Politicians of Color on the Ballot

"I heard it today that she doesn't meet the requirements," said former President Donald Trump in August 2020, claiming that then-candidate Vice President Kamala Harris was not eligible for office because, in Trump's mind, she may not have been a natural-born U.S. citizen. Trump had made similar remarks about his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, on the first wave of what has come to be known as the "birther movement," which started before Obama's first election in 2008. Four U.S. Congresswomen of color have been the targets of similar conspiracy theories, which have not been confined to fringe social media echo chambers but have been repeated by unscrupulous opinion leaders even in mainstream media.

How Does Skin Tone and Racial/Ethnic Group of a Political Candidate of Color Influence Voters?

Because such falsehoods have been concocted only about politicians of color and have appealed to a large share of the electorate made mostly of White constituents, we began to examine how voters' opinions about a political candidate might be influenced by that candidate's skin tone. Unfortunately, we know from previous research that people of color with lighter skin tones earn more, are perceived as more educated, and are generally seen as more attractive than people with a darker complexion—a form of discrimination known as colorism.

Skin tone, however, is not the only factor that influences how people of color are perceived. The racial and ethnic groups to which people belong, are assigned or perceived to be, also affect their placement in society's hierarchy as well. For example, certain racial and ethnic groups are often considered less American, even if they are citizens of the United States. This perception of foreignness can lead to discrimination and inequality and also have more serious implications.

To investigate whether both colorism and racial/ethnic bias play a role at the ballot box, we conducted research in which we showed different groups (college students and members of the community) an image of the same male political candidate with some small changes (skin tone variations and/or race/ethnicity labels) and then asked for their reactions, such as how warm they felt toward the candidate, how trustworthy they thought him to be, how much of an expert in his field they thought he was, and how likely they were to vote for him. In our third study, we also presented participants with a collection of images of the same candidate with lighter or darker skin tone, and asked them to choose the image of the candidate they thought they had seen at the beginning of the study. Would they remember correctly, and how would their choices be related to their attitudes towards him?

Bias Towards Lighter Skin Tone

When presented with the same candidate of color, White participants generally favored the African American political candidate with a lighter skin tone over the same candidate with darker skin. They expressed more positive interpersonal judgments about him and indicated that they were more likely to vote for him than for an African American candidate with a darker skin tone, and more than for a candidate with a lighter skin tone identified as Mexican American. Generally, the participants remembered the political candidate as having a lighter skin tone than the image they had seen at beginning of the study and the lighter the participants remembered the candidate to be, the more positively they judged him. Importantly, this first set of studies did not simply suggest that judging a political candidate of color is just a matter of "lighter skin = better." Instead, we uncovered a more nuanced process that White voters experience when people of color are on the ballot.

Are Mexican Americans Seen as Less American by White Voters?

These findings were intriguing and pointed to the possibility that another factor—perception of foreignness—was also at play. To investigate this, we next showed participants an image of a political candidate with a Brown skin tone, and described the candidate as either Mexican American or African American. In addition to the same judgments as before, we asked participants to rate how American they thought the candidate was. Overall, participants perceived the Mexican American candidate as less American than the African American candidate. In addition, this perception of Americanness helped to explain differences in White voters' judgments of the African versus Mexican American candidate and their voting intentions. In other words, White voters were less likely to express positive opinions about the Mexican American candidate, in part because they did not perceive him to be more American.

Our findings inform the pursuit of a more diverse political representation in the leadership positions of our institutions. We believe that increasing the representativeness of those in power is important for both moral and practical reasons because expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion in government is a matter of principle and efforts to pursue such initiatives are key to ensuring the survival of liberal democracies.

For Further Reading

Chirco, P., & Buchanan, T. M. (2023). We the People. Who? The face of future American politics is shaped by perceived foreignness of candidates of color. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12341

Chirco, P., & Buchanan, T. M. (2022). Dark faces in white spaces: The effects of skin tone, race, ethnicity, and intergroup preferences on interpersonal judgments. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 22(1), 427-447. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12304

Patty Chirco is a doctoral candidate at the University of Bern studying interventions to reduce threat responses to DEI efforts as well as social justice issues, particularly the effects of the categorization of people from underrepresented groups based on the intersections of their phenotypical traits and the groups they belong to on interpersonal judgments.

Tonya M. Buchanan is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Central Washington University. Her research explores the role of identity, emotion, and heuristics in (social) judgments and decision-making, with a focus on issues of bias and equity.