Anti-black prejudice in Asian American public opinion

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite the growing size and political relevance of the Asian American population, existing research provides limited insight into how anti-Black prejudice shapes Asian American public opinion. Using four Cooperative Congressional Election Surveys (CCES) and additional tests using two National Asian American Surveys (NAAS), I show four key findings. First, US-born Asians exhibit lower levels of anti-Black prejudice than foreign-born Asians even after accounting for the effects of other plausible influences. Furthermore, both groups are more racially sympathetic than whites. Second, US-born Asians’ racial attitudes liberalized at a faster rate than foreign-born Asians’ after 2016, in line with trends found in existing research on white Democrats. Third, despite having lower overall levels of anti-Black animus, US-born Asians’ racial sentiments are more strongly correlated with a variety of political attitudes than the racial sentiments of their foreign-born counterparts. Fourth, this racialization of political attitudes for US-born Asians appears to be the result of racially liberal US-born Asians being especially likely to hold liberal political views.