Asian Americans’ Indifference to Black Lives Matter: The Role of Nativity, Belonging and Acknowledgment of Anti-Black Racism

This paper assesses how ongoing historical racism and nativism as embedded within U.S. culture requires new and important dialogues about the omnipresence of White supremacy and its interconnected mechanisms that divide communities along the lines of race and perceived in-group status. To assess the role of immigration as it is understood through paradigms of White supremacy and systemic racism, the current study examines individual-level predictors of indifference to the BLM movement based on nativity status among Asian Americans—a racialized pan-ethnic group that is comprised of predominantly foreign-born members. Using the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, one of the few nationally representative surveys that include detailed information about the Black Lives Matter movement, our study includes 1371 Asian immigrants (i.e., foreign-born Asian Americans) and 1635 U.S.-born Asian Americans. Results demonstrate that reporting indifference to the BLM movement differ by nativity such that foreign-born Asian Americans were significantly more likely to report indifference to the BLM movement compared to their U.S.-born Asian American counterparts. However, the impact of nativity disappears once we account for sense of belonging and acknowledgement of anti-Black racism. The sense of belonging was significant in predicting indifference to the BLM movement among U.S.-born Asian Americans only. The findings contribute to our understanding of racial sense making for Asian Americans as well as an understanding of how White supremacy translates to anti-Black racism through multiple and interconnected mechanisms for the maintenance of White supremacy.