Strength in Numbers: Perceptions of Political Commonality with African Americans among Asians and Asian Americans in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
Harvey L. Nicholson ◽  
J. Scott Carter ◽  
Arjee Restar

Asians are now the fastest growing racial minority group in the United States. Nearly 18 million Asians and Asian Americans currently reside in the country. Approximately 44 million African Americans also live in the United States. To improve their limited social, economic, and political clout, Asians and Asian Americans in the United States (AAAUS) could benefit from the formation of mutually beneficial political alliances with African Americans, another historically marginalized racial group. However, complicated relational dynamics between African Americans and AAAUS may drastically reduce the chances of political unity. Using the 2008 National Asian American Survey, the authors examine the effects of three factors—group consciousness, linked fate, and experiences of discrimination—on perceptions of political commonality with African Americans among AAAUS. The findings show that group consciousness and linked fate positively and strongly increase the odds of perceptions of political commonality with African Americans; however, experiences of discrimination do not. The results suggest that the cultivation of mutually beneficial political alliances between African Americans and AAAUS would first require AAAUS to develop a heightened sense of group consciousness and linked fate. The potential impact of these factors on future political alliances between both groups are discussed, as are the limitations of this study.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 328-328
Author(s):  
Simona Kwon ◽  
Deborah Min ◽  
Stella Chong

Abstract Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial and ethnic minority group in the United States, whose population is aging considerably. Previous studies indicate that social isolation and loneliness disproportionately affects older adults and predicts greater physical, mental, and cognitive decline. A systematic literature review using PRISMA guidelines was conducted to address this emerging need to understand the scope of research focused on social isolation and loneliness among the disparity population of older Asian Americans. Four interdisciplinary databases were searched: PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and AgeLine; search terms included variations on social isolation, loneliness, Asian Americans, and older adults. Articles were reviewed based on six eligibility criteria: (1) research topic relevance, (2) study participants aged >60 years, (3) Asian immigrants as main participants, (4) conducted in the United States, (5) published between 1995-2019, and (6) printed in the English language. The search yielded 799 articles across the four databases and 61 duplicate articles were removed. Abstracts were screened for the 738 remaining studies, 107 of which underwent full-text review. A total of 56 articles met the eligibility criteria. Synthesis of our review indicates that existing research focuses heavily on Chinese and Korean American immigrant communities, despite the heterogeneity of the diverse Asian American population. Studies were largely observational and employed community-based sampling. Critical literature gaps exist surrounding social isolation and loneliness in Asian American older adults, including the lack of studies on South Asian populations. Future studies should prioritize health promotion intervention research and focus on diverse understudied Asian subgroups.


2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (11) ◽  
pp. 1624-1627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin A. Chen ◽  
Emily Zhang ◽  
Cindy H. Liu

Anti-Asian discrimination and assaults have increased significantly during the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, contributing to a “secondary contagion” of racism. The United States has a long and well-documented history of both interpersonal and structural anti-Asian discrimination, and the current pandemic reinforces longstanding negative stereotypes of this rapidly growing minority group as the “Yellow Peril.” We provide a general overview of the history of anti-Asian discrimination in the United States, review theoretical and empirical associations between discrimination and health, and describe the associated public health implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing relevant evidence from previous disasters in US history that became racialized. Although the literature suggests that COVID-19 will likely have significant negative effects on the health of Asian Americans and other vulnerable groups, there are reasons for optimism as well. These include the emergence of mechanisms for reporting and tracking incidents of racial bias, increased awareness of racism’s insidious harms and subsequent civic and political engagement by the Asian American community, and further research into resilience-promoting factors that can reduce the negative health effects of racism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-516
Author(s):  
Nilay S. Shah ◽  
Namratha R. Kandula

Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial/ethnic minority group in the United States and have unique, heterogenous health status and outcomes across a range of conditions between disaggregated Asian subgroups. Despite the rapid growth of this group, clinical and epidemiologic research lags considerably in adequately and ap­propriately representing Asian Americans. Too often, Asian American participants and populations are inappropriately aggregated into a single race category in research, masking important differences between ethnic subgroups. In this commentary, actionable recommendations are provided to investigators in order to enhance inclu­sion and representation of Asian Americans in a broad scope of research programs. Incorporating these recommendations in research planning and conduct will support health and promote health equity for these populations. Ethn Dis. 2020;30(3):513-516; doi:10.18865/ed.30.3.513


2018 ◽  
Vol 677 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lee ◽  
Karthick Ramakrishnan ◽  
Janelle Wong

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing group in the United States, increasing from 0.7 percent in 1970 to nearly 6 percent in 2016. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2065, Asian Americans will constitute 14 percent of the U.S. population. Immigration is fueling this growth: China and India have passed Mexico as the top countries sending immigrants to the United States since 2013. Today, two of three Asian Americans are foreign born—a figure that increases to nearly four of five among Asian American adults. The rise in numbers is accompanied by a rise in diversity: Asian Americans are the most diverse U.S. racial group, comprising twenty-four detailed origins with vastly different migration histories and socioeconomic profiles. In this article, we explain how the unique characteristics of Asian Americans affect their patterns of ethnic and racial self-identification, which, in turn, present challenges for accurately counting this population. We conclude by discussing policy ramifications of our findings, and explain why data disaggregation is a civil rights issue.


Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Zarsadiaz

Asians and Asian Americans are the most suburbanized people of color in the United States. While Asians and Asian Americans have been moving to the metropolitan fringe since the 1940s, their settlement accelerated in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. This was partly the result of relaxed US immigration policies following the 1965 Hart-Celler Act. Globalization and burgeoning transnational economies across the so-called Pacific Rim also encouraged outmigration. Whether it is Korean or Indian immigrants in northern New Jersey or Vietnamese refugees in suburban Houston, Asians and Asian Americans have shifted Americans’ understandings of “typical” suburbia. In the late 1980s, academic researchers and policymakers started paying closer attention to this phenomenon, especially in Southern California, where Asians and Asian Americans often clustered together in select suburbs. Sociologists, in particular, observed how greater Los Angeles’s economic, political, and built landscapes changed as immigrants and refugees—predominantly from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, India, and Vietnam—established roots throughout the region, including Orange County. Since then, other studies of heavily populated Asian and Asian American ethnic suburbs—or “ethnoburbs”—have emerged, including research on New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC. Nonetheless, scholarship remains focused on Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, and other hubs of the metropolitan West Coast. Research and scholarship on Asians and Asian Americans living in the suburbs has grown over the last decade. This is partly a response to demographic shifts occurring beyond the coasts. Moreover, geographers, historians, and urban planners have joined the discussion, producing critical studies on race, class, architecture, and political economy. Despite the breadth and depth of recent research, literature on Asian and Asian American suburbanization remains limited. There is thus much room for additional research on this subject, given a majority of Asians and Asian Americans in the United States live outside city limits.


Author(s):  
Monica Chiu ◽  
Jeanette Roan

Asian American graphic narratives typically produce meaning through arrangements of images, words, and sequences, though some forgo words completely and others offer an imagined “before” and “after” within the confines of a single panel. Created by or featuring Asian Americans or Asians in a US or Canadian context, they have appeared in a broad spectrum of formats, including the familiar mainstream genre comics, such as superhero serials from DC or Marvel Comics; comic strips; self-published minicomics; and critically acclaimed, award-winning graphic novels. Some of these works have explicitly explored Asian American issues, such as anti-Asian racism, representations of history, questions of identity, and transnationalism; others may feature Asian or Asian American characters or settings without necessarily addressing established or familiar Asian American issues. Indeed, many works made by Asian American creators have little or no obvious or explicit Asian American content at all, and some non-Asian American creators have produced works with Asian American representations, including racist stereotypes and caricatures. The earliest representations of Asians in comics form in the United States were racist representations in the popular press, generally in single-panel caricatures that participated in anti-immigration discourses. However, some Asian immigrants in the early to mid-20th century also used graphic narratives to show and critique the treatment of Asians in the United States. In the realm of mainstream genre comics, Asian Americans have participated in the industry in a variety of different ways. As employees for hire, they created many well-known series and characters, generally not drawing, writing, or editing content that is recognizably Asian American. Since the 2010s, though, Asian American creators have reimagined Asian or Asian American versions of legacy characters like Superman and the Hulk and created new heroes like Ms. Marvel. In the wake of an explosion of general and scholarly interest in graphic novels in the 1990s, many independent Asian American cartoonists have become significant presences in the contemporary graphic narrative world.


Author(s):  
Chia Youyee Vang

In geopolitical terms, the Asian sub-region Southeast Asia consists of ten countries that are organized under the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Current member nations include Brunei Darussalam, Kingdom of Cambodia, Republic of Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos), Malaysia, Republic of the Union of Myanmar (formerly Burma), Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Kingdom of Thailand, and Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The term Southeast Asian Americans has been shaped largely by the flow of refugees from the American War in Vietnam’ however, Americans with origins in Southeast Asia have much more diverse migration and settlement experiences that are intricately tied to the complex histories of colonialism, imperialism, and war from the late 19th through the end of the 20th century. A commonality across Southeast Asian American groups today is that their immigration history resulted primarily from the political and military involvement of the United States in the region, aimed at building the United States as a global power. From Filipinos during the Spanish-American War in 1898 to Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, and Hmong refugees from the American War in Vietnam, military interventions generated migration flows that, once begun, became difficult to stop. Complicating this history is its role in supporting the international humanitarian apparatus by creating the possibility for displaced people to seek refuge in the United States. Additionally, the relationships between the United States, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore are different from those of other SEA countries involved in the Vietnam War. Consequently, today’s Southeast Asian Americans are heterogeneous with varying levels of acculturation to U.S. society.


Author(s):  
Intae Yoon

Private money clubs or mutual financial aid and saving associations (MFASAs) are commonly identified as one of the contributing factors to high small business ownership rates among Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrants in the United States. This article discusses MFASAs among the immigrant groups in the United States. Included are MFASAs’ historical roots, trends, operational procedures, and their role in building financial assets among these groups. As MFASAs have roles other than that of being private financial vehicles for immigrants, other functions are also discussed. The potential for MFASAs to be considered a development model beyond the Asian American community is presented.


2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yomee Lee

AbstractDespite their long history in the United States, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Asian Americans and their lived experience in sports. The purpose of this study was to give voices to Asian American men by focusing on their experiences in sports. In particular, this study examined the experiences of East Asian and Southeast Asian American male college students who were often perceived as “foreign” and “pejoratively feminine” racialized minority yet participated in sports that were associated with dominant masculinity in the U.S. The setting of the study was as a predominately White institution located in Upstate New York where Asian Americans make up about one percent of the total student population. Qualitative research method was employed for the study. Six Asian American male students were recruited through snowball and purposeful sampling methods. In-depth interviews were conducted to reveal the rich stories of these Asian American men. The research showed that the stories of Asian American male college students were much nuanced and complicated. Specifically, this study revealed that Asian American men were constantly otherized as “forever foreigners” who did not have a legitimate citizenship in the United States. Also, Asian Americans faced unique ideas about their manhood that either highlighted emasculated and feminized masculinity or hyper-masculinity. In dealing with these situations, Asian American men employed unique cultural strategies to challenge and resist racial stereotypes through sports.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
BoRam Kim ◽  
Teri Aronowitz

There has been a 72% increase in the Asian American population from approximately 12 million in 2000 to 21 million in 2015. By 2050, there will be 33.4 million Asian Americans living in the United States, making this population the most rapidly growing ethnic group in the country. There is a myth that Asian Americans are a model conservative minority group in terms of sexual behavior and safe sexual practices and are not at risk of sexually transmitted infections including HIV. However, they are the only ethnic group in the United States that had a continuous increase in HIV infection rates from 4.9 per 100,000 in 2011 to 5.5 per 100,000 in 2016. Due to state and national methods of data collection for race and ethnicity with regard to sexually transmitted infection and HIV, the Asian American population’s data are often limited. The purpose of this article is to identify the potential historical and political reasons why the Asian American population’s HIV or sexual risk has not been fully documented and to propose potential health policy solutions.


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