Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze to what extent and how discriminatory arguments are interlocked and mutually reinforced today in multiple forms of oppression. Foucault’s concepts of biopower and normalization are adopted to analyze the persistence of racism, associated with post-structural feminism to understand the perception of gender roles. A two-step survey was applied with a questionnaire that combined socio-demographic characteristics and statements ranked in a Likert-type scale to represent discriminatory beliefs, attitudes, and practices. Bivariate correlations were estimated using the Pearson Chi-Square and Likelihood Ratio methods. The highest significant coefficients were analyzed. Results showed correlated experiences of explicit racism; feelings of fear, threat, and violence; criminalization of Black people, rejection of interracial intimacy and reproduction; criminalization and structural violence against Black people; and rejection of any kind of protection by the state. Explicit racism is intersected with patriarchal attitudes, such as women should assume their domestic role as wives and that women’s behavior causes their rape, along with the rejection of LGBTQ marriage, discrimination against youths, and rejection of providing sex education at schools. The rejection of street dwellers is highly correlated with xenophobia. The poor are likely to live in overcrowded housing and less urbanized neighborhoods. Race, gender, and class discrimination are correlated to far-right political identification, with activism against public policies and laws that guarantee the rights and protection of these groups, and with a preference for a government that controls rather than listens to citizens.