People of Color are People of Action: Asian American Participation in Own-Group and African American-Oriented Collective Action

Abstract

Racially marginalized communities are socially and politically active, yet there is limited work that examines the psychological forces underlying how People of Color engage in cross-racial solidarity and collective action. We propose a model of politicized racial identity and collective action to Asian American participation in own-group collective action and African American collective action. In Study 1, we tested the model using correlational data. In Study 2, we used an experiment to explore whether politicized identities predict collective action. Results support the relation between politicized identities and collective action. Politicized Person of Color identity predicted Asian American engagement in both own-group-oriented collective action (Study 2) and African American-oriented (Study 1, Study 2) collective action. Further, politicized Asian American identity predicted Asian American engagement in own-group collective action (Study 1). These findings provide empirical evidence for the role of politicized identities in predicting collective action, including cross-racial solidarity with African Americans.