The Effects of US Foreign Relations on American Racial Politics

• In Event: Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and Views of/by Asian Americans

Abstract

Attacks against Asians in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic have produced burgeoning research on the relationship between elite cues, international crises, anti-Chinese animosity in the United States. However, further empirical investigation is needed to ascertain the root cause(s) of such hostility; much of the existing literature does not differentiate between resentment towards American adversaries, which could be race-blind in theory, and race-based discrimination. A serious competing explanation for claims of racism against Chinese Americans in recent years is that such discrimination lies not in racial prejudice, but rather in resentment against Americans whose (perceived) country of origin is an American adversary. After all, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that drew much condemnation from the United States, some Russian American businesses also confronted an outpour of anti-Russian threats and resentment, despite the racialization of Russian Americans as white. Is the observed hostility against Chinese Americans driven by racial prejudice, animosity towards a foreign adversary, or some combination of both? How is public opinion towards Americans of immigrant background affected by tensions between the immigrant’s (perceived) country of origin and the United States?

This paper presents results from an original survey experiment that measures the effects of elite foreign policy cues on subsequent public attitudes towards Chinese and Russian Americans in the United States. The findings indicate that while alarmist elite cues on US-China and US-Russia relations adversely affected the American public’s judgment of both Chinese and Russian Americans’ ability to assimilate into American society and participate in American politics, descriptions of foreign threats to American security and economic standing adversely impacted the respondents’ evaluations of Chinese Americans more significantly than Russian Americans. These aforementioned trends seem to be driven largely by white Americans. The results suggest that worsening relations between an American individual's country of origin and the United States could lead to increased civic ostracization of such an individual, and this effect could be further exacerbated if the individual is non-white.

Author

• Lucy Song, Harvard University