Letters for Black Lives: Co-ethnic Mobilization and Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement

Abstract

Previous research demonstrates that individuals are more open to persuasion from people who share their race. However, it is not known whether this relationship holds for Asian Americans. We address this shortcoming by exploring how the race of an author influences support for, and perceptions of, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Drawing from literature on opinion formation and social identity theory, we expect that whites will be most persuaded by whites, while Asian Americans will not be particularly persuaded by co-ethnic messengers due to relatively low levels of group identity. To test our hypotheses, we use two online surveys that oversample Asian American respondents who are randomly assigned letters in support of BLM written by either an Asian American author or a white author. Similar to previous research, we find that whites are more likely to respond to appeals from co-racial individuals. However, we find that Asian Americans respond positively to co-ethnic and white messengers. Further analysis reveals that Asian Americans’ lower levels of in-group preferences compared with whites explains why they do not respond to co-racial individuals similarly to other groups.