Fault Lines Among Asian Americans: Convergence and Divergence in Policy Opinion

Sociologists have long argued that a racial and ethnic category can be made under certain circumstances and remade under anothers. The panethnic category of Asian American was in fact devised to mobilize different immigrant-origin groups in the 1960s. Today’s Asian Americans have diverse opinions on numerous issues. Given this divergence, it is possible that the category will be subject to remaking or unmaking. Using survey questions from the 2016 pre-election National Asian American Survey, this article analyzes where respondents’ policy opinions converge and diverge. Using latent class models, it shows that though many Asian Americans support government interventions in health care, education, climate change, and racial justice, some diverge sharply in regard to Muslim immigration. Logistic regression models show that different experiences of immigration and differences in national origins undergird such divergence. I discuss the implications of these fault lines for the future of the Asian American category.