Message received: Asian Americans’ racial, ethnic, and national identity centrality before and after the 2016 election

Abstract

Many different external factors shape Asian American identity. However, the effect of political elections on racial, ethnic, and national identities has been understudied. This research explores whether political elections represent moments of exogenous shock that can shape the importance of three different dimensions of identities for Asian Americans. This study uses data from the 2016 National Asian American Survey (n = 3,643) to test for a relationship between the racialized rhetoric surrounding the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the aforementioned aspects of Asian American identity. Regression analyses suggest that the election shaped patterns of centrality of racial, national and ethnic identity among Asian Americans, albeit differently across ethnic groups. Specifically, American identity centrality increased for Chinese respondents post-election relative to pre-election, but did not shift significantly for any other group. On the other hand, racial identity centrality significantly decreased for Filipino and Vietnamese respondents post-election, while other groups did not experience a significant change in their racial identity centrality. Finally, ethnic identity centrality only decreased significantly among Korean respondents post-election. This research suggests that these identities among Asian Americans are sensitive to external events, such as political elections, and that the effects of racialized political rhetoric vary across ethnicity.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Jenifer Bratter, Michael Carroll and Bianca Mabute-Louie for their helpful feedback on previous drafts of this paper. Additionally, we would like to thank the reviewers for their valuable feedback.

Notes

1 For the purpose of this paper, we use the term Asian American to refer to individuals of Asian origin living in the United States while we use the term Asian to refer to individuals of Asian origin living outside of the United States. Additionally, we use the term national identity and American identity interchangeably when referring to Asian American identity.

2 Although the NAAS contains measures specifically gauging support for Donald Trump, missing data would substantially restrict the number of ethnic groups with viable samples, as well as the sample size as a whole. Instead, we opted to use political ideology and political party identification as a proxy to preserve the size of the analytic sample (Sherman 2018)

3 This question was included as the first question of two in a split ballot experimental design. Half of the respondents were asked this question while the other half were asked “Based on where the two parties stand on the issues, do you think your views are closer to the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.”

4 Although identity tends to become more stable as age increases, supplementary analyses reveal no significant differences in the association between the election and identity centrality when comparing those in the youngest age group to the other age groups

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Allan Farrell

Allan Farrell is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Rice University. His research aims to investigate how racial inequality is sustained when racial boundaries start to “blur” by exploring unique mechanisms of racial inequality and identity development among nonwhite and non-black groups in the United States. His work has appeared in the Du Bois Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Ethnicities.

Raul S. Casarez

Raul S. Casarez is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Rice University. His work explores how dynamics of racial and national identity shape group boundary formation and interactions between native-born Americans and immigrants. In addition, he has contributed to the broader body of research that looks at how context, social institutions, and life experiences shape racial identity and racial stratification. His work has appeared in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and The Sociological Quarterly.

Xiaorui Zhang

Xiaorui Zhang is a PhD student at Rice University. Her research focuses on the intersection among immigration, race, and ethnicity, and how it uniquely shapes Asian American identities.

Sharan Kaur Mehta

Sharan Kaur Mehta is a PhD candidate in sociology at Rice University. Her research explores the intersection of race and religion with a focus on the racialization of religious minorities, processes of identity formation, and collective action.