latinos also fell between the Black and Latino samples on support for Black Lives Matter: Afro-Latinos (66.6%) supported BLM more than Latinos as a whole (52.4%) but less than the Black primary sample (72.9%). Notably, Afro-Latinos reported the most experiences with discrimination by police, immigration officers, employers and coworkers, and other people by as much as 12 percentage points when compared to the Black primary sample. Because they are discriminated against by larger society as well as within their own Latino ethnic groups, this statistic is not surprising (Benson and Clealand 2021; Lavariega Monforti and Sanchez 2010).

Measuring Racial Identity among LATINOS

The ways that Latinos view race necessitate a more complex methodology for measuring race—that is, multidimensional racial measures. The 2020 CMPS asked respondents to indicate race/ethnicity, skin color, and how they were racialized by others. For the Afro-Latino sample, I included an additional question that asked respondents to list their racial category from choices that did not correspond to US racial frameworks but rather the frameworks and censuses in Latin America and the Caribbean. ² These multidimensional racial measures allowed us to understand with more accuracy and complexity how race is lived and perceived by Afro-Latinos. With this dataset, we could compare notions of racial self-identification, racialization, skin color, and census self-identification, as well as analyze how these characteristics matter for experiences and attitudes among Afro-Latinos.

Among those who identified with Black as their primary race, 70% also identified as Black in the expanded race question, and another 24% identified as one of the mixed-race categories. Among those who chose Latino as their primary race/ethnicity, 14% identified as Black and 55% as a mixed-race category (See Table 2). Thus, although some Latinos’ self-identification may not be Black, many chose Afro-descendant racial categories, such as mulato, moreno, and trigueño. The expanded racial question demonstrated that a survey that samples Afro-descendants among the Latino population cannot ask about race using only US Census categories. Overall, 41% of respondents answered that they were racialized as Black in their everyday lives, and 36% stated that they were racialized as Latino. ³ The oversample represents different realities among Afro-descendants; race and racialization are complex concepts that change with region and context.

Latinos are engaged in a dual process in which how they identify racially is influenced by both US racial frameworks and those used in their home country or even their parents’ and grandparents’ home country. To study racial identity among Latinos, we must possess a substantive understanding of racial identity in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as how racial categories and schemas differ across the region as country-specific conceptualizations. Who is racialized as Black in the Dominican Republic, for example, is not the same as in Cuba, despite their geographic closeness and similar histories of colonization and enslavement by the Spanish.

In addition to the incongruence between racial frameworks in the United States versus Latin America and the Caribbean, the anti-Blackness within Latino communities and in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean affects self-identification and group closeness. For example, whereas those who identified as Black only on the CMPS may have a strong Latino identity, discrimination within their own community may contribute to an alignment with Black populations. Conversely, Latin American narratives of race historically have devalued and diluted Blackness, which can discourage identification with the Black category (Contreras 2016; Cruz-Janzen 2007; Mitchell 2018).

The 2020 CMPS oversample allowed us to have the conversations included in this article to determine how to improve the process for 2024. We continue to pursue questions on how to define a population based on self-identification with such complex and varied racial narratives throughout the Latin American region. The presence of these data marks a clear turning point in our ability to analyze Blackness among Latinos and how race is perceived and experienced by this population. As the first national Afro-Latino sample, we are excited about the possibilities that the data present, and we look forward to making improvements for the 2024 CMPS.