Immigration and the Changing Status of Asian Americans
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Immigration and the Changing Status
of Asian Americans
JENNIFER LEE
Abstract
Mass immigration over the past four decades has changed the racial and ethnic composition of United States by ushering in millions of Asians and Latinos whose arrival
has not only challenged the traditional black-white color line, but has also changed
perceptions about race. Focusing on Asian Americans, I show how contemporary
immigration has changed the racial status of this group; once considered “unassimilable” and “undesirable immigrants,” Asian Americans now exhibit the highest rates
of intermarriage, the lowest rates of residential segregation, and the highest median
household incomes of all US racial groups. By highlighting the changing selectivity
of Asian immigration after the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act,
I illustrate how their hyper-selectivity has not only affected their patterns of incorporation, but also produced positive stereotypes of contemporary Asian Americans.
This, in turn, has resulted in a social psychological process that I refer to as stereotype
promise—the promise of being viewed through the lens of a positive stereotype that
leads one to perform in such a way that confirms the positive stereotype, thereby
enhancing performance and outcomes. By introducing research in social psychology to the fields of immigration and race, I provide a better understanding of the
ways in which immigration is changing the meaning of race for Asian Americans in
twenty-first century America.
INTRODUCTION
Today, race and immigration have become so inextricably linked that one
can no longer talk about race without considering immigration. And correlatively, one cannot understand the debates about immigration without
factoring in the role of race. But exactly how have trends in contemporary
immigration changed our ideas about race in the twenty-first century America, particularly for Asian Americans? Once considered “unassimilable” and
“undesirable immigrants,” Asian Americans have changed their racial status so dramatically that they now have the highest rates of intermarriage, the
lowest rates of residential segregation, highest educational outcomes, and the
highest median household incomes of all US racial groups.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
To explain the process of racial change, I highlight the changing selectivity
of Asian immigration after the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, and illustrate how their hyper selectivity has not only affected their
patterns of incorporation, but also produced positive stereotypes of contemporary Asian Americans. This, in turn, has resulted in a social psychological
process that I refer to as stereotype promise—the promise of being viewed
through the lens of a positive stereotype that leads one to perform in such
a way that confirms the positive stereotype, thereby enhancing performance
and outcomes. By introducing research in social psychology to the fields of
immigration and race, I provide a better understanding of the ways in which
contemporary immigration is changing the meaning of race in twenty-first
century America for Asian Americans.
IMMIGRATION AND RACE
Immigrants and their children account for about 23% of the US population,
and 80% of today’s newcomers hail from Latin America, Asia, Africa, or the
Caribbean, creating a society that is more racially and ethnically diverse than
at any point in history (Alba & Nee, 2003; Lee & Bean, 2010; Massey, Durand,
& Malone, 2003; U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics, 2010). In 1970, Latinos
and Asians made up only 5% and 1% of the nation’s population, respectively,
but by 2010, their populations more than tripled close to 17% and 5.5%
(Ruggles et al., 2010). Latinos have surpassed Blacks as the largest minority
group, and Asians have grown so rapidly that they have recently surpassed
Latinos as the largest group of new immigrants to the United States (Pew
Research Center, 2012). Demographers project that these populations will
continue to grow so that by 2050, Latinos will make up nearly one-third of
the nation’s population at 29%, and Asians close to one-tenth, at 9% (Lee &
Zhou, 2004; Smith & Edmonston, 1997).
Contemporary immigrants have challenged the way we define race in
the United States by forcing racial categories to go beyond the traditional
black-white binary that had long characterized US race relations. Less than
a century ago, race was confined to two categories: “pure” whites and
all others. For example, Virginia’s Racial Integrity Law of 1925 defined
a “white” person as one with “no race whatsoever of blood other than
Caucasian,” and emerged to legally ban intermarriage between whites and
other groups. The statute reflected the Supreme Court rulings of Takao Ozawa
v. United States in 1922 and the United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind in 1923,
in which persons of Asian origin were not only classified as nonwhite, but
were also considered members of an “unassimilable race,” lacking the rights
to US citizenship (Lee & Bean, 2010).
At the time, Asian Americans were largely low-skilled, low-wage manual
laborers who lived in crowded ethnic enclaves. As “marginal members
Immigration and the Changing Status of Asian Americans
3
of the human race,” full of “filth and disease,” Asian Americans were
denied citizenship, denied the right to intermarry, segregated, and, in the
case of Japanese Americans, interned. It was not until the passage of the
McCarren-Walter Immigration and Naturalization Act in 1952 that Asian
Americans were allowed to become naturalized citizens. Yet despite decades
of institutional discrimination and racial prejudice, the status of Asian
Americans has risen dramatically.
THE HYPER-SELECTIVITY OF POST-1965 ASIAN IMMIGRATION
How is it possible that the racial status of Asian Americans—once considered
unassimilable and undesirable immigrants—has changed so dramatically?
The answer lies in the change in the selectivity of Asian immigration—how
Asian immigrants differ from nonmigrants in their countries of origin. Those
who immigrated to the United States after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act are far more highly-selected than those who migrated prior.
While nearly all immigrants to the United States are more highly educated
than their counterparts who have not immigrated, Asian immigrants are the
most highly selected (Feliciano, 2005). For example, 27% of adults between
the ages 25 and 64 in South Korea and 25% in Japan have a Bachelor’s degree
or more, but nearly 70% of comparably aged recent immigrants from Korea
and Japan are college-educated (Pew Research Center, 2012). This means that
Korean and Japanese immigrants in the United States are nearly three times
more likely to have a college degree than their national origin counterparts
who did not immigrate.
Not only are contemporary Asian immigrants more highly educated than
their fellow ethnics who stayed behind, but they are more highly educated
than other US immigrant groups and more highly educated than the general
US population. More than three-fifths (61%) of Asian immigrants between
the ages of 25 and 64 who have immigrated in recent years have at least
a Bachelor’s degree—more than double the national average for the US
population overall at 28% (Pew Research Center, 2012). Contemporary Asian
immigrants on average are hyper-selected, that is, they exhibit a dual type
of positive selectivity. Not only are they more likely to have graduated from
college than their counterparts who did not migrate, but they are also more
likely to have graduated from college than US population (Lee & Zhou, 2014).
Given the high human capital of Asian immigrants, stereotypes of Asian
Americans (and Asians more generally) tend to be overwhelmingly positive: Asians value education, work hard, are entrepreneurial, and hold
strong family values—attributes that explain their exceptional academic
and occupational outcomes (Murray, 2012). Too often, these attributes are
framed as stemming from Asian culture. Yet by failing to recognize that
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Asian immigrants in the United States are only a slice—and an exceptionally
hyper-selected slice—of the Asian population easily leads to the specious
argument that there is something essential about Asian culture that promotes
exceptional outcomes. In methodological terms: to make generalizations
about all Asians based only on the hyper-selected group of Asian immigrants
in the United States is sampling on the dependent variable.
However, the hyper-selectivity of Asian immigration helps to explain the
persistence of racial, ethnic, and cultural stereotypes of Asian Americans,
even amidst disconfirming evidence. Obviously, not all Asians Americans
are highly-educated and have high median household incomes. For example,
Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Hmong immigrants have lower levels of educational attainment than the US average, and each of these groups, as well as
Chinese and Koreans, has higher poverty rates than the US national average.
Given the heterogeneity within the Asian racial category and the evidence
that not all Asian Americans have exceptional outcomes, why do positive
stereotypes of Asian Americans persist?
Research in social psychology helps to shed light on this vexing question.
Studies have shown that people are more likely to notice and remember
events and experiences that confirm their expectations, and to discount or
ignore those that disconfirm them (Fiske, Lin, & Neuberg, 1999; Ridgeway,
2011). In addition, because there are visible examples that confirm the stereotype, the disconfirming evidence can be easily cognitively dismissed as the
exception (Hewstone, 1994). Yet regardless of the validity of a stereotype,
social psychological studies have also shown that the mere existence of
a stereotype can affect an individual’s performance, even if one does not
subscribe to the stereotype (Steele, 1999).
IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: STEREOTYPE THREAT
AND STEREOTYPE PROMISE
While immigration research has been informed by a number of social science
disciplines—including sociology, political science, anthropology, economics,
and demography—social psychology has been curiously absent.1 An interdisciplinary field, immigration can benefit from research in social psychology, and in particular, the body of studies that has shown how group-based
stereotypes can affect an individual’s performance.
This vein of research has been spear-headed by Claude Steele and his colleagues whose studies have shown that the threat or fear of performing in a
1. For a fuller elaboration on the useful intersection between immigration and social psychology,
refer to the Russell Sage Foundation’s working group on Cultural Contact and Immigration. Retrieved
from
http://www.russellsage.org/research/cultural-contact/working-group-cultural-contact-andimmigration.
Immigration and the Changing Status of Asian Americans
5
way would inadvertently confirm a negative stereotype of one’s group can
depress an individual’s performance—what they refer to as stereotype threat
(Steele & Aronson, 1995). Through various experiments, they have shown
that stereotype threat decreases the performance of high-achieving African
American students on difficult verbal tests as well as accomplished female
math students on difficult math tests when these tests are presented as a measure of ability. Steele and his colleagues have also shown that performance
improves for both groups when the “threat” is lifted, that is, when the tests
are presented as problem-solving exercises rather than a measure of ability.
Further developing this line of research, Shih, Pittinsky, and Ambady (1999)
have found that Asian American female students who are strong in math
performed better on a math test when researchers cued their ethnic identity,
and performed worse when they cued their gender compared to the control
group. Their point is that test performance is both malleable and susceptible
to implicit cues—what they refer to as stereotype susceptibility.
Building on this literature, I conceived of “stereotype promise”—the promise
of being viewed through the lens of a positive stereotype that leads one to
perform in such a way that confirms the positive stereotype, thereby enhancing performance (Lee, 2012). Stereotype promise focuses more broadly on
the way in which positive stereotypes can boost performance outside of controlled test-taking environments and in real-world settings such as schools
and workplaces. For example, in a study of 1.5- and second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese in Los Angeles, the respondents explained that their
teachers and school administrators assumed Asian students—regardless of
ethnicity, class, gender, or generational status—were smart, hard-working,
and high-achieving. And importantly, the Chinese and Vietnamese respondents also revealed how the teachers and administrators’ positive opinions
of them had very real consequences (Lee & Zhou, 2014).
Teachers’ positive perceptions affected the grades that Asian American
students received, the extra help they were offered with their coursework
and their college applications, and their likelihood of being placed into
competitive programs such as GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) and
into academic tracks such as advanced placement (AP) and Honors. While
the positive stereotypes affected how teachers and guidance counselors
treated Asian American students, they also affected the way that Asian
American students perceived themselves. Even some of the most mediocre
students—those who earned C’s in junior high school and failed the AP
exam for high school—changed their behavior once teachers placed then
into the AP track and in Honor’s classes. Once anointed as exceptional,
bright, and deserving, these mediocre students changed their behavior;
they took school more seriously, put more effort into their homework, and
changed the reference group by which they measured their performance,
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
which resulted in straight A’s and admission to top colleges.2 In essence,
stereotype promise affected the performance of even some of the most
mediocre Asian American students, resulting in exceptional outcomes (Lee
& Zhou, 2014).
Moreover, because these students’ academic outcomes matched their teachers’ expectations, the teachers can point to the students’ stellar academic
achievement as proof of their initial assessment about all Asian American students (that they are smart, high-achieving, and deserving of being placed into
the most competitive academic tracks), all the while unmindful of their role in
generating a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1948). This, in turn, leads them
to favor a new cohort of Asian American students, and the cycle continues.
It is critical to underscore that while some Asian American outcomes may
be exceptional, it is not because Asians are superior in some intrinsic sense
or because they value achievement more than other groups. Rather, positive
stereotypes of Asian Americans can change the behavior of even some of the
most average performers, thereby constructing exceptional outcomes. These
social psychological processes operate to give Asian Americans an advantage over their non-Asian peers, and are consequential because they occur
in gateway institutions such as schools and workplaces. This is just one concrete example in which research in immigration and race has benefited from
studies in social psychology.
CONCLUSION—THE CHANGING MEANING OF RACE FOR ASIAN
AMERICANS
Once a dichotomous category in the United States, race has moved far
beyond the black-white binary as a result of the arrival of contemporary
immigrants from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Diverse
in national origins, socioeconomic background, and phenotype, today’s
immigrants have challenged the meaning of race and racial status for both
the newcomers and members of their host society. One of the most striking
changes has been the racial status of Asian Americans.
Less than a century ago, Asian Americans were considered “unassimilable” and “undesirable immigrants,” who were denied citizenship, denied
the right to intermarry, and confined to ethnic enclaves. Today, Asian
Americans have the highest rates of intermarriage, are the most residentially
2. What sets apart stereotype promise from the Pygmalion effect (or the expectancy effect)—that teachers’ expectations can influence students’ performance—is that in Rosenthal and Jacobsen’s study, teachers
were told that certain students (selected at random) were “special” and had “intellectual competencies
that would in due course be revealed.” After 1 year of the experiment, the researchers found that a higher
percentage of “special” students increased their IQ by 20 points or more compared to the control group
(47% vs 19%). By contrast, our respondents’ teachers were not told that the Chinese and Vietnamese students had academic potential that would bloom in due course; instead, teachers made assumptions about
their academic ability based on group-based stereotypes of Asians. See Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968).
Immigration and the Changing Status of Asian Americans
7
integrated, and exhibit the highest median household incomes of all US
racial groups. The high selectivity of Asian immigration after 1965 has
paved the way for the emergence of a new set of racial stereotypes: that
of the highly-educated, hard-working, high-achieving Asian American—a
far cry from their label as “marginal members of the human race” who
were filled with “filth and disease.” While Asian Americans are a diverse
lot, the US racialization process leads to positive based stereotypes of this
heterogeneous group, and results in “stereotype promise,” which, in turn,
can facilitate the incorporation of contemporary Asian immigrants and
their children. As a result, racial status can change, and has changed for
Asian Americans, illustrating one of the many ways in which immigration
is changing the meaning of race in the twenty-first century.
REFERENCES
Alba, R. D., & Nee, V. G. (2003). Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and
contemporary immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Feliciano, C. (2005). Educational selectivity in U.S. immigration: How do immigrants
compare to those left behind? Demography, 42(1), 131–152.
Fiske, S. T., Lin, M. H., & Neuberg, S. L. (1999). The continuum model: Ten years
later. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual process theories in social psychology
(pp. 231–254). New York, NY: Guilford.
Hewstone, M. (1994). Revision and change of stereotypic beliefs. European Review of
Social Psychology, 5, 69–109.
Lee, J. (2012). Asian American exceptionalism and stereotype promise. The Society Pages. Retrieved from http://thesocietypages.org/papers/asian-americanexceptionalism-and-stereotype-promise/.
Lee, J., & Bean, F. D. (2010). The diversity paradox: Immigration and the color line in 21st
century America. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Lee, J., & Zhou, M. (2004). Asian American youth: Culture, identity, and ethnicity. New
York, NY: Routledge.
Lee, J., & Zhou, M. (2014). From unassimilable to exceptional: The rise of Asian Americans and ‘stereotype promise’. New Diversities, 16(1), 7–22.
Massey, D. M., Durand, J., & Malone, M. (2003). Beyond smoke and mirrors: Mexican
immigration in an era of economic integration. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Merton, R. K. (1948). The self-fulfilling prophecy. The Antioch Review, 8(2), 193–210.
Murray, C. (2012). Why aren’t Asians republicans? American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved from http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/11/why-arent-asiansrepublicans/.
Pew Research Center (2012). The Rise of Asian Americans. Retrieved from http://
www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2012/06/SDT-The-Rise-of-Asian-AmericansFull-Report.pdf
Ridgeway, C. L. (2011). Framed by gender: How gender inequality persists in the modern
world. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and
pupils’ intellectual development. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Ruggles, S. J., Alexander, T., Genadek, K., Goeken, R., Schroeder, M. B., & Sobek, M.
(2010). Integrated public use microdata series: Version 5.0 [machine-readable database].
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Shih, M., Pittinsky, T. L., & Ambady, N. (1999). Stereotype susceptibility: Identity
salience and shifts in quantitative performance. Psychological Science, 10(1), 80–83.
Smith, J. P., & Edmonston, B. (1997). The new Americans: Economic, demographic, and
fiscal effects of immigration. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Steele, C. M. (1999). Thin ice: Stereotype threat and black college students The Atlantic.
Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/08/thinice-stereotype-threat-and-black-college-students/304663/.
Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5),
797–811.
U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics (2010). 2009 yearbook of immigration statistics.
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
JENNIFER LEE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Jennifer Lee is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine
who received her BA and PhD degrees from Columbia University. She is
author of Civility in the City, coauthor of The Diversity Paradox, for which she
received the Otis Dudley Duncan Book Award, and coeditor of Asian American Youth, which was named the 2006 Outstanding Book Award from the Asia
and Asian America Section of the American Sociological Association. She has
been a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Fellow at
the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of
Chicago, a Fulbright Scholar to Japan. She is currently a Fellow at the Center
for Social Cohesion.
To read more information about Jennifer Lee’s research, click here:
http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4667
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Immigration and the Changing Status
of Asian Americans
JENNIFER LEE
Abstract
Mass immigration over the past four decades has changed the racial and ethnic composition of United States by ushering in millions of Asians and Latinos whose arrival
has not only challenged the traditional black-white color line, but has also changed
perceptions about race. Focusing on Asian Americans, I show how contemporary
immigration has changed the racial status of this group; once considered “unassimilable” and “undesirable immigrants,” Asian Americans now exhibit the highest rates
of intermarriage, the lowest rates of residential segregation, and the highest median
household incomes of all US racial groups. By highlighting the changing selectivity
of Asian immigration after the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act,
I illustrate how their hyper-selectivity has not only affected their patterns of incorporation, but also produced positive stereotypes of contemporary Asian Americans.
This, in turn, has resulted in a social psychological process that I refer to as stereotype
promise—the promise of being viewed through the lens of a positive stereotype that
leads one to perform in such a way that confirms the positive stereotype, thereby
enhancing performance and outcomes. By introducing research in social psychology to the fields of immigration and race, I provide a better understanding of the
ways in which immigration is changing the meaning of race for Asian Americans in
twenty-first century America.
INTRODUCTION
Today, race and immigration have become so inextricably linked that one
can no longer talk about race without considering immigration. And correlatively, one cannot understand the debates about immigration without
factoring in the role of race. But exactly how have trends in contemporary
immigration changed our ideas about race in the twenty-first century America, particularly for Asian Americans? Once considered “unassimilable” and
“undesirable immigrants,” Asian Americans have changed their racial status so dramatically that they now have the highest rates of intermarriage, the
lowest rates of residential segregation, highest educational outcomes, and the
highest median household incomes of all US racial groups.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
To explain the process of racial change, I highlight the changing selectivity
of Asian immigration after the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, and illustrate how their hyper selectivity has not only affected their
patterns of incorporation, but also produced positive stereotypes of contemporary Asian Americans. This, in turn, has resulted in a social psychological
process that I refer to as stereotype promise—the promise of being viewed
through the lens of a positive stereotype that leads one to perform in such
a way that confirms the positive stereotype, thereby enhancing performance
and outcomes. By introducing research in social psychology to the fields of
immigration and race, I provide a better understanding of the ways in which
contemporary immigration is changing the meaning of race in twenty-first
century America for Asian Americans.
IMMIGRATION AND RACE
Immigrants and their children account for about 23% of the US population,
and 80% of today’s newcomers hail from Latin America, Asia, Africa, or the
Caribbean, creating a society that is more racially and ethnically diverse than
at any point in history (Alba & Nee, 2003; Lee & Bean, 2010; Massey, Durand,
& Malone, 2003; U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics, 2010). In 1970, Latinos
and Asians made up only 5% and 1% of the nation’s population, respectively,
but by 2010, their populations more than tripled close to 17% and 5.5%
(Ruggles et al., 2010). Latinos have surpassed Blacks as the largest minority
group, and Asians have grown so rapidly that they have recently surpassed
Latinos as the largest group of new immigrants to the United States (Pew
Research Center, 2012). Demographers project that these populations will
continue to grow so that by 2050, Latinos will make up nearly one-third of
the nation’s population at 29%, and Asians close to one-tenth, at 9% (Lee &
Zhou, 2004; Smith & Edmonston, 1997).
Contemporary immigrants have challenged the way we define race in
the United States by forcing racial categories to go beyond the traditional
black-white binary that had long characterized US race relations. Less than
a century ago, race was confined to two categories: “pure” whites and
all others. For example, Virginia’s Racial Integrity Law of 1925 defined
a “white” person as one with “no race whatsoever of blood other than
Caucasian,” and emerged to legally ban intermarriage between whites and
other groups. The statute reflected the Supreme Court rulings of Takao Ozawa
v. United States in 1922 and the United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind in 1923,
in which persons of Asian origin were not only classified as nonwhite, but
were also considered members of an “unassimilable race,” lacking the rights
to US citizenship (Lee & Bean, 2010).
At the time, Asian Americans were largely low-skilled, low-wage manual
laborers who lived in crowded ethnic enclaves. As “marginal members
Immigration and the Changing Status of Asian Americans
3
of the human race,” full of “filth and disease,” Asian Americans were
denied citizenship, denied the right to intermarry, segregated, and, in the
case of Japanese Americans, interned. It was not until the passage of the
McCarren-Walter Immigration and Naturalization Act in 1952 that Asian
Americans were allowed to become naturalized citizens. Yet despite decades
of institutional discrimination and racial prejudice, the status of Asian
Americans has risen dramatically.
THE HYPER-SELECTIVITY OF POST-1965 ASIAN IMMIGRATION
How is it possible that the racial status of Asian Americans—once considered
unassimilable and undesirable immigrants—has changed so dramatically?
The answer lies in the change in the selectivity of Asian immigration—how
Asian immigrants differ from nonmigrants in their countries of origin. Those
who immigrated to the United States after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act are far more highly-selected than those who migrated prior.
While nearly all immigrants to the United States are more highly educated
than their counterparts who have not immigrated, Asian immigrants are the
most highly selected (Feliciano, 2005). For example, 27% of adults between
the ages 25 and 64 in South Korea and 25% in Japan have a Bachelor’s degree
or more, but nearly 70% of comparably aged recent immigrants from Korea
and Japan are college-educated (Pew Research Center, 2012). This means that
Korean and Japanese immigrants in the United States are nearly three times
more likely to have a college degree than their national origin counterparts
who did not immigrate.
Not only are contemporary Asian immigrants more highly educated than
their fellow ethnics who stayed behind, but they are more highly educated
than other US immigrant groups and more highly educated than the general
US population. More than three-fifths (61%) of Asian immigrants between
the ages of 25 and 64 who have immigrated in recent years have at least
a Bachelor’s degree—more than double the national average for the US
population overall at 28% (Pew Research Center, 2012). Contemporary Asian
immigrants on average are hyper-selected, that is, they exhibit a dual type
of positive selectivity. Not only are they more likely to have graduated from
college than their counterparts who did not migrate, but they are also more
likely to have graduated from college than US population (Lee & Zhou, 2014).
Given the high human capital of Asian immigrants, stereotypes of Asian
Americans (and Asians more generally) tend to be overwhelmingly positive: Asians value education, work hard, are entrepreneurial, and hold
strong family values—attributes that explain their exceptional academic
and occupational outcomes (Murray, 2012). Too often, these attributes are
framed as stemming from Asian culture. Yet by failing to recognize that
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Asian immigrants in the United States are only a slice—and an exceptionally
hyper-selected slice—of the Asian population easily leads to the specious
argument that there is something essential about Asian culture that promotes
exceptional outcomes. In methodological terms: to make generalizations
about all Asians based only on the hyper-selected group of Asian immigrants
in the United States is sampling on the dependent variable.
However, the hyper-selectivity of Asian immigration helps to explain the
persistence of racial, ethnic, and cultural stereotypes of Asian Americans,
even amidst disconfirming evidence. Obviously, not all Asians Americans
are highly-educated and have high median household incomes. For example,
Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Hmong immigrants have lower levels of educational attainment than the US average, and each of these groups, as well as
Chinese and Koreans, has higher poverty rates than the US national average.
Given the heterogeneity within the Asian racial category and the evidence
that not all Asian Americans have exceptional outcomes, why do positive
stereotypes of Asian Americans persist?
Research in social psychology helps to shed light on this vexing question.
Studies have shown that people are more likely to notice and remember
events and experiences that confirm their expectations, and to discount or
ignore those that disconfirm them (Fiske, Lin, & Neuberg, 1999; Ridgeway,
2011). In addition, because there are visible examples that confirm the stereotype, the disconfirming evidence can be easily cognitively dismissed as the
exception (Hewstone, 1994). Yet regardless of the validity of a stereotype,
social psychological studies have also shown that the mere existence of
a stereotype can affect an individual’s performance, even if one does not
subscribe to the stereotype (Steele, 1999).
IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: STEREOTYPE THREAT
AND STEREOTYPE PROMISE
While immigration research has been informed by a number of social science
disciplines—including sociology, political science, anthropology, economics,
and demography—social psychology has been curiously absent.1 An interdisciplinary field, immigration can benefit from research in social psychology, and in particular, the body of studies that has shown how group-based
stereotypes can affect an individual’s performance.
This vein of research has been spear-headed by Claude Steele and his colleagues whose studies have shown that the threat or fear of performing in a
1. For a fuller elaboration on the useful intersection between immigration and social psychology,
refer to the Russell Sage Foundation’s working group on Cultural Contact and Immigration. Retrieved
from
http://www.russellsage.org/research/cultural-contact/working-group-cultural-contact-andimmigration.
Immigration and the Changing Status of Asian Americans
5
way would inadvertently confirm a negative stereotype of one’s group can
depress an individual’s performance—what they refer to as stereotype threat
(Steele & Aronson, 1995). Through various experiments, they have shown
that stereotype threat decreases the performance of high-achieving African
American students on difficult verbal tests as well as accomplished female
math students on difficult math tests when these tests are presented as a measure of ability. Steele and his colleagues have also shown that performance
improves for both groups when the “threat” is lifted, that is, when the tests
are presented as problem-solving exercises rather than a measure of ability.
Further developing this line of research, Shih, Pittinsky, and Ambady (1999)
have found that Asian American female students who are strong in math
performed better on a math test when researchers cued their ethnic identity,
and performed worse when they cued their gender compared to the control
group. Their point is that test performance is both malleable and susceptible
to implicit cues—what they refer to as stereotype susceptibility.
Building on this literature, I conceived of “stereotype promise”—the promise
of being viewed through the lens of a positive stereotype that leads one to
perform in such a way that confirms the positive stereotype, thereby enhancing performance (Lee, 2012). Stereotype promise focuses more broadly on
the way in which positive stereotypes can boost performance outside of controlled test-taking environments and in real-world settings such as schools
and workplaces. For example, in a study of 1.5- and second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese in Los Angeles, the respondents explained that their
teachers and school administrators assumed Asian students—regardless of
ethnicity, class, gender, or generational status—were smart, hard-working,
and high-achieving. And importantly, the Chinese and Vietnamese respondents also revealed how the teachers and administrators’ positive opinions
of them had very real consequences (Lee & Zhou, 2014).
Teachers’ positive perceptions affected the grades that Asian American
students received, the extra help they were offered with their coursework
and their college applications, and their likelihood of being placed into
competitive programs such as GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) and
into academic tracks such as advanced placement (AP) and Honors. While
the positive stereotypes affected how teachers and guidance counselors
treated Asian American students, they also affected the way that Asian
American students perceived themselves. Even some of the most mediocre
students—those who earned C’s in junior high school and failed the AP
exam for high school—changed their behavior once teachers placed then
into the AP track and in Honor’s classes. Once anointed as exceptional,
bright, and deserving, these mediocre students changed their behavior;
they took school more seriously, put more effort into their homework, and
changed the reference group by which they measured their performance,
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
which resulted in straight A’s and admission to top colleges.2 In essence,
stereotype promise affected the performance of even some of the most
mediocre Asian American students, resulting in exceptional outcomes (Lee
& Zhou, 2014).
Moreover, because these students’ academic outcomes matched their teachers’ expectations, the teachers can point to the students’ stellar academic
achievement as proof of their initial assessment about all Asian American students (that they are smart, high-achieving, and deserving of being placed into
the most competitive academic tracks), all the while unmindful of their role in
generating a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1948). This, in turn, leads them
to favor a new cohort of Asian American students, and the cycle continues.
It is critical to underscore that while some Asian American outcomes may
be exceptional, it is not because Asians are superior in some intrinsic sense
or because they value achievement more than other groups. Rather, positive
stereotypes of Asian Americans can change the behavior of even some of the
most average performers, thereby constructing exceptional outcomes. These
social psychological processes operate to give Asian Americans an advantage over their non-Asian peers, and are consequential because they occur
in gateway institutions such as schools and workplaces. This is just one concrete example in which research in immigration and race has benefited from
studies in social psychology.
CONCLUSION—THE CHANGING MEANING OF RACE FOR ASIAN
AMERICANS
Once a dichotomous category in the United States, race has moved far
beyond the black-white binary as a result of the arrival of contemporary
immigrants from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Diverse
in national origins, socioeconomic background, and phenotype, today’s
immigrants have challenged the meaning of race and racial status for both
the newcomers and members of their host society. One of the most striking
changes has been the racial status of Asian Americans.
Less than a century ago, Asian Americans were considered “unassimilable” and “undesirable immigrants,” who were denied citizenship, denied
the right to intermarry, and confined to ethnic enclaves. Today, Asian
Americans have the highest rates of intermarriage, are the most residentially
2. What sets apart stereotype promise from the Pygmalion effect (or the expectancy effect)—that teachers’ expectations can influence students’ performance—is that in Rosenthal and Jacobsen’s study, teachers
were told that certain students (selected at random) were “special” and had “intellectual competencies
that would in due course be revealed.” After 1 year of the experiment, the researchers found that a higher
percentage of “special” students increased their IQ by 20 points or more compared to the control group
(47% vs 19%). By contrast, our respondents’ teachers were not told that the Chinese and Vietnamese students had academic potential that would bloom in due course; instead, teachers made assumptions about
their academic ability based on group-based stereotypes of Asians. See Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968).
Immigration and the Changing Status of Asian Americans
7
integrated, and exhibit the highest median household incomes of all US
racial groups. The high selectivity of Asian immigration after 1965 has
paved the way for the emergence of a new set of racial stereotypes: that
of the highly-educated, hard-working, high-achieving Asian American—a
far cry from their label as “marginal members of the human race” who
were filled with “filth and disease.” While Asian Americans are a diverse
lot, the US racialization process leads to positive based stereotypes of this
heterogeneous group, and results in “stereotype promise,” which, in turn,
can facilitate the incorporation of contemporary Asian immigrants and
their children. As a result, racial status can change, and has changed for
Asian Americans, illustrating one of the many ways in which immigration
is changing the meaning of race in the twenty-first century.
REFERENCES
Alba, R. D., & Nee, V. G. (2003). Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and
contemporary immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Feliciano, C. (2005). Educational selectivity in U.S. immigration: How do immigrants
compare to those left behind? Demography, 42(1), 131–152.
Fiske, S. T., Lin, M. H., & Neuberg, S. L. (1999). The continuum model: Ten years
later. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual process theories in social psychology
(pp. 231–254). New York, NY: Guilford.
Hewstone, M. (1994). Revision and change of stereotypic beliefs. European Review of
Social Psychology, 5, 69–109.
Lee, J. (2012). Asian American exceptionalism and stereotype promise. The Society Pages. Retrieved from http://thesocietypages.org/papers/asian-americanexceptionalism-and-stereotype-promise/.
Lee, J., & Bean, F. D. (2010). The diversity paradox: Immigration and the color line in 21st
century America. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Lee, J., & Zhou, M. (2004). Asian American youth: Culture, identity, and ethnicity. New
York, NY: Routledge.
Lee, J., & Zhou, M. (2014). From unassimilable to exceptional: The rise of Asian Americans and ‘stereotype promise’. New Diversities, 16(1), 7–22.
Massey, D. M., Durand, J., & Malone, M. (2003). Beyond smoke and mirrors: Mexican
immigration in an era of economic integration. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Merton, R. K. (1948). The self-fulfilling prophecy. The Antioch Review, 8(2), 193–210.
Murray, C. (2012). Why aren’t Asians republicans? American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved from http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/11/why-arent-asiansrepublicans/.
Pew Research Center (2012). The Rise of Asian Americans. Retrieved from http://
www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2012/06/SDT-The-Rise-of-Asian-AmericansFull-Report.pdf
Ridgeway, C. L. (2011). Framed by gender: How gender inequality persists in the modern
world. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and
pupils’ intellectual development. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Ruggles, S. J., Alexander, T., Genadek, K., Goeken, R., Schroeder, M. B., & Sobek, M.
(2010). Integrated public use microdata series: Version 5.0 [machine-readable database].
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Shih, M., Pittinsky, T. L., & Ambady, N. (1999). Stereotype susceptibility: Identity
salience and shifts in quantitative performance. Psychological Science, 10(1), 80–83.
Smith, J. P., & Edmonston, B. (1997). The new Americans: Economic, demographic, and
fiscal effects of immigration. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Steele, C. M. (1999). Thin ice: Stereotype threat and black college students The Atlantic.
Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/08/thinice-stereotype-threat-and-black-college-students/304663/.
Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5),
797–811.
U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics (2010). 2009 yearbook of immigration statistics.
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
JENNIFER LEE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Jennifer Lee is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine
who received her BA and PhD degrees from Columbia University. She is
author of Civility in the City, coauthor of The Diversity Paradox, for which she
received the Otis Dudley Duncan Book Award, and coeditor of Asian American Youth, which was named the 2006 Outstanding Book Award from the Asia
and Asian America Section of the American Sociological Association. She has
been a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Fellow at
the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of
Chicago, a Fulbright Scholar to Japan. She is currently a Fellow at the Center
for Social Cohesion.
To read more information about Jennifer Lee’s research, click here:
http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4667
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