Asian American Identity: Shared Racial Status and Political Context

Abstract

Amidst rising levels of ethnic diversity in the United States, scholars struggle to understand how group consciousness functions among other non-black minority groups such as Asian Americans and Latinos. Most of the literature in this area focuses on the relationship between identity and immigration incorporation or the debate between national origin and panethnicity. We argue that the Asian American community offers an important case study to understand how social context and one's perceived racial position influence an individual's sense of group attachment. Thus, the Asian American case presents new insight beyond the black politics model into how racial identification influences individual political attitudes and behavior. We present findings from a unique embedded survey experiment conducted in 2004 that reveals a surprising degree of malleability in Asian American racial group attachment. This is a striking contrast to the findings demonstrated by blacks whose racial identification is relatively more stable over various contexts. We seek to explain these findings by advocating for a more explicit consideration of the structural incentives and costs of adopting racial and ethnic identities by highlighting the significance of U.S. immigration policy and its role in creating group-based stereotypes and racial tropes.

Racialization in times of contention: how social movements influence Latino racial identity

“…Instead, taking note of Junn and Masuoka's (2008) call "for more explicit consideration of the structural incentives and costs of adopting racial and ethnic identities" (730), we find more convincing the possibility that Puerto Ricans were less likely to see Latinos as a distinct racial group in our models because they are the only Latino subgroup who is automatically born with US citizenship. One of the primary mechanisms for the contemporary Latino racialization process is their 520 C. Zepeda-Millán and S.J.…”

The complicated constituency: a study of immigrant opinions about political representation

“…Such research tends to focus on whether people think of themselves as American, as a member of a panethnic group, or as a member of a national origin group, and has illustrated the complex and contextual ways that identities get prioritized and affect behavior (de la Garza, Falcon, and Garcia 1996;Jones-Correa and Leal 1996;DeSipio 2002;Michelson 2003;Lien, Conway, and Wong 2004;Schildkraut 2005Schildkraut , 2011Pearson and Citrin 2006;Citrin et al 2007;40 D.J. Schildkraut Junn and Masuoka 2008). Research also shows that the immigrant generation often retains strong ties to the country of origin (e.g., Lien, Conway, and Wong 2004;Schildkraut 2011).…”

“…But they also suggest that scholars who study identification among ethnic minorities should pay more attention to the role that one's identity as an immigrant can play in shaping attitudes and behaviors. This identity has the potential to unite people across ethnic and national origin lines but also faces stiff barriers to being adopted for more than instrumental purposes, given the differences in language and ethnicity that the social category of "immigrant" encompasses (Sommers 1991;Espiritu 1992;Lowe 1996;Masuoka 2006;Junn and Masuoka 2008). It is unclear how participants would have responded had I asked them which of their social identities matters most to them.…”

“…Immigrants report having more trust in the American government than in the government of their home countries, with levels of trust often decreasing across generations (Michelson 2003;Lien, Conway, and Wong 2004). Partisan identification among immigrants, however, is low, which is attributed to a variety of factors, including the lack of information about American partisan politics, the lack of outreach by parties, and that issues of central concern to immigrants might not align with the nation's current left/right divide (Wong 2006;Junn and Masuoka 2008;Hajnal and Lee 2011).…”

Race, partisanship, and perceptions of inter-minority commonality

“…3 Perhaps more importantly, the exclusion of blacks and whites from the analysis unnecessarily limits our ability to determine whether perceptions of commonality among members of different racial and ethnic groups respond to the same set of factors. This limitation is particularly troubling in light of research suggesting that whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians each formulate their political opinions in slightly different ways (Dawson 1994;Hajnal and Lee 2011;Junn and Masuoka 2008;Lee 2002;Lee 2008;McClain 2008;Segura and Alves Rodrigues 2006;White 2007).…”