Whose Side Are You On? Asian Americans’ Mistrust of Asian–White Biracials Predicts More Exclusion From the Ingroup

Abstract

We investigated Asian Americans’ perceptions of Asian–White biracials. Because the Asian/White boundary may be more permeable than other minority/White boundaries, we reasoned that Asian Americans are more likely than Black Americans to be skeptical of biracials, perceiving that biracials would prefer to identify as White and would be disloyal to Asians, consequently categorizing them as more outgroup. We further reasoned that Asian Americans’ concerns about and exclusion of biracials would be predicted by greater perceived discrimination against Asian Americans, which increases the incentive for biracials to pass into the higher status racial group. Studies 1 and 2 provided correlational support for these theorized relationships among Asian Americans. Study 2 showed that perceived discrimination did not increase Black Americans’ concerns about biracials’ identity preferences and loyalty. Studies 3 and 4 provided causal evidence for the roles of perceived discrimination and biracial identity preferences, respectively, in Asian Americans’ exclusion of biracials.

Introducing the Sociopolitical Motive × Intergroup Threat Model to Understand How Monoracial Perceivers’ Sociopolitical Motives Influence Their Categorization of Multiracial People

“…Just as we discussed earlier that status can vary contextually, there may also be additional complexity worth exploring between groups that fall under the broad umbrella of relatively low status groups. Although we do not highlight this in our integrated model because there is only one paper to date directly comparing perceivers from different lower status (nonmajority) groups (i.e., Asian vs. Black Americans; Chen et al, 2019), future research may further reveal that sociopolitical motives operate differently for lower status groups that differ in their position in the racial hierarchy (e.g., lowest status vs. intermediate status). For example, whereas Ho et al (2017) demonstrated that lower SDO Black Americans were more likely than their higher SDO counterparts to include Black-White multiracial people in the ingroup (due to egalitarians' tendency to be sensitive to discrimination and, therefore, feel a sense of linked fate with multiracial people), Chen et al (2019) found (although this was not the focus of their study) that SDO was unrelated to Asian Americans' categorization of Asian-White multiracial people.…”

“…Although we do not highlight this in our integrated model because there is only one paper to date directly comparing perceivers from different lower status (nonmajority) groups (i.e., Asian vs. Black Americans; Chen et al, 2019), future research may further reveal that sociopolitical motives operate differently for lower status groups that differ in their position in the racial hierarchy (e.g., lowest status vs. intermediate status). For example, whereas Ho et al (2017) demonstrated that lower SDO Black Americans were more likely than their higher SDO counterparts to include Black-White multiracial people in the ingroup (due to egalitarians' tendency to be sensitive to discrimination and, therefore, feel a sense of linked fate with multiracial people), Chen et al (2019) found (although this was not the focus of their study) that SDO was unrelated to Asian Americans' categorization of Asian-White multiracial people. It is possible that because Asian-White multiracial people are more accepted by White people compared with Black-White multiracial people (Ho et al, 2011;Pew Research Center, 2015), lower SDO Asian perceivers do not perceive much discrimination against Asian-White multiracial people and thus do not have a basis for including multiracial people based on linked fate.…”

“…Social psychological research on racial categorization shows that Black-White multiracial people continue to be seen as more Black than White by both Black and White people alike (Chen & Ratliff, 2015;Gaither et al, 2016;Ho et al, 2011Ho et al, , 2017Peery & Bodenhausen, 2008). A smaller body of evidence suggests that Asian-White multiracial people may be excluded and treated as outgroup members by both White and Asian people (Chen et al, 2019;Ho et al, 2011). Multiracial people also appear to perceive that they are not fully accepted.…”

The Potential Cost of Cultural Fit: Frame Switching Undermines Perceptions of Authenticity in Western Contexts

“…On the other hand, frame switching may elicit similarly unfavorable reactions for biculturals in East Asia but for reasons other than inconsistency signaling inauthenticity. Many East Asian cultures promote strong in-group/out-group boundaries and racial essentialism, and any behavior that indicates that a person has divided alliances to different groups may be construed as disloyalty 12 , especially when those other groups have clear ethnic or racial markers (Chen et al, 2018). Thus, biculturals could face similar consequences in East Asian and Western contexts but through different mechanisms.…”

Broadening the Stimulus Set: Introducing the American Multiracial Faces Database

“…Of the studies we reviewed, 74% of all face stimuli used were Black-White Multiracial. Yet, according to Parker et al 2015 Whereas Asian-White biracial people have been investigated in several studies to date (Chen et al, 2019;Garay et al, 2019;Ho et al, 2011) and are the second most represented target group (19% of stimuli), there is scant research investigating the perception of Multiracial Hispanic faces. It should be noted that perceptions of the Hispanic/Latinx category differ from its official designation as an ethnicity (as opposed to a race).…”