Las Vidas Negras Importan: Centering Blackness and Racial Politics in Latin American Research

Racial disparities in Latin America exist in poverty levels, income, education, infant mortality, political representation, access to social services, and other key indicators. However, researchers in comparative politics face an uphill challenge to prioritize racial politics in studies of democratization, democratic consolidation, representation, and even social movements and inequality, despite racial hierarchies being quite harmful to democracy in Latin America. This article argues for the centering of Black politics and racial hierarchies in Latin American politics and highlights recent literature to map just how that can be done. More than adding race as a variable or a control, we must understand racial identification and anti-Black racism in Latin America: how they operate, and how they influence, complicate, motivate, affirm, and inspire politics. In this article, I address ( a) why we should center racial politics in Latin American politics, ( b) how comparative racial scholars have centered Black politics, ( c) the methodologies necessary to accurately measure racial identification, and ( d) recent research that examines the interplay between racial self-identification, Black group consciousness, and voting behavior.