EXECUTI VE S U MMARY
APRIL 2021
Toward a More Perfect Union:
Understanding Systemic
Racism and Resulting Inequity
in Latino Communities
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests across the country have
fueled an unprecedented national conversation on racial justice. However, this national
discourse often ignores how historical and institutional dynamics produce cumulative
and persistent disparities for Latino* communities in this country. This exclusion reflects
a long history and set of experiences regarding Latinos in the United States that is often
hidden and difficult to quantify. History and research show that one thing is clear: past
policymakers’ actions—sometimes intentional and other times not—to exclude, suppress,
and “otherize” people of color have shaped the Latino experience in this country, as they
have shaped the experiences of other communities of color. Even though the United
States has abolished the most egregious, formal examples of systemic racism, their
legacy, as well as more subtle forms of exclusion, persist.
Toward a More Perfect Union: Understanding Systemic Racism and Resulting Inequity in
Latino Communities offers a “primer” for understanding the ways that systemic racism
has impacted Latino communities. In particular, this paper outlines the role that systemic
racism plays in perpetuating injustices and inequity in the areas of employment, income and
poverty, education, homeownership, wealth, health coverage, and criminal justice. On the
whole, systemic racism is a key factor explaining the unequal social, political, and economic
opportunities for the nation’s 60 million Latinos. On each of these measures—from
housing to education to criminal justice to immigration and others—Latino socioeconomic
outcomes are significantly lower than those of their White counterparts. Together, these
disparities continue to reinforce the separate and unequal status of Latinos in the United
States by fueling a cycle of inequity where power (in terms of wealth or representation in
government)—remains out of reach for many Hispanics.
* The terms “Hispanic” and “Latino” are used interchangeably by the U.S. Census Bureau and throughout this
document to refer to persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central and South American, Dominican,
Spanish, and other Hispanic descent. According to the technical definitions used by the Census, Latinos may
be of any race. This document uses the sociological construct of “race” whereby, at least historically, most
Latinos were treated as a distinct racial group, regardless of ethnicity. UnidosUS also occasionally refers to
this population as “Latinx” to represent the diversity of gender identities and expressions that are present in
the community.
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TOWARD A MORE PERFECT UNION:
Criminal Justice
Institutionalized police violence has affected Latino communities for decades. Later
twentieth-century penal laws and uneven enforcement have disproportionately affected
the Latino community, and Latinos are 1.7 times (170%) more likely to be killed by a
police officer than their White counterparts.* This estimate is likely an undercount due
to the lack of ethnicity data collected by most criminal justice databases. In addition,
Latino immigrants have the stigma of “criminality” ascribed to them by an ever-evolving
assortment of laws and immigration-enforcement mechanisms.
Education
In the United States, right from the start, people of color have had limited access to
education. As recently as the 1960s, most Black, Latino, and Native American elementary
and secondary school students were relegated to largely segregated schools funded at
much lower levels than those serving White children, and many students of color were
entirely excluded from some higher education institutions. This unequal system is the
result of the confluence of intentional laws, policies, and cultural practices, including Jim
Crow legislation in the South, state laws and practices ensuring segregation of Latinos
in the Southwest, the rise of residential segregation in the northern states, and the
limited role of the federal government in funding and overseeing public education. Even
after legal segregation was abolished, Latinos were subject to additional isolation via
restrictions based on language. Today, Latino children remain more likely to be in schools
with fewer resources and lower funding levels, and they are now the most segregated
school children in the country.
Employment
Historically, employment programs and labor protection laws—such as the Social
Security Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), which introduced
unemployment insurance and other protections (including a 40-hour workweek, a federal
minimum wage, and overtime requirements)—have disproportionately excluded Black and
Latino workers from these benefits through an exemption on many domestic, agricultural,
and service occupations. These and many other subsequent policy decisions relegated
many Latino workers to lower-status occupations without protections and perpetuated
the exploitation of workers of color. The effects persist today. Although Latinos currently
have the highest labor force participation rate of any racial or ethnic group in the United
States, they are concentrated in low-wage jobs and are the least likely to have access to
benefits, including paid leave.
Health
High uninsurance rates in the Latino community are driven, in large part, by the
structural racism embedded in the employment-based insurance system, as employers
in many of the lower-tier occupations in which Hispanics are concentrated rarely offer
health insurance as a fringe benefit. Among Hispanics, 41% receive health insurance
* References to specific facts and figures or other background information can be found in the full version of
this paper.
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UNDERSTANDING SYSTEMIC RACISM AND RESULTING INEQUITY IN LATINO COMMUNITIES
through their jobs, compared to 66% of Whites. State and federal policies restricting
coverage eligibility for publicly funded health benefits have a disproportionate impact
on Latino coverage rates. While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was intended to help
provide coverage to more individuals, as the overall number of uninsured people in the
United States fell, the Latino uninsured rate remained one of the highest in the country,
and many gains made by the ACA for Latinos have been lost in recent years. Language
barriers too often effectively bar Latinos from appropriate care. The compounded
effects of social determinants such as housing, working conditions, and schooling lead
to Latinos being more likely than Whites to report being in “fair” or “poor” health, with a
greater incidence of chronic health conditions.
Housing
Practices such as redlining and residential segregation are two pernicious hallmarks of
racism and discrimination in our nation’s housing system. Outright discrimination and
a series of other practices, such as “steering” Latinos away from predominantly White
neighborhoods, have resulted in difficulty accessing mortgages or homes close to
good jobs and schools, as well as difficulty in finding affordable, quality rental housing.
Although the worst discriminatory housing practices have been banned, their lasting
effects have perpetuated segregated neighborhoods, along with their accompanying
socioeconomic, educational, and health-related harms. Throughout the twentieth
century, U.S. policymakers and institutions designed and implemented laws, programs,
and policies to increase wealth building through property ownership and making rental
housing affordable, but those efforts largely benefitted White households instead. In
2019, Hispanics are significantly less likely, at 48%, to be homeowners than Whites, who
own homes at a rate of 70%.
Immigration
Hispanic immigrants faced few restrictions on immigration until the 1960s and 1970s,
when immigration patterns shifted from predominately European to “browner”
populations, including Latin Americans. New forms of structural racism emerged in
laws and policies that seemed designed to systematically and adversely affect Latinos
in numerous ways, including limits on ways to adjust to legal status, unprecedented
levels of enforcement, and new restrictions on access to public benefits. Undocumented
workers and their families face particular challenges, and research consistently shows
that providing lawful immigration status would increase wages, tax revenues, and
economic output.
Voting
Despite significant increases in legal protections through the Voting Rights Act (VRA),
discriminatory policies and barriers continue to exist for people of color. Latinos
represent 13.2% of all eligible voters in the United States but continue to face exclusion
or discrimination through restrictive voter I.D. laws, roll purging, unnotified polling place
closures, and early voting reduction, all of which weaken Latinos’ ability to fully exercise
their right to vote. The disenfranchisement of Puerto Rican residents, American citizens
numbering more than 3 million, is a constant reminder of our voting system’s racialized
origins. The exclusion of certain groups from the democratic process results in a lack
of political power to elect candidates with shared values who can enact public policy
priorities important to diverse groups.
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TOWARD A MORE PERFECT UNION:
The Wealth Gap
Wealth* is an essential indicator of long-term financial security and a measure of social
status. Accumulated wealth allows people to weather adverse life events, achieve
homeownership, start businesses, invest, prepare for retirement, and transfer opportunities
onto future generations. While most White people in the United States benefit from laws,
policies, and practices that ensure they can access these opportunities, Latinos and other
people of color are excluded, sometimes intentionally. In 2019, Latino families held $36,100
in wealth compared to $188,200 held by White families. Disparities in employment,
education, and housing—all of which carry legacies of structural racism—continue to
reinforce this racial wealth gap.
Conclusion
The weight of evidence demonstrates that a significant portion of the socioeconomic
disparities between Hispanics and other Americans is attributable to and/or has roots in
systemic racism:
• Hispanics almost invariably have been adversely affected by racism embedded in
institutional structures and policy systems most salient to economic opportunity and
upward mobility, and policy interventions to dismantle systemic racism must fully include
the Hispanic community.
• UnidosUS believes that wherever possible, racism deeply embedded in our society’s core
structures and institutions must be acknowledged, confronted, and dismantled.
• UnidosUS further believes that intentionally inclusive policy can both reduce
racial disparities while also benefitting everyone, a strategy some scholars call
“targeted universalism.”
An essential element of the growing national discourse on race is the intentional and full
inclusion of the history, perspectives, and interests of Latinos. Journalists, educators, and
advocates can and should pursue concrete objectives:
• Public discourse should be more inclusive of how systemic racism has adversely
affected the Latino community throughout its 180-plus year history under
American jurisdiction.
• Educational institutions should more accurately reflect the Hispanic experience in the
United States, including coverage of how systemic racism has affected Latinos.
• Latino advocates themselves should become better informed about systemic racism,
and more intentional about informing key audiences of the clear linkages between
contemporary challenges faced by the Hispanic community and their roots in
systemic racism.
* According to the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, “wealth” is defined as the difference between a family’s gross
assets and their liabilities and that measure is used in this document. See The Fed - Disparities in Wealth by
Race and Ethnicity in the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances (federalreserve.gov) for more information on
their definition.
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UNDERSTANDING SYSTEMIC RACISM AND RESULTING INEQUITY IN LATINO COMMUNITIES
About Us
UnidosUS, previously known as NCLR (National Council of La Raza), is the nation’s largest
Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization. Through its unique combination of
expert research, advocacy, programs, and an Affiliate Network of nearly 300 community-
based organizations across the United States and Puerto Rico, UnidosUS simultaneously
challenges the social, economic, and political barriers that affect Latinos at the national
and local levels.
For more than 50 years, UnidosUS has united communities and different groups seeking
common ground through collaboration, and that share a desire to make our community
stronger. For more information on UnidosUS, visit unidosus.org or follow us on Facebook,
Instagram, and Twitter.
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