Centering Blackness in Latinidad: A Quantcrit Analysis of Street Race, Skin Color, and Discrimination As Predictors of Psychological Distress Among U.S. Afrolatinx/e Adults

Background and Purpose:
Over six million AfroLatinx/e individuals live in the United States, yet their lived experiences and mental health remain understudied due to dominant narratives of a raceless Latinidad. Prior studies show that AfroLatinx/e adults report higher psychological distress than their white Latinx/e counterparts, but the mechanisms linking racial identity, discrimination, and mental health are not well understood. This study applies QuantCrit (Quantitative Critical Race Theory) to examine how multiple dimensions of race, racial attitudes, and discrimination are associated with psychological distress among U.S. AfroLatinx/e adults.

Methods:
This cross-sectional study used a Qualtrics-hosted survey distributed via Prolific, a crowdsourcing platform. Participants (N = 287) were eligible if they were 18 years or older, self-identified as Latinx/e, and resided in the United States, including Puerto Rico. Quota sampling ensured adequate representation of AfroLatinx/e participants (n = 98). Measures included self-reported race, street race (perceived external racialization), the Yadon-Ostfeld Skin Color Scale, the Colorblind Racial Attitudes Scale (as a measure of color-neutral racial attitudes), and the Everyday and Major Discrimination Scales. Psychological distress was assessed using the Kessler-6 scale and recoded into a 3-level categorical variable (0 = low, 1 = moderate, 2 = serious). Multinomial logistic regression models estimated odds ratios (OR) for predictors of psychological distress, controlling for age, education, income, gender, nativity, and nationality. Consistent with a QuantCrit approach, the analysis focused solely on AfroLatinx/e participants to center their lived experiences and interpret findings through a historical lens that challenges dominant narratives of a raceless Latinidad.

Results:
Higher levels of everyday discrimination significantly increased the odds of experiencing serious psychological distress compared to low distress (OR = 1.22, p = .025). Darker skin tone was associated with higher odds of both moderate and serious distress (OR = 5.97, p = .060; OR = 9.78, p = .037). Participants who selected Black street race had marginally higher odds of experiencing moderate distress compared to those racialized as Hispanic/Latino (OR = 5.99, p = .065), suggesting that external racialization may influence psychological distress independently of self-identified race.

Conclusions and Implications:
These findings show that everyday discrimination, street race, and skin color are key predictors of psychological distress among U.S. AfroLatinx/e adults. They highlight the mental health burden of racialized experiences and expose the limitations of relying solely on self-reported race or racially homogenous Latinx/e samples in mental health research. Findings are contextualized within the historical legacy of anti-Blackness across Latin America and the Caribbean, where colonial racial hierarchies, mestizaje, and erasure have long shaped ideologies, policy, and identity formation. These legacies persist in U.S. contexts and continue to shape how AfroLatinx/e communities are racialized in ways that impact their well-being. This study calls for racially conscious, culturally grounded mental health interventions and policies that address the transnational dimensions of anti-Black racism within Latinidad.