The Mechanisms of Ethnoracialization and Asian American Support for Race-conscious Admissions

Abstract

Recent studies on political attitude formations have developed the ethnoracialization framework, which emphasizes the roles of racial hierarchies and ethnic identities interconnected with national origins. However, existing research has not established analytical strategies to incorporate this framework, leaving a gap between theory and practice. We propose an alternative analytical model to examine ethnoracialized political attitudes using the case of Asian Americans’ support for race-conscious college admissions. Using data from the 2016 National Asian American Survey, our effect coding reveals how Asian Americans’ race-conscious admissions attitudes vary by ethnicity. Then, we investigate whether this variation can be attributed to theoretical predictors of such attitudes, including the mention of previously supportive Supreme Court decisions on race-conscious admissions, through regression modeling. Most ethnic groups’ mean support scores significantly vary from the grand mean of Asian Americans, and those gaps remain significant even after controlling for socioeconomic backgrounds and general predictors. As an exception, redistributionism accounted for some ethnic variations. Certain predictors such as individual experiences of the U.S. opportunity structure and the racial justice frame shaped overall race-conscious admissions attitudes but did not reduce ethnic variations. These findings highlight the need for increased attention to the analysis of ethnic communities when studying ethnoracialized political attitudes, as our current theories appear insufficient in explaining variations observed between ethnic groups. Thus, conducting research that explores the interplay between Asian Americans, racialization, and ethnic communities will provide a more comprehensive understanding of Asian Americans and potentially other ethnoracialized groups.