Taking Stock of Solidarity Between People of Color in U.S. Politics: Accumulated Evidence, New Challenges, and Fresh Opportunities

Recent work suggests that solidarity between people of color (PoC) is triggered when a minoritized ingroup believes they are discriminated similarly to another outgroup based on their alleged foreignness or inferiority. Heightened solidarity is then supposed to boost support for policies that benefit minoritized outgroups who are not one’s own– for example, Black adults become more pro-Latino, Asian adults become more pro-Black, and Latino adults become more pro-Asian. In this talk, Efrén Pérez will discuss his lab’s growing experimental evidence on this proposed mechanism. He will highlight new challenges and opportunities to learn more—both theoretically and methodologically 0– about interminority solidarity in politics. He concludes by discussing new research agendas to advance our understanding about interminority politics in a multiethnic democracy like the United States.

Efrén Pérez is Full Professor of Political Science and Psychology at UCLA. His research centers on political psychology, with specific interests in intergroup politics, group identity, language and political thinking, implicit political cognition, and psychometrics. He has published more than thirty articles in leading general science, political science, and psychological science journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Social Psychological and Personality Science, Political Behavior, and Political Psychology. He is also the author of four books, including Diversity’s Child: People of Color and the Politics of Identity (Chicago University Press) and Voicing Politics: How Language Shapes Public Opinion (Princeton University Press), which received the 2023 Robert E. Lane Best Book Award in Political Psychology from the American Political Science Association. In addition to his research, Efrén directs the Race, Ethnicity, Politics, and Society (REPS) Lab at UCLA.

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