UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Political Psychology of Race in Comparative Perspective: Racial Identity, Attitudes, and Participation in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science by Fabr´ıcio Mendes Fialho 2017 c Copyright by Fabr´ıcio Mendes Fialho 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Political Psychology of Race in Comparative Perspective: Racial Identity, Attitudes, and Participation in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States by Fabr´ıcio Mendes Fialho Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor David O. Sears, Chair In this dissertation, I investigate why race is a salient political cleavage in some societies but not in others. Focusing on three countries marked by racial inequality but that differ in their racial dynamics – Brazil, South Africa, and the United States – I examine why the their racial formation processes resulted in strongly politicized racial identities in the two latter cases but not in the former. I advance a theoretical argument that emphasizes the political roots of the development salient racial identities in these countries. I contend that, when a nation formation process has a built- in emphasis on racial hierarchies and prejudice and the state apparatus is employed for the en- forcement of racial group boundaries in order to enact discriminatory policies against subordinate groups, this process unintentionally contributes to the formation of group consciousness among the members of political minorities, to reinforcement of major social cleavages, and to the emergence of political actors demanding social change. Apartheid in South Africa and the Jim Crow laws in the Southern United States, in using the state to oversee racial boundaries and to implement discriminatory practices against Blacks (and Coloureds, in the South African case) in favor of their White populations, fostered the development of strong group identities that ended up being crucial for the struggle against and eventual breakdown of those segregationist social systems. Brazil has not experienced legal forms of racial discrimination or segregation since the end of slavery in the late nineteenth and has celebrated race-mixing as a core element of its national identity, which ii resulted in permeable group boundaries and in the lack of consistent racial group identities. To test this hypothesis empirically, I analyze data from cross-national surveys as the World Values Survey, the International Social Survey Programme, and the Social Hubble to assess group differences in perceptions of discrimination, political trust, and participation in political acts and voluntary organizations. Findings indicate the persistence of robust differences in institutional trust and participation between race groups in South Africa and the United States but not in Brazil. Results on perceived discrimination show that non-Whites do report higher levels of perceived dis- crimination compared to Whites yet the group gap is conditional on the context the type of discrim- ination. Importantly, results from Brazil and South Africa, when analyzed jointly are suggestive that group-levels of perceived discrimination cannot account for the the lack of group differences in political attitudes and behavior in Brazil and the political salience of race in South Africa. Prior literature is corroborated by findings for the United States. Overall, results support the theoretical claim that the politicization of racial identities is depen- dent on contextual conditions such as the existence of strong social cleavages and the enforcement of group boundaries by the state. Once politicized, those identities have important political conse- quences. iii The dissertation of Fabr´ıcio Mendes Fialho is approved. Stanley R. Bailey Lorrie Frasure-Yokley Daniel N. Posner David O. Sears, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv To Mark Q. Sawyer v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 1 1.1 Setting the Puzzle...................................1 1.2 Why Brazil, South Africa, and the United States? A Brief Historic Digression...3 1.3 Group boundaries and racial identity.........................5 1.3.1 Nation-building and racial groups......................5 1.3.2 Social identity and the permeability of boundaries.............. 10 1.4 Forging and Mobilizing Racial Identities....................... 12 1.4.1 The argument................................. 15 1.5 Outline of chapters.................................. 16 2 Perceived Discrimination :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 19 2.1 Perceiving discrimination............................... 21 2.1.1 Some consequences of perceived discrimination............... 22 2.1.2 Who perceives discrimination........................ 23 2.2 Data and methods................................... 26 2.2.1 Samples.................................... 26 2.2.2 Measures of perceived discrimination.................... 27 2.2.3 Racial classification............................. 28 2.2.4 Folk categories and cultural identities.................... 30 2.2.5 Sociodemographics.............................. 31 2.2.6 Identity salience............................... 31 2.2.7 Intergroup contact.............................. 32 vi 2.2.8 Computational procedures.......................... 32 2.3 Findings........................................ 33 2.3.1 Racial discrimination............................. 33 2.3.2 Everyday Discrimination........................... 43 2.3.3 Are everyday and racial discrimination related?............... 54 2.4 Discussion....................................... 57 3 Institutional Trust ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 63 3.1 Race and political trust................................ 68 3.2 Measuring trust in public institutions......................... 72 3.3 Testing for measurement invariance......................... 74 3.3.1 Confirmatory factor analytic models for ordinal variables.......... 75 3.3.2 Levels of measurement invariance...................... 77 3.3.3 Model fit................................... 80 3.4 Data and methods................................... 82 3.4.1 World Values Survey datasets........................ 82 3.4.2 Measures of trust in institutions....................... 84 3.4.3 Racial classification............................. 85 3.4.4 Validation datasets.............................. 86 3.4.5 Missing data imputation........................... 87 3.4.6 Computational procedures.......................... 88 3.5 Results......................................... 88 3.5.1 Correlation analysis, variables selection, and measurement model........................... 88 3.5.2 Descriptive analysis............................. 96 vii 3.5.3 Tests of measurement invariance using the WVS5.............. 99 3.5.4 Latent mean differences among groups, WVS5............... 105 3.5.5 Validation analysis.............................. 107 3.6 Discussion....................................... 112 3.7 Appendix: Polychoric correlations.......................... 117 4 Social and Political Participation ::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 126 4.1 Measuring Participation................................ 131 4.1.1 The political and the non-political...................... 131 4.1.2 Modes of participation............................ 133 4.2 Data and Methods................................... 136 4.2.1 Datasets.................................... 136 4.2.2 Measures of political participation...................... 137 4.2.3 Race classification.............................. 139 4.2.4 Sociodemographics and interest in politics.................. 140 4.2.5 Missing data imputation........................... 140 4.2.6 Computational procedures.......................... 141 4.3 Findings........................................ 142 4.3.1 Group-level differences in political participation.............. 142 4.3.2 Sociodemographic variables and race.................... 147 4.3.3 Regression analysis.............................. 157 4.4 Discussion....................................... 163 5 Conclusion ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 165 Bibliography :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 171 viii LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Legal racial segregation and racial classification................... 14 2.1 Average perceived racial discrimination and race.................. 34 2.2 Folk categories, cultural identities, and perceived racial discrimination........ 38 2.3 Average perceived everyday discrimination by race................. 45 2.4 Folk categories, cultural identities, and perceived everyday discrimination...... 48 2.5 Predicted probabilities of perceiving discrimination.................. 56 3.1 Two-domain model of trust in institutions...................... 95 3.2 Trust in Order and in Political institutions...................... 97 3.3 Latent means, WVS5................................. 106 3.4 Latent factor means, validation datasets....................... 113 4.1 Participation in political action............................ 143 4.2 Participation in voluntary organizations....................... 145 4.3 Education and political activism, ISSP........................ 148 4.4 Education and political activism, WVS5....................... 149 4.5 Education and organizational membership, WVS5.................. 150 4.6 Age and political activism, ISSP........................... 152 4.7 Age and political activism, WVS5.........................