Differential Status Evaluations and Racial Bias in the Chilean Segregated School System

Abstract

Although there is growing interest in studying the long‐ignored relationship between stratification and race in Chile, racial bias in person perception remains unknown. We hypothesize that the segregation of the Chilean school system generated a prestige order in which pupils are differentiated by status characteristics according to the type of school they attend, and that these evaluations are based on racial traits. To test this hypothesis, we study whether facial appearance is sufficient to impute the type of school a pupil is attending, and whether these categorizations evoke different status evaluations of wealth and morality based on race. Results confirm that participants’ perceptions of facial appearance allow them to situate pupils in the Chilean social structure. Faces categorized as studying at different types of schools varied in their perceived wealth. However, the relationship between moral traits and types of schools was weak. We also found evidence of racial bias in the participants’ perceptions of pupils’ faces: faces categorized as enrolled in municipal schools (low status) were judged with Amerindian or mestizo racial traits, while faces categorized as attending private fee‐paying schools (high status) were judged with white racial traits. We did not find a relationship between race and morality.

Who Differentiates by Skin Color? Status Attributions and Skin Pigmentation in Chile

“…These results support our research Hypothesis 2. Hence, skin pigmentation in Chile is an important factor in the process of categorizing the status of others, confirming that darker skin tones are associated with lower status positions, as recent evidence in Latin America and in Chile has shown (Uhlmann et al, 2002; Telles, 2014; Salgado and Castillo, 2018).…”

“…The importance of whiteness in the continent is such that skin color conservation mechanisms have been put into practice, as in the marriage market, illustrating the preference for marrying people with white skin pigmentation (Collier and Sater, 2004; Telles and Flores, 2013). In Chile, white people also tend to enjoy formal and informal privileges, social deference, and attribution of socially valued properties (Uhlmann et al, 2002; Salgado and Castillo, 2018). Therefore, it is likely that dark-skinned individuals in Chile are categorized as lower status compared to light-skinned ones.…”

“…Instead of well-defined racial clusters – straightforwardly associated with social status – present in the latter, the former has gone through an extensive miscegenation process that has created a racial gradient with subtle differences, except for the higher echelons of society, which tend to be white. In Chile, previous research suggests that status evaluations of wealth are highly correlated with whiteness (Salgado and Castillo, 2018). Also, studies of skin pigmentation in the metropolitan region (CIIR, 2017) have shown that skin color appears stratified in the Chilean capital: individuals from wealthier households tend to be whiter and have less diversity in skin color than other status groups.…”

“…Skin color could therefore also better explain the social categorization of others in the Latin American context. In recent research on stereotyping conducted in Chile, participants (undergraduate students) estimated the wealth of adolescent faces present in visual stimuli (Salgado and Castillo, 2018). In that study, researchers categorized the stimuli in ethnoracial groups (e.g., Amerindian, White, Black, Mulato ).…”

“…According to this ideology, intensive miscegenation, which has occurred since colonial times, dissolved most of the racial differences, bringing about “one of the most uniform races of the entire world” (Walsh, 2015). Only recently, empirical research has shown the importance of race in general, and skin pigmentation in particular, for status attribution in Chile (Lizcano, 2005; Staab and Maher, 2006; Salgado and Castillo, 2018). All in all, this race-blind ideology has also permeated the culture, so although the Chilean population is genetically diverse (Eyheramendy et al, 2015), the majority self-identify as white, and they manifest strong preferences for light-skinned Chileans, even those who self-identify as morenos (Uhlmann et al, 2002).…”