Latinos are a racially and phenotypically diverse population, and substantial racial inequalities persist both in Latin America and among U.S. Latinos. Research in Latino politics, however, has primarily focused on the role of panethnic identity and coethnic solidarity in orienting Latinos’ political attitudes. Meanwhile, prior work in sociology argues that Latinos primarily understand their race in panethnic or national origin terms. Both of these literatures attend to the important roles that legacies of discrimination and punitive immigration policies play in racializing Latinos as a distinct group in the U.S., but we are left with an incomplete picture of Latinos’ racial identities and their implications for politics In my dissertation project, I ask: How do Latinos identify their race, and why? And what are the implications of Latinos’ racial identities for public opinion, assimilation, and the future of racial identity politics in the U.S.? The first part of my dissertation will show that racial identities beyond panethnicity—such as Indigenous, White, Black, or Multiracial—are important ways in which many Latinos understand their race on their own terms. I argue that racial identities for Latinos can be both multidimensional and fluid—across time, context, and boundaries—and that existing self-classification questions may not fully capture them.
