inter-minority coalition
Definition
Inter-minority coalition refers to a form of cross-racial political solidarity in which distinct racially minoritized groups, such as Black, Latino, and Asian Americans, unite under a shared superordinate identity to advance collective interests. The psychological foundation of such coalitions rests on perceived similarity: when members of different groups recognize that they face comparable forms of discrimination, they are more likely to recategorize themselves as part of a broader "people of color" identity rather than maintaining strictly separate ingroup boundaries. This process depends on the specific axes of marginalization involved, since solidarity is most reliably produced when groups share a common dimension of stereotyping, such as perceived foreignness or social subordination, rather than when their marginalized positions differ substantially. Shared discrimination appeals increase solidarity uniformly across racial groups but do not directly shift voting intentions, suggesting that coalition activation operates through attitudinal change rather than immediate behavioral compliance. The indirect pathway from shared discrimination through solidarity to voting intentions is meaningful, with solidarity predicting greater intention to vote for a candidate perceived as advancing people of color interests across nationally representative samples of Black, Latino, and Asian Americans.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
Related Terms
- discrimination (1 shared article)
- racial solidarity (1 shared article)
- intended behavior (1 shared article)
- voting (1 shared article)
Applications
Inter-minority Coalition and Shared Discrimination
Shared discrimination appeals function as the primary experimental mechanism for activating inter-minority coalition by making salient the parallel forms of marginalization experienced by distinct racial groups. Across three parallel survey experiments conducted three weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, such appeals significantly increased solidarity with people of color among Black, Latino, and Asian American adults, with effects that were uniform rather than group-specific.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
Inter-minority Coalition and Voting Intentions
Inter-minority coalition, operationalized as solidarity with people of color, was indirectly associated with higher intentions to vote for both a generic people-of-color-aligned representative and Kamala Harris, with solidarity serving as the mediating variable in a structural equation model showing good fit (CFI = .986, RMSEA = .027). The strength of this indirect association varied by racial group: the link between solidarity and Harris vote intention was significantly stronger for Latino and Asian Americans than for Black Americans, a pattern attributed to a partisan ceiling among Black voters rather than to weaker coalition identification.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
Inter-minority Coalition and Competitive Victimhood
Competitive victimhood narratives, which frame racial progress as zero-sum, are associated with undermining the mutual recognition that sustains inter-minority coalition. The study found that shared discrimination appeals were less effective at translating into solidarity when group marginalization differed substantially across axes of group difference, pointing to the conditions under which coalition formation is harder to achieve.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
