Abstract:

“Money whitening” refers to the notion that more affluent people are more likely to be classified as White. It has been studied extensively in Latin America. Can money whiten in the United States, where race is relatively fixed? Using traffic citation data that includes self- and officer-classified race for millions of motorists, we show that Hispanic-identified motorists are more likely to be classified as non-Hispanic White when driving newer cars. Person fixed-effect models confirm that the same motorist is more likely to be classified as White in a newer car. Further, White officers are more likely to whiten than Hispanic officers, and officers are more likely to whiten as the local socioeconomic gap between Hispanic and White residents grows, findings that support stereotyping as the mechanism through which money whitens. Money whitens in the United States, but it only whitens people who are phenotypically ambiguous and whose group is implicated in race-based socioeconomic stereotypes.