Racism and resilience of pandemic proportions: online harassment of Asian Americans during COVID-19

ABSTRACT

This study explores perceptions of online racial hate speech directed at Asian Americans in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined how individuals’ enactment of resilience communication in response to that threat affected their self-reported estimates of personal health. Using a nationally representative survey (n = 1767) that oversampled Asian Americans (n = 455), we found that Asian Americans perceived the problem of online hate speech to be more severe than members of non-targeted groups. Analysis revealed a mediated pathway through which heightened perceptions of online racial hate speech were positively associated with individuals’ enactment of specific resilience processes tied to identity affirmation, which was linked to positive gains in psychological health. Results contribute to resilience theory in the context of racism and the observed relationships between resilience communication and health. We discuss how individuals in minoritized communities and allies might use resilience to combat the synergistic stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 pandemic
• resilience
• online racial hate speech
• Asian Americans
• social media

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this paper was presented at the International Communication Association conference in 2021. The authors thank Dr. Steven Wilson and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and critique.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In support of this interpretation, a post-hoc analysis of the 315 Asians included in the resilience analyses indicated a strong sense of racial identity salience (M = 4.31, SD = 1.13)—or the extent to which race is relevant to one's self-concept (Sellers & Shelton, 2003). A one-sample t-test indicated that racial identity salience was above the midpoint of the 7-point scale, t (314) = 12.78, p < .001, suggesting that among the Asian Americans in this sample, race was a significant component of their personal identity. Facing increased online hate speech in which this component of the self was directly attacked may have made the affirming identity behavior a more important resilience strategy.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Communication Association’s Research Cultivation Grant Program.