Blacks More Attached to Racial Identity Than Asians
Wise King Solomon once said, “of making many books there is no end.” The same could be said for studies. Every week there are new studies on a myriad of topics. People research, compile, interview, measure, and quantify to create studies about every subject under the sun.
Race relations and perceptions are popular study topics. The American Political Science Association has released one titled, “Asian American Identity: Shared Racial Status and Political Context.”
“Asian Americans are less attached to their racial identity than black Americans,” reads the press release. “This finding confirms that minority politics in the United States today is more complex than generally realized and that understanding the increasingly multicultural nature of the U.S. requires perspectives that incorporate, but go beyond, the black historical experience.”
In other words, the experiences of American blacks isn’t the only game in town. The experiences of other minorities are just as valuable in understanding how race influences one’s politics.
The study shows that a smaller number of Asians say race is important compared to blacks. Asians tend to integrate at higher levels than blacks or other minority groups. They exhibit an internal diversity that makes them difficult to pin down as a monolith, and they are not as constrained by negative racial stereotypes.
The 13-page study (PDF), based on a 2004 survey, showed that Asian American group identity is driven by state-sponsored racial classification, immigration policy, and racial stereotypes. Let’s examine the latter more closely. The researchers argue that Asian Americans are often stereotyped as the “model minority,” and this stereotype is perceived by Asians as an individual-level trait. Consequently, Asians are less motivated to form group racial identify than a minority group like blacks, for whom group identity is central.
Is strong group identity the main impediment to blacks supporting the dissolution of state-sponsored race preferences?
