Asian Americans’ Racialized Incorporation into the Political Field

Abstract

I use Asian Americans’ political participation to examine how the racialization of Asian Americans manifests in the political field, and how such processes shape Asian Americans’ racialized experiences and identity. Based on interviews with 95 Asian American political candidates and organizers in Houston, Texas, the findings show that, regardless of respondents’ motivation for participating in politics, most of them have encountered racial discrimination based on the “perpetual foreigner” racial trope in the political field and have observed how race dictates the way politics operates in the United States. The racialized experiences in politics lead to these organizers’ awareness of their Asian American racial status and their belief that political participation is a means to assert their political belonging to U.S. society and to transform their marginalized racial status. This facilitates their sense of linked fate with other individuals with Asian heritages in the United States and sustains their political activism. The findings suggest that Asian Americans are going through a process of racialized incorporation in the political field, as they are “sorted” along racial lines when becoming part of the U.S. hierarchical political system.