Poll: Distrust of Asian Americans is rising
axios.comI wonder what the poll would look like if you interviewed Taiwanese-Americans and Taiwanese living in America about their views of Chinese mainlanders.
Also, would be interesting to see a similar poll about Russians from Americans in general and Ukrainian-Americans.
Members at large of aggressor groups will be stereotyped, that's how humans work everywhere. Go to South Africa and interview locals about people from "up north".
> Members at large of aggressor groups
The people who were born in the same town as I was, who speak undifferentiable standard US English, send their kids to local schools, etc.?
Insofar as minorities seek greater legal representation and rights, "Asian American" makes perfect sense as a political identity. If you're Burmese, why not throw in with Thai and Chinese Americans?
However, I'm unsure if anything tangible can be discerned about Americans' attitudes toward "Asian Americans." There are simply too many cultures represented that share not enough in common. Even "Hispanics" (a vexing, incoherent classification) have more in common than Asian Americans.
If you don't know what you're measuring, it's hard to understand the data and give it appropriate context.
I recently learned that Americans group people from the Indian subcontinent under the category 'Asian'.
I am therefore apparently an Asian, something that never occurred to me.
> I recently learned that Americans group people from the Indian subcontinent under the category 'Asian'.
IIRC, in the UK, "Asian" is understood as South Asian by default, not as East Asian in the US.
Anecdata: My wife is a doctor AT A HOSPITAL and someone yelped at her a couple weeks ago as she was leaving the parking lot:
“Chinese, they don’t f*ing win! You don’t f*ing win!”
Made us both very upset
Sorry that happened. Cheers to you both.
Everybody clapped.
I would bet good money that distrust from every ethnic group to every other ethnic group is rising due to identity politics making this a salient attribute in every discussion.
Source with interactive data: https://www.staatus-index.org
> Many Americans remain unaware of the spike in anti-Asian American racism and hate over the past year.
...yet on the same page the responses to "How has your opinion of Asian Americans, in general changed over the past 12 months?" overwhelmingly skew to "stayed the same" or "positive".
Maybe I'm missing something, but it certainly seems like they are trying to push a narrative that even their own data doesn't support.
Where's the contradiction?
If you assume that people answered honestly, it's very possible that remaining proportion of people who viewed Asian Americans negatively were more likely to express anti-Asian American racism and hate over the past year, instead of keeping quiet about their views.
Furthermore, a lot of people are biased to skew their responses or lie due to social-desirability bias [1]. The responses are self-reported. It's highly plausible that many people said their opinion "stayed the same" while actually worsening.
Most importantly, anti-Asian hate crimes have "increased by 339 percent" from 2020 to 2021 [2]. Even if you doubt the data, comparatively, crime reports are more reliable and objective than self-reports when you ask a population about their views of people of a particular ethnicity.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-desirability_bias
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/anti-asian-hate-c...
> It's highly plausible that many people said their opinion "stayed the same" while actually worsening.
This statement crosses the line into absurdity.
The poll (that they designed!) didn’t give the “correct” results so time to do some hand waving and move the goalposts.
I’ll never understand this obsession with imagined grievances and jumping through hoops to paint one’s self as a victim. What is the point? Attention? Pity?
There is no absurdity, as "recall bias" is a recorded effect where people inaccurately remember past experiences to fit their current worldview (source: https://catalogofbias.org/biases/recall-bias/). You also ignored the points on social-desirability bias and crime reports and just asserted there is no increase in racism, and racism is a result of "imagined grievances" and victim culture.
You're asserting that the crime reports are wrong, and we can conclude that racial incidents did not increase because people in a survey said they weren't racist.
Many Asian Americans aren't asking for your "attention" or "pity." If there is more awareness among the Asian American community of racist incidents (e.g. many Asians getting randomly punched or pushed onto the subway tracks), one can have more aware of their surroundings when going outside to avoid random violence.
1. Recall bias is a fancy concept to whip out, but now sure I follow how you think it applies here or helps your point: "I am kinda racist now but I was even MORE racist against Asians in the past" Huh?
2. You can't just ignore a poll because the results don't match your message and then just say: "Oh, well, we can't even trust the results of this poll guys. All the racists will just say they aren't racists... cuz, cmon, we like KNOW there are SOOO many racists!"
3. Hate crime reporting has increased because HOW these incidents are now reported has changed in the past ~18 months at the Federal and local levels. Are there fewer or more of these incidents? Is there some trend? I don't think less than 2 years of data can tell us much of anything.
I find it interesting that when this argument fails to find any actual evidence it reverts to vigorous hand waving and asking us to believe there is some growing contingent of illusive racist boogeymen.
Enough with the fear mongering.
You contradicted yourself.
You wrote that we can’t ignore evidence that does not support your worldview in point 2, and then you flipped and said we should ignore the evidence of crime data in point 3, because the results did not match your own message.
At least be consistent and say “we don’t have enough data to conclude either way,” instead of claiming that it’s a bold statement that polling data is less reliable than crime statistics.
> Furthermore, a lot of people are biased to skew their responses or lie due to social-desirability bias [1]. The responses are self-reported. It's highly plausible that many people said their opinion "stayed the same" while actually worsening.
Not just that, people are also just biased to believe their previous opinions are consistent with their current opinions.
Ah, of course!
I always make sure my responses to anonymous surveys are as politically correct as possible. Ya know, just in case ;)
Something about the poll itself feels incendiary. I think these kinds of polls and the spin the media puts on them seems as if it was designed to stir the pot.
You don't get a $524m valuation without pushing clickbait and divisive content.
The concerning stats are on slides 32 and 33, showing that an increasing number of Americans believe Asian Americans are more loyal to their country of origin, and that Asian Americans contributed to COVID-19. Unlike some of the other stats, this one isn't broken down by party. But I would bet that almost all of this increase was among Republicans. Slide 19 provides some support for this, as conservatives were more than twice as likely as liberals to say that racism against Asian Americans has stayed the same or decreased.
Aggregate polls hide the bimodal nature of American politics, which makes them largely useless in understanding what is actually happening in the population.
>Unlike some of the other stats, this one isn't broken down by party. But I would bet that almost all of this increase was among Republicans.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
The change I want to see is broad recognition that Republican leaders are leveraging latent racism for political gain, so that moderate voters turn away from the party and it is forced to abandon that cynical strategy, which is actively dividing the country.
I want a world where decisions are based in truth. And the truth is that the Republicans have given up on trying to stop their party members from being overtly racist and xenophobic.
Personally, I think some weird process of self-radicalization involving the newest mass media and a denial of reason and fear of change in racial demographics, has kicked in with the Republicans and they won’t be able to stop it internally; there are no lines of common decency where the swirling madness won’t push all the thoughtful people past. I believe the rest of the civic body will have to stop them using our power. Yes, science is real. no, there’s no big differences between ethnic groups. Yes, being racist fucks up society for a long time, let’s stop. Yes, women are human also. Yes, immigrants refresh and renew the US commitment to hard work leading to achievement and the US ability to respect, enjoy and combine all human cultures. We, the majority, will vote, organize to vote, and push this world view every day for a hundred years rather than slip back into authoritarian or racist past which was anti-science, anti-truth, and anti-virtue.
Look again. Their very own data doesn’t support your attempt to blame those darned racist conservatives.
The parent comment link allows you to view responses by political affiliation and answers by conservatives skew greatly to a more “positive” view of Asian Americans over the past 12 months.
Just a reminder to check your biases. Everything you don’t like isn’t caused by the other political party.
You're right, but you don't make a string claim or cite evidence, thus the downvotes. Here's the facts:
On the question of "Asian Americans as a group are more loyal to their country of origin than to the United States", Democrats experienced a 60% increase year over year in agreement (22=>35), whereas Republicans experienced only a 36% increase (24=>33).
On the question of "Asian Americans as a group are at least partly responsible for COVID-19", Democrats experienced a 135% increase year over year in agreement (10=>24), whereas Republicans experienced only a 91% increase (13=>25).
Now for my take on these facts:
I don't find either particularly concerning. There certainly are some Asian Americans who are more loyal to their country of origin than to the United States, and that ground truth number may or may not be accurately represented by these surveys in one or both years. There's no way to know from the information we are provided, and there's no reason to make a value judgement either way. (Is it "wrong" for someone to be more loyal to their home country?)
Regarding COVID, in my opinion Asian Americans as a group are absolutely at least partly responsible for COVID-19... but so is every other group! To claim that any group holds absolutely no responsibility of our collective handling of the global pandemic is absurd. We're all in this together.
Where are you seeing this? I don't see anywhere in the report where it breaks those two questions down by party.
Also worth observing that the report shows 35% of Republicans wouldn't be comfortable with an Asian American President, vs 20% of Democrats.
Try following the link in the original comment you replied to.
This link, right? https://www.staatus-index.org/
The screen that says "However, an increasing percentage of Americans in 2022 are questioning the loyalty of Asian Americans and blaming Asian Americans for the Covid-19 epidemic."? There's no drill-down there for me.
Update: ok, found it---it's not on the screen that shows the specific questions, you have to scroll down through the drop-down on the first screen.
> Just a reminder to check your biases. Everything you don’t like isn’t caused by the other political party.
You are correct. If I'd made the bet, I would have lost because the underlying data shows most of the increase in agreement on these two questions was among Democrats. (For those looking for the breakdown of the data, the first page has a dropdown with all of the questions and an option to filter by party affiliation.) Though the Democrats response on the COVID question add up to 102% for some reason, it doesn't materially change the result.
It's what happens when there's a world power feeling threatened by a rising upstart. Be skeptical, folks.
What, is China the rising upstart? China was doing amazing tech and had an amazing society for thousands of years before America was even discovered.
Yup, if you weed out all the political FUD the signs are pointing that way. History has often shown bickering happening between the upstart vs the incumbents as well.
i am a naturalized american who used to have a different passport most of the life. I've pondered who I would support in a hypothetical war between the countries. I haven't been able to resolve this.
The one who's less guilty of humanitarian violations in that scenario? Don't support America, Russia, or China when they act to make peoples' lives worse. It's like having two really good friends (husband and wife) and the husband starts beating the wife. You're not going to support him just because he's the closer friend. With that said, it's important to remember that many people will do just this and immigrants in a country can wrongly support their origin country. cough supporting Russia right now cough
I would hope it is to the country you chose to pledge an Oath of Allegiance to in order to obtain the new citizenship and all of the benefits it has granted
hope i can uphold my Oath of Allegiance for sure.
Circumstances matter. Would you hold someone responsible for not keeping an oath to the Reich?
How about Trump?
That (circumstances) was not entered into the equation, so I took it to mean all things being equal. Otherwise how could one possibly ponder which side until those circumstances are known, there was no hint that circumstances where being considered
Hopefully you can support whatever country allows the freedom to be critical of its motives and question its leaders.