Racial Discrimination, Black Identity, and Critical Consciousness in Spain

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship of racial discrimination on the identity and critical consciousness of 1369 African and Afro-descendant respondents to the frst nationwide survey conducted in Spain in 2020. The survey not only showed the scope of experiences of discrimination based on skin color but has also opened the way for testing whether these experiences of racial discrimination end up afecting the identity and critical consciousness of black people, Africans, or Afro-descendants, based on the questions included in the survey and the rejection–identifcation hypothesis. According to the statistical models obtained by discriminant analysis, racial discrimination helps to strengthen racial identity. Having been discriminated by skin color was the variable that most diferentiated those who self-identifed with their country of origin from those who did not and the second most predictive of self-recognition as a black or Afro-descendant person. But when the infuences of racial discrimination on racial identity and critical consciousness were jointly analyzed, applying structural equation modeling, the latter outweighed the former: racial discrimination contributes to the awakening black activism. Less clear seems to be the infuence of racial identity on critical consciousness.