Tag Archives: Race

Racial framing contests: How anti-Asian racism and its resistance enacted racial projects during COVID-19

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Regla-Vargas, Alejandra, A.J Alvero, & Hajar Yazdiha. 2026. “Racial framing contests: How anti-Asian racism and its resistance enacted racial projects during COVID-19.” Big Data & Society, 13(1). https://doi-org/10.1177/20539517261424160

This study examines the dynamics of racial framing contexts taking the case of anti-Asian hate speech and counter-hate speech on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the COVID-HATE dataset (n = 2,491,405 tweets posted 15 January 2020 to 26 March 2021), we analyze racial framing contests between movements and counter-movements. Through a mixed-methods approach, we find that: (1) hate frames deployed racial projects characterizing Asians as public health and national security threats, while counter-frames either directly challenged these characterizations or bypassed them to focus on systemic racism and (2) hate and counter-hate movements often “spoke past” each other rather than engaging in direct frame–counterframe dynamics as prevailing theories would predict. Counter-movements did not consistently produce opposing frames for each hate frame but rather developed independent messaging focused on combating racism itself. This study advances our understanding of how both hate and resistance operate through racial projects, with implications for theories of social movements, social media, and racial formation.

Red and Blue Immigrants: Political (Mis)Alignment, Immigration Attitudes, and the Boundaries of American National Inclusion

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Okura, Keitaro. 2026. “Red and Blue Immigrants: Political (Mis)Alignment, Immigration Attitudes, and the Boundaries of American National Inclusion.” American Journal of Sociology 131(4):729-772.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/739568

Conventional theories of attitudes toward immigrants emphasize either conflict between civic and ethnocultural conceptions of national identity or a consensus favoring highly skilled, culturally assimilable immigrants. This article advances an alternative paradigm: natives’ immigration attitudes are contingent on their perceived (mis)alignment with newcomers’ politics. Drawing on six descriptive and experimental studies across two surveys, I first document that Americans view immigrants as future Democrats who are culturally right-wing and economically left-wing. I then demonstrate that Americans’ receptiveness to immigrants, as well as judgments about their legal status and deservingness, are highly sensitive to whether newcomers are potential partisan allies or adversaries. Notably, the influence of perceived political (mis)alignment eclipses classic predictors of immigration attitudes. Contemporary debates over immigration further underscore the salience and potency of these political motivations. These findings offer a novel lens for understanding the modern foundations of immigration attitudes and the boundaries of national membership.

Why Don’t South Asians in the U.S. Count As “Asian”?: Global and Local Factors Shaping Anti-South Asian Racism in the United States*

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Kurien, P. and Purkayastha, B. (2024), Why Don’t South Asians in the U.S. Count As “Asian”?: Global and Local Factors Shaping Anti-South Asian Racism in the United States*. Sociol Inq, 94: 351-368. https://doi.org/10.1111/soin.12592

In a 2020 U.S. survey, more Asian Indians than Chinese indicated that they were worried about post-Covid-19 hate crimes. Yet, post-Covid violence against people of Asian background has been viewed as being directed against “Chinese-looking” individuals. This is just one example of how South Asians are overlooked in discourses about Asian Americans. This theoretical paper provides an expansion of the racial formation framework to explain this exclusion. We demonstrate how global factors, including the foreign engagements of the United States shaped the development of the Asian American group and category, and why, even though Asian Americans can be brown, yellow, white, or black, an East Asian phenotype is viewed as denoting an “Asian” body in the United States. We also discuss how the racialization of religion shapes anti-South Asian racism, a factor largely ignored in the literature on racial formation and Asian Americans. We end by calling for the inclusion of South Asians in Asian American literature to challenge many of the reigning paradigms regarding Asian America and anti-Asian racism.

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Black Lives Matter: A Reference Handbook

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Durham, Simone N and Angela Jones. 2025. Black Lives Matter: A Reference Handbook: Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

This multifaceted reference work surveys the history, development, leadership, and priorities of Black Lives Matter (BLM), including the group’s efforts to raise public awareness of police violence in communities of color.

Beginning with the infamous incidents of police brutality that spurred the creation and growth of BLM, this book goes on to profile leading and influential activists and organizations, such as the NAACP, movement co-founder Alicia Garza, and civil rights activist and athlete Colin Kaepernick.

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Privilege or marginalization: how Chinese youth from divergent class backgrounds make sense of racism in the U.S. and Australia

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Guo, W., & Liu, Q. T. (2025). Privilege or marginalization: how Chinese youth from divergent class backgrounds make sense of racism in the U.S. and Australia. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2025.2519807

This study examines how Chinese youth in the U.S. and Australia perceive and respond to racism as temporary migrants, focusing on the influence of pre-migration class positions and host-country contexts. Based on interviews with sixty Chinese students in the U.S. and forty-five working holiday makers in Australia, we find that U.S.-based students, primarily from urban, upper-middle-class backgrounds, experience status shock as they encounter systemic racial hierarchies and institutional barriers, fostering heightened sensitivity to racism and strong racial consciousness. Conversely, working holiday makers, largely from rural or economically disadvantaged areas, experience status uplift and a sense of empowerment. Viewing multiculturalism and mobility opportunities in Australia as an improvement over class-based discrimination in China, they tend to normalize or downplay racism. These contrasting responses are further shaped by each country’s immigration policies and labor markets. This study advances racialization research through a comparative, intersectional approach to Chinese diasporas.