Asian Americans as a Critical Case Study

Though Asian Americans have been in the United States for centuries, the relatively small size of the population, their residential concentration in a few states, and the perception of Asian Americans as politically quiescent are all reasons why political scientists have only recently begun to study Asian Americans.Footnote ³ Yet, competitive elections in the 2008 Presidential primaries recently highlighted the political significance of Asian American voters in delegate-rich states such as California and New York. Talk of an “Asian American” vote entered the national discourse and renewed speculation about how Asian American political preferences compare with those of whites, blacks and Latinos. The possibilities for an Asian American vote rest on the assumption that those classified as Asian share a sense of racial identity, and that group consciousness has political consequences.

The formation of a monolithic Asian American bloc has been challenged in the social science literature. This population is diverse in terms of national origin and language. No one group is predominant and, according to the 2000 Census, more than 6 national origin groups are combined as Asian American, including Chinese (23 percent), Filipino (18 percent), Asian Indian (17 percent), Vietnamese (11 percent), Korean (11 percent), and Japanese (8 percent), along with an “other Asian” category (12 percent). Some scholars have suggested that these diverse groups of Asian Americans may favor distinctive national origin groups over a pan-ethnic racial identity.Footnote ⁴ It is also important to underscore that racial formation and the definitions applied to racial categories in the U.S. are uniquely American constructs, and represent new categories to immigrant Asians. New immigrants may not adhere to the categories imposed on them upon their entry into the U.S. and so cannot be expected to automatically identify with a pan-ethnic racial category.

In addition to the internal diversity among Asian Americans, the relatively high levels of social and residential integration could also mitigate racial identity formation. They are more likely than blacks and Latinos to be economically integrated with whites. In particular, high average levels of formal education drive a similarly high degree of occupational status and income earnings.Footnote ⁵ Taken together, these resources produce a population that is less likely to reside in ethnic enclaves and more likely than other minority groups to live in racially integrated neighborhoods and attend racially diverse schools.Footnote ⁶ To the extent that classic assimilation models are correct, this level of economic and residential integration suggests that Asian Americans will more quickly become incorporated into American society compared to other racialized immigrant groups with fewer resources for mobility. Citing these social and demographic trends, political observers from both ends of the ideological spectrum predict the rapid assimilation of Asian Americans into the U.S., while presumably leaving behind an Asian or Asian American political identity.Footnote ⁷

The notion that Asian Americans are less constrained by negative racial stereotypes portend a diminution in Asian Americans racial group identity and a gradual assimilation into mainstream, white America. Yet at the same time, we also see Asian Americans highlighted as a distinctive racial group that is, in some cases, critical to the outcome of a national election. Speculation about Asian American racial identity vacillates between these two perspectives, and there is little theoretical grounding to explain how or why Asian American racial group consciousness is exercised in certain events but not in others. Political scientists have generally accepted the idea that Asian Americans are racially triangulated between white and black,Footnote ⁸ and that this racial position most likely has implications for Asian American racial identity. But even if an Asian American racial consciousness can be found, it may not function as racial group identity does for blacks. We argue that racial identity for Asian Americans exists as a more latent identity compared to blacks, and we find Asian American racial group consciousness much more susceptible to the surrounding context than that demonstrated by blacks. Given this latent characteristic, we ask how and what helps to activate a sense of group membership in political terms among Asian Americans?

Activating Racial Group Consciousness: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

In order to determine if a racial group consciousness has political consequences, we test the relative ease with which identity can be activated in specific political contexts. One common context in contemporary politics in which minorities may take part in is a campaign that either highlights or promotes a particular minority candidate. Minority candidates have been found to have a positive impact on levels of political efficacy and trust particularly among those of the same racial background.Footnote ⁹ The concept of descriptive representation asserts that the notion of shared characteristics—particularly race, ethnicity, or gender—invite feelings of solidarity, familiarity, and self-esteem among members of that respective group.Footnote ¹⁰ Recent empirical studies also suggest that minority candidates can mobilize their respective minority communities thereby increasing turnout levels beyond that expected for a white candidate.Footnote ¹¹ Underlining these studies is the argument that shared racial group identity is the key explanatory mechanism behind these patterns.

Although scholars speculate that descriptive representation is linked with racial group consciousness, we do not know the causal direction between the two. If, as hypothesized, minority candidates do have a mobilizing effect—either in terms of turnout or heightening perceptions of political efficacy—then we should expect descriptive representation to activate group consciousness. We are able to identify that causal direction by relying on experimental methods. By including a manipulation that highlights the importance of descriptive representation, we can show whether racial group identification is heightened in a positive direction. The use of experimental methods also highlights the influence of short-term communications on racial identification. Since experimental methods create a specific context for a short period of time, we also recognize that an experimental design also tests the malleability of racial identity and the degree to which identity is driven by context. Thus, racial group identity may not necessarily be a stable psychological predisposition, but instead a perception that may be cued by outside contexts.

We hypothesize that, in terms of racial group consciousness, the more active that group consciousness is, the harder we would expect it to be to move. In this regard, groups with strong and deeply held racial identity should show a smaller increase, if any, in group consciousness as compared to those members of groups for which racial identity has latent political content. If racial group identity among Asian Americans has such a latent political content, we would expect respondents to reveal a stronger sense of group consciousness when they are reminded of the political consequences of being Asian American. To the extent that blacks' racial political identity is more active than it is for Asian Americans, claims for group-based political action may have less efficacy in eliciting stronger racial consciousness among blacks. However, we also expect to find higher levels of racial group consciousness for blacks compared to Asian Americans in the absence of any reminder of the racial bases of group political action.

Analysis and Findings

What difference did viewing the faces of U.S. cabinet officials have on the extent to which blacks and Asian Americans express racial group identifications? The results are presented in table 1, pairing the marginal distributions for the measures of racial identification for the control and treatment groups. Any differences can be attributed to the efficacy of the stimulus, and statistically significant relationships are bold in the table.

Table 1

Racial Consciousness with Descriptive Representation Manipulation (%)

Source: 2004 Ethnic Politics Pre-election Study.

Statistically significant relationships are shown in bold.

Results for black respondents conform to our expectations of the importance of a frame of descriptive representation for three of the measures of racial consciousness, though for only one measure are the differences statistically significant at the .05 level. Viewing the U.S. cabinet official headshot photographs did most to influence responses on the question about linked fate, increasing from 56 percent who agree and strongly agree in the control group to 64 percent among those who viewed the stimulus. Blacks in the treatment group were also more likely to say they felt close to other blacks, and somewhat more likely to say they thought that being black was “somewhat important” to their political identity, though these differences were not statistically significant. For the remaining two measures of what is most important to be, there were only small differences, with the descriptive representation manipulation having an effect in increasing the likelihood that those who viewed the prime would say that it is most important to be “Both black and American.” There was no discernible effect for any of the measures of racial cultural identity.

Asian Americans showed strong results from the experimental manipulation, demonstrating substantial malleability from exposure to the descriptive representation stimulus. There are large and statistically significant differences between the treatment and control groups for three measures of racial political consciousness, including feelings of closeness to other Asians/Asian Americans, linked fate, and racial political identity. In addition, Asian Americans viewing the stimulus were more likely to say it was most important to be a specific ethnic group and American (i.e., “Chinese American”) or Asian American, thereby favoring the inclusion of “American” in their self-categorization. Alternatively, there are no differences in the measures of racial cultural identity between those who viewed the U.S. cabinet officials headshots and those who received no treatment.

While the results within groups are interesting, the findings comparing black and Asian American racial consciousness are most illuminating. In terms of feelings of closeness to members of one's own racial group, nearly 80 percent of blacks in the control group respond affirmatively. While the proportion is roughly two-thirds of Asian Americans in the control group, the proportion jumps to nearly the identical proportion for blacks among Asian Americans who receive the descriptive representation treatment. Similarly, comparing positive responses to the linked fate question shows that Asian Americans who see the Asian American U.S. cabinet officials feel the same degree of linked fate as blacks who have not been primed to think about racial group representation. The question on racial political identification, however, shows important differences between blacks and Asian Americans. Though the experimental manipulation has efficacy for Asian Americans in increasing the proportion who say that being Asian American is “somewhat important” to their racial political identity, the proportion overall who say race is important to them in their racial consciousness is much smaller overall than for blacks. The vast proportion of blacks—more than 80 percent say being black is at least somewhat important to their racial identity. In contrast, between a third and 44 percent of Asian Americans say that being Asian American is “not at all important” to their political identity. Though viewing the racial group representation prime has efficacy for Asian American racial consciousness, important differences remain between blacks and Asian Americans in terms of the extent to which they report their race being a factor in their ideas about politics.

In terms of the measures of racial consciousness asking about preferred identity label and cultural identity, there were also important differences between blacks and Asian Americans. A direct comparison cannot be made between the choice of identity labels among respondents in the two groups because the set of response categories differs, but the data show that Asian Americans are more likely to say it is most important to be “American” at the expense of other racial or ethnic labels than are blacks. Among the three measures of racial cultural identity, there are also interesting differences for two of the items. Exposure to the racial group descriptive representation frame had no influence on any of the items for either blacks or Asian Americans, and respondents in both groups are nearly uniform in their agreement that black and Asian American children should learn about their history and culture. Where the two groups differ, however, is in the importance of children marrying others of the same racial background, and the desirability of learning an African or Asian language. Among Asian Americans, more than half agree that it is important for children to learn an Asian language, but this is not surprising given the fact that more than two-thirds of Asian Americans in the United States are foreign born, and whose first language is likely one other than English. Blacks are overwhelmingly native-born, but nevertheless a third of those interviewed said it was important for black children to learn an African language. Finally, while a quarter of the black respondents agreed with the statement blacks should marry other blacks, a smaller fraction of Asian Americans agreed that children should marry within their racial group.

The results from our analysis affirm previous research that demonstrates that blacks have an active racial identity. Though blacks have a stronger racial consciousness than Asian Americans, is surprising how close the two groups are in terms of group identity. It is unexpected because of the degree of internal diversity within the Asian American population, since the high proportion of foreign-born could mitigate feelings of racial group solidarity. Asian American as a race is a distinctly U.S.-based concept, and one that may be novel to immigrants. Asian Americans from Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Thai, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, and other backgrounds are culturally, linguistically, and religiously distinctive. It is a shared racial identity—an imposed racial classification—that unites Asian American political consciousness rather than claims to Asian culture or other descriptive characteristics. These data strongly suggest that Asian American political identity is not an oxymoron.

Shared Racial Status and the Formation of Asian American Group Identity

The findings from the embedded survey experiment leave us with some explaining to do. Why do the marginal distributions on the group consciousness items for Asian Americans look the way they do, particularly in comparison to those for blacks? Social identity theory would suggest that the experiment encourages people to feel a sense of commonality with one's in-group.Footnote ¹⁶ This explanation makes the assumption that the in-group is an obvious given for Asian Americans. But if we recognize the ethnic diversity within the Asian American population, the clear identification of the in-group is not so obvious. Indeed, the experimental stimuli present one photograph of a Chinese American and another of a Japanese American. The survey sample is a representative sample of the U.S. population of Asian Americans from a variety of national origin groups. Thus, we do not know whether Asian American respondents are making an association by ethnicity, culture, or language. Instead, it appears that Asian Americans have identified a shared racial status with the representatives pictured in the experimental stimulus.

The assertion that Asian Americans cohere based on a shared racial status is not new, but has been recently overshadowed as scholars have focused on differences by country of origin.Footnote ¹⁷ To be sure, divisions based on national origin exist, particularly given the fact that more than two-thirds of the Asian American population is foreign born. National origin differences relating to homeland politics matter to new immigrants and this presents a challenge to mobilize Asian Americans as a collective group. However, we should not assume that shared national origin, culture or language are the only factors with which Asian Americans can find commonality. Indeed, studies on group consciousness have emphasized politicized consciousness—an awareness of the group's marginalization that, in turn, spurs commitment to collective action—as key to explaining the link between group identity and politics.Footnote ¹⁸ There are a number of other dimensions along which Asian Americans could form a shared sense of group consciousness.Footnote ¹⁹

Scholars of black politics point to the role of race and its influence on individual life chances. According to Dawson, it is race rather than other individual characteristics such as class that structure black worldviews.Footnote ²⁰ Black individuals are classified as a group based on their racial phenotype which is linked to a variety of negative stereotypes.Footnote ²¹ Yen Le Espiritu contends that Asian Americans, like blacks, are also subject to a similar process of racial lumping, and that their individual experiences are framed by the fact that this lumping occurs.Footnote ²² People of Asian origin share a set of physical characteristics that allows racial group status to be assigned quickly and at face value. Whether of East Asian, South Asian, or Southeast Asian origin, Asian Americans, like blacks, both races are readily identifiable and racialized at first sight. The acknowledgement that Asians are lumped together visually as well as by the U.S. government as a racial category provides the foundation for a racial identity that is directed at politics.

Yet the key to the formation of black linked fate is the idea that blacks share a common history as a subjugated racial group. For blacks, the experiences of slavery, Jim Crow, and the persistence of barriers to mobility have demonstrated a historical pattern that underscores the inference that unless the fate of the entire racial group improves one's own individual life also will not change. Blacks continue to link their own individual life chances to that of the racial group even as their individual socioeconomic status improves.Footnote ²³ For Asian Americans, however, this inference has less resonance because the majority of Asian Americans in the U.S. today immigrated after 1965 and therefore do not share the experience of a long history of racial discrimination. Further, structural barriers inhibiting Asian American individual life chances appear to be less rigid than that experienced by blacks as evidenced by their relatively faster rates of assimilation and integration into the mainstream economic sector.

Why, then, would shared racial status matter to Asian Americans? We conceptualize the structuring of racial political identity as a complex interaction between policies of the state, institutions, political economy, and the stereotypes that result to create incentives for people categorized by race to either adopt or turn away from a group-based political identity.Footnote ²⁴

First, state-sponsored racial classification places limits on how people can identify, and there are clear incentives to accept this scheme of racial classification. “Asian” has persisted as a non-white racial group throughout most of the history of the United States, nor does it appear that this racial classification will disappear in the near future.Footnote ²⁵ Throughout the history of the United States, assignment to a racial group has carried important consequences, among them freedom, voting enfranchisement, property ownership, and citizenship rights. The imperative for the U.S. government to classify people by race in the census emanates from none other than the notorious three-fifths compromise codified in the nation's founding document. The census began to enumerate Asians as a separate racial category in 1860 when Chinese in California were first counted. While racial classification has shifted throughout the twentieth century, Asian categories has been consistently included as a distinctive racial group.Footnote ²⁶

By counting groups of people through the census, the state establishes those who are recognized members of the polity and which social categories are acceptable.Footnote ²⁷ Racial classification has been most significant to Americans classified as something other than white since federal and state laws made explicit discriminatory practices against blacks, Mexicans, Asians, and others. Categorization has both political antecedents as well as implications, and Asian Americans have historically provided a critical link in the racial triangulation of minority Americans by serving as a buffer group between other groups at various points in the continuum. As long as Asians are differentiated as separate and non-white, those so classified will continue to understand their identity as racialized.

Second, immigration policy plays a critical role in determining the structural advantage and disadvantage for new immigrants.Footnote ²⁸ Yet, many scholars have overlooked the role of institutions in favor for more individual-level explanations for immigrant behavior and attitudes. Many point to Asian Americans' relatively high levels of socioeconomic status as evidence of their successful assimilation into American society or even the byproduct of a superior ethnic culture. But the size and composition of the Asian population today has been fueled primarily by new immigration, and federal immigration policy offers a more accurate causal explanation for the contemporary composition of the Asian American population. U.S. immigration policies create preferences for certain types of immigrants and disproportionately award the status of lawful permanent resident for those who match those favored characteristics. This results in a particular configuration of immigrants, both lawful and undocumented. Past policies aimed at Asian immigration favored poor and unskilled workers to serve as railroad workers, miners, and farm workers. The current policies privilege legal entry for workers with high-level professional skills and advanced degrees, and is responsible for determining the shape and composition of Asian migration to the U.S. today. We recognize that immigration policy creates a selection bias that explains the highly-educated and skilled Asian American population on the one hand, compared with the size of the relatively poor and uneducated Latino immigration population on the other.

Thus, the relationship between socioeconomic status and assimilation for Asian immigrants today is not the same as that for European ethnics that entered the U.S. a century earlier. Traditional assimilation theories, which were used to explain European ethnics in the nineteenth century, note a direct and positive relationship between socioeconomic status and assimilation.Footnote ²⁹ We argue that the trajectory of incorporation for today's Asian immigrants is different from that experienced by Europeans or even today's Latino immigrants given that Asians enter the U.S. under very different economic circumstances. Among Asian immigrants, many enter the U.S. with an already extensive array of individual resources. Since the relationship between socioeconomic status and assimilation is unique for today's Asian immigrants, the relationship between assimilation and ethnic identification may also be different for Asian Americans. According to Dahl (Reference Dahl1961), ethnic identification for European ethnics faded as Europeans assimilated into U.S. society and acquired higher levels of socioeconomic status.Footnote ³⁰ With greater individual resources, European ethnics did not need to rely on their ethnic identity or ethnic community. Some claim that this pattern is occurring for Asian Americans today and that they will follow a similar trajectory.Footnote ³¹ While there are longitudinal data to counter this contention, Asian Americans clearly enter U.S. society under very different circumstances, and we know that their relatively high levels of socioeconomic status cannot be explained entirely by ethnic assimilation. Thus, we remain skeptical that Asian Americans will follow a traditional path to assimilation in terms of racial identity.

Third, as a result of racial categorization and the selection bias of immigration policy, Asian Americans are subject to specific racialized tropes that influence their individual life chances regardless of their length of residence in the U.S. As long as an Asian American is classified as “Asian,” the prevalent racialized tropes of the time will be applied and treatment as a racial “other” will encourage Asians to maintain a sense of racial group identity.Footnote ³² Racial tropes have implications for the incentives and costs people face when identifying with a racial or ethnic group. The most dominant trope is the “model minority” stereotype that frames Asian Americans as hard working, smart, and successful.Footnote ³³ The term model minority is applied to Asian Americans as a whole, but is perceived as an individual-level trait.Footnote ³⁴ So while Asian Americans might connect their racial identity with a particular set of stereotypical characteristics, the positive and more individualistic frame of their identity as a “model minority” provides fewer motives to form group racial identity than more economically deprived groups. Similarly, if Asian Americans believe they have greater opportunities and hold higher status than others in society, there may be less reason to engage in group solidarity to achieve political ends.Footnote ³⁵ But this is tempered by the “forever foreigner” trope of Asian Americans as inscrutable, untrustworthy, and perpetual outsiders. The image has the effect of a glass ceiling, preventing Asian Americans from full social integration. Indeed, some have argued that the construction of Asian Americans as a model minority works hand in hand with the characterization of Asians as perpetual foreigners.Footnote ³⁶

Model minority is clearly a more positive racialized trope than coolie, but it is not without negative consequence. Dueling contemporary tropes of Asian Americans as simultaneously a model minority while forever foreigner create a unique context of incentives and costs for racial group consciousness. Lauded for some characteristics and considered suspicious for others, Asian Americans exist in a distinctive racial position from other minority groups in the United States. Thus, Asian American political identity is forged out the complex interaction of all of these factors—the diversity of the population, the history of anti-Asian racism in the United States, the contemporary bias within immigration policy for high-skilled workers that produces a particular selection bias among Asian immigrants, and the competing stereotypes of Asian Americans as simultaneously a model minority while remaining forever foreigner.

Latent Solidarity: Asian American Political Identity

The structural factors of racial categorization, immigration policy and racialized tropes help to construct Asian American group identity based on a shared racial status. Rather than the clearly politicized racial identity of blacks, the contours of Asian American group consciousness take shape as latent solidarity. Like blacks, racial categorization for Asian Americans persists, and is readily identifiable on face value. In this sense, racial group membership is not a choice, and categorization as a race other than “white” will always be there and will always play a role. Yet, this racial distinction also means that the formation of Asian American racial group consciousness depends on the particular context. In our survey experiment, we tested one specific context, and the manipulation demonstrated that stronger perceptions of Asian American racial group identity can be elicited when respondents are primed with political role models. We recognize that there are potentially a myriad of other contexts in which racial group identity among Asian Americans can be enhanced or diminished.

Most quantitative studies on racial identity and attitudes in the U.S. rely on cross-sectional public opinion studies that capture individual responses at one point in time. For the most part, these are devoid of measurements of the social context that acts as the respondent's frame of reference. But social identities are formed in response to the specific context of one's surrounding social environment and interactions with others. To properly explain the formation of racial group consciousness, we must also take into account how particular social contexts activate or dampen racial group identification. Clearly, the role of context on group identity will vary by racial group, and we demonstrate that, for Asian Americans, the formation of racial group consciousness is contingent on the context. It is distinct from that found for blacks in which racial group consciousness is not as strongly influenced by the given environment. The over-determinacy of race on the individual life chances for blacks makes racial group consciousness a salient and persistent mechanism for black political worldviews.Footnote ³⁷ For Asian Americans, race has less of a hold on individual life chances. Different forms and degrees of racialization among blacks and Asian Americans in U.S. politics are critical variants to exploit in identifying contextual frames that are salient to the activation of racial identification. However, to say that Asian American racial identity is malleable does not make it any less important to the study of politics. Indeed, the fact that the formation of racial group consciousness is a response to a given event or issue makes racial identity just as intricately linked with politics as other similar forms of group identification such as partisanship.

Further, analyses comparing the magnitude of racial identity measures across various racial groups often discount groups whose level of identity does not reach the same levels of group consciousness as blacks. Identities are not created equally, and what is important is not the magnitude of difference but rather why the differences occur in the first place. The imperative of this kind of a relational analytic strategy goes beyond the simple but useful act of comparing marginals across the racial groups. Instead, a relational strategy forces analysts to reconsider the way we study racial identity, highlighting the possibility of presenting different models to explain the activation of racial identity, and the significance of group consciousness for political participation.Footnote ³⁸ The perspective requires both an appreciation of the historical specificity and unique experiences of each group's construction as racially distinctive, as well as sensitivity to the malleability of those identities in different contexts. It is this very reason why it is important to understand the racial formation of those placed in the “middle” of the racial hierarchy. The politics of racial identity cannot be effectively examined by considering a single group in isolation, because racial tropes may exist in opposition to the dominant stereotypes for other groups.Footnote ³⁹

Most importantly, we argue that racial identity should be thought about in a structural as well as constructed sense. We pointed to the role of U.S. immigration policy and the selection bias it creates by producing an Asian American population with high levels of formal education and social standing. Calling Asian Americans a model minority may be an accurate description of a selected set of Asians who successfully emigrated to the United States. But those qualities cannot be extended to characterize either Asian culture or Asian Americans in general, nor can they be applied in comparison to other minority groups with different trajectories of fortune. Overlooking structural factors has led analysts to misappropriate the economic success of Asian Americans to the realm of cultural difference in comparison with other U.S. minorities. What these final observations underscore is just how substantial the complexities are in disentangling the sources and contours of political consciousness based in racial categories. In the multi-racial U.S. polity today, we now have the opportunity to consider racial dynamics beyond the binary of white and black. This situation signals tremendous possibilities for empirical innovation and theoretical rigor as we progress in the study of race, ethnicity, and politics.

Appendix A. Question Wording for Racial Identification and Group Pride Manipulations