(bright upbeat music) - Good evening, and welcome to "Horizonte," a show that takes a look at current issues through a Hispanic lens.

I'm your host, Catherine Anaya.

The impact of skin color in the lives of Latinos across the U.S is immense.

From impacting their ability to move ahead in careers to their daily life experiences.

Many Latinos view skin color as a factor affecting their chances to be successful.

The idea of colorism or discrimination based on skin color within a particular race is a deeply hurtful issue among Latinos.

According to a Pew Research study, 62% of Latinos say having a darker skin color hurts their ability to get ahead.

But colorism can also have implications outside of our community when it comes to systems or institutions.

Joining me now to discuss the idea of colorism within and outside Hispanic communities and how it plays out, is Dr. Edward Vargas from the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University.

Thank you so much for joining me.

- Thank you for having me.

- It is good to see you.

So, we know that our population continues to grow, but what a lot of people don't realize is that we are so varied within our community.

There are differences in ethnicity, nationality, race and skin color, factors that can sometimes lead to what we are talking about today, which is colorism.

Can you explain colorism and how it differs from racism?

- Yeah, great question.

So, colorism is the practice and the prejudices and the discrimination that happened because of an individual skin tone, you.

But colorism is also deeper than just skin tone.

It's also your phenotype, for example, if you have curly hair, if you have straight hair, eye color.

So again, skin color is a term used not just to define your individual skin tone, but also your outside sort of a phenotype.

- So, what kind of discrimination do Latinos or might they face when it comes to, and we're zeroing on on skin color in particular, but as you mentioned, there are other areas as well.

- Right.

So, the discrimination that can occur because of skin tone range from, for example, shopping.

We know that, for example, the large majority of Latinos who report discrimination based on their race or on their skin tone, is while shopping, while purchasing, while going out to eat, to more institutional structural things like for example, getting a home loan, a real estate agent showing you a particular neighborhood as opposed to another neighborhood.

Interest rates are affected in fact that Latinos pay higher interest rates in terms of their mortgages, even though they have good credit relative to white, their white counterparts.

I mean also it influences your experiences in terms of other housing, such as getting rent, where you're shown an apartment, it also impacts your, for example, your schooling and your schooling of experiences for your kids.

So for example, we find that in the school to prison pipeline, there is this literature about light-skinned Latino kids who get referred and diagnosed for learning attention issues relative to darker skinned Latinos who get sent to a detention, for example.

Other aspects of this can happen in the world of policing.

We know that if you are darker skinned, you're more likely to be pulled over.

And Arizona is a great case study for this.

- Well, so how would you describe what is happening in Arizona right now?

- So, great.

So, through the legacy of SB 1070, and the "show me your papers" laws that came out of that time, there's been some interesting studies happening.

For example, the ACLU did an evaluation of the Maricopa Sheriff's Office, and found that Latinos were more likely to be stopped.

They were more likely to be held at longer time, and they were more likely to be arrested relative to their white counterparts.

Now, what's really interesting about that data is that there is bias in this data.

For example, when a cop pulls you over, the race of the individual that they're pulling over is done by the police officer, not by the individuals themselves.

So, even with this bias that cops are more likely to actually put white on the paper, Latinos are still more likely to be stopped and detained.

Another kind of key piece to this is that the race of the police officer actually matters here.

So, if you're pulled over by a Latino cop relative to a white cop, impacts whether or not you get, for example, arrested or held for a longer period of time.

And so, if you are stopped by a white cop, for example, you are held, you're five times more likely to be arrested.

- So, when we talk about then the implications, and you're specifically talking about Arizona, how does this affect people who are faced with the colorism when it comes to how they view themselves, how they view themselves in society, how it affects their mental health?

- Great question.

So, in the world of study of race and racism and discrimination, there's this idea of perceived race or socially ascribed race.

Some of my colleagues, we call this street race.

So in other words, if you're walking down the street, how do other people racialize you?

And we find that this actually is, becomes very important for Latinos.

So we find that, for example, Latinos who think that other people see them as white actually report better health outcomes.

When it comes to discrimination, Latinos who other people see them as white, for example, are less likely to be pulled over by the police, are less likely to be discriminated while trying to find housing.

Less likely to be experiencing discrimination at a health clinic.

- It's fascinating, and I wanna read some statistics here.

According to a recent Pew Research Center's bilingual national survey of 3,375 Hispanic U.S adults, a majority, 62% say having darker skin color hurts their ability to get ahead in the U.S today at least a little.

And 59% say, having a lighter skin color helps Hispanics get ahead.

And 57% say skin color shapes their daily life experiences a lot more.

So, these are significant numbers, we're talking about what happens outside of our community, but what happens within our community when we're talking about colorism?

'Cause it does happen.

- Yeah, great, great question.

You know, what we find is that, of course, we all, we come in all different shades and colors.

We know, for example, there's this antidote and this joke about when a baby's born and how, you know, given the skin color of the baby, it's like, (Dr. Edward speaking in a foreign language) like a little light skinned baby, as opposed to like a baby that's darker.

(Dr. Edward speaking in a foreign language) And you'll be like, (Dr. Edward speaking in a foreign language) So, there are these these underlying tones of racism and discrimination that our community has, right?

But it's important to note that in some data that I have as part of a Co-PI on some large data sets funded by the National Science Foundation, we find that in fact Latinos, while yes, there is discrimination that happens within our community, but if you look at the actual data, we find that about 74% of the discrimination experiences that we experience are from, coming from white populations.

So, around 10 to 12% are within Hispanic discrimination.

Now, that's really important to keep in mind here.

I think what happens is just that when it happens from somebody like us, it hurts a little bit more.

- [Catherine] I was going to say, it's still hurtful- - It feels different, it stings different.

But the data doesn't support that in terms of its impact on your health.

So, it's only when you experience discrimination from a white person, does that impact your physical and your mental health.

And we find no statistical differences when it's somebody of your own race.

- So, whether it's in our community or outside our community, colorism is something that needs to be discussed.

- [Dr. Edward] That's correct.

- It's very important to how it impacts us on our daily lives.

- Discrimination, racism are real.

They impact our health.

It impacts everybody's health.

I think for the most part, what we tend to find from people that we interview is that people can't make sense of it.

Are they discriminating because of my skin color?

Are they discriminating because of my weight?

Maybe I'm maybe bigger.

Are they discriminating me maybe 'cause they assume that I'm an immigrant?

So, there is these kind of layered intersectional pieces that make us think about that experience.

We know that if you tend to think about these things over time, that is actually gets under our skin, which then impacts our health.

- But it's not talked about enough in our community.

Would you agree with that?

- I think it's not talked about enough.

I think we have to educate ourselves both and unlearn some of the things that maybe we've been taught.

We have a duty as, for example, I'm a parent, I have a three-year-old and we talk about race.

I buy books that talk specifically about the role of race and discrimination and differences.

For example, a great book is about hair, about about hair texture, and about how this baby has beautiful hair.

Zuri is the name of the character in this book about hair.

Have a book about shades and different shade colors.

I'll just say is that we both have an obligation to teach ourselves, to educate ourselves.

And for, we have older parents, educate our parents about what's going on.

And then educate our younger community about what's going on in the world.

- Any ideas when we are talking about the older generation in our family, about approaching that subject with, you know, some of our elders who maybe don't understand that colorism is actually something significant?

- Well, I think they understand because they've experienced it.

- [Catherine] Right.

But maybe they don't know it has a name.

- They don't know it has a name, and they don't know what to do about it.

And I think that's different.

We see that generationally.

So for example, if you do feel like you've experienced discrimination, you should speak up and maybe seek legal representation.

If it happened at work or it happened in a place where you shouldn't be treated differently because of your race and ethnicity.

Older folks know, they live through it.

We're not too far removed from the civil rights era of this, you know, in American history.

A lot of times, parents who are immigrants, they're coming from places in the country where they see it a little bit differently, right?

They see it maybe in the novellas, while the light-skinned folks are the main actors, the darker skinned folks are the servants, right?

So, they experience it.

They maybe just don't have the language to call it out for what it is.

- Well, it's an important conversation that we all need to be having on a regular basis, for sure.

And like you said, you know, you can start with your children.

- You start with your children, yeah.

And if you're at ASU and you wanna come visit, I teach a class on Race, Medicine and the Body.

So come learn about how race and discrimination gets under your skin, and how it impacts your health.

- I love that.

Thank you so much, I really appreciate you joining me.

- Thank you.

- Okay, good to see you.

And that's our show for tonight.

For "Horizonte" and Arizona PBS, I'm Catherine Anaya.

Have a great night.

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