Tag Archives | Racial Attitudes

The Mere Mention of Asians in Affirmative Action

Jennifer Lee, Van C. Tran

Sociological Science, September 26, 2019
10.15195/v6.a21


Presumed competent, U.S. Asians evince exceptional educational outcomes but lack the cultural pedigree of elite whites that safeguard them from bias in the labor market. In spite of their nonwhite minority status, Asians also lack the legacy of disadvantage of blacks that make them eligible beneficiaries of affirmative action. Their labor market disadvantage coupled with their exclusion from affirmative action programs place Asians in a unique bind: do they support policies that give preferences to blacks but exclude them? Given their self- and group interests, this bind should make Asians unlikely to do so. We assess whether this is the case by comparing their attitudes to those of whites, blacks, and Hispanics. Drawing on a novel three-way framing experiment embedded in the 2016 National Asian American Survey, we document how the “mere mention of Asians” in affirmative action frames affects support for the preferential hiring and promotion of blacks. Support shifts in different ways among all groups depending on the mere mention of Asians as either victims of affirmative action alongside whites or as victims of discrimination alongside blacks. Moreover, among Asians, support for affirmative action differs significantly by immigrant generation: first-generation Asians express the weakest support.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jennifer Lee: Department of Sociology, Columbia University
E-mail: lee.jennifer@columbia.edu

Van C. Tran: Department of Sociology, The Graduate Center, CUNY
E-mail: vtran@gc.cuny.edu

Acknowledgements: Direct all correspondence to Jennifer Lee, Department of Sociology, Columbia University. E-mail: lee.jennifer@columbia.edu. This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (1558986) and the Russell Sage Foundation (93-17-07). For comments and suggestions, we thank Maria Abascal, Aixa Cintrón-Vélez, Thomas DiPrete, Florencia Torche, Andreas Wimmer, and the editors of Sociological Science.

  • Citation: Lee, Jennifer, and Van C. Tran. 2019. “The Mere Mention of Asians in Affirmative Action.” Sociological Science 6: 551-579.
  • Received: July 15, 2019
  • Accepted: September 2, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a21


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