“As you think about people who have multiracial backgrounds, there are a number of interesting questions that arise – about who belongs to which group, about where they think they themselves belong, about how those perceptions align with each other,” he says. Nour Kteilyprofessor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School and its co-director Litowitz Center for Enlightened Dissent.
Investigations have shown that the majority of multiracial people do not consider themselves multiracial, often because they believe they are more like one race than another. And about a fifth of multiracial people have felt pressure from family, friends or society to identify as a single race.
Asian-white bisexuals are no exception. About half consider that others perceive them as whiter and nearly half believe they can often pass as white.
But how do Asian-white bisexuals themselves want to specify? A dominant argument suggests that they will want to identify with the more dominant group, says Kealy, in part because it can be seen as higher status and less subject to discrimination. “So you could imagine a world in which someone who has a background in both a majority group (white) and a minority group (Asian) could express more solidarity with the majority group,” he says.
But Kteily finds the opposite to be true for Asian-white biracial people, in research with Wilson Merrell and Arnold Ho of the University of Michigan and Nadia Vossoughi of Grinnell College.
Through a series of studies, they find that most Asians – white biracials in the US – even those who “naturally look white” – feel more solidarity with the Asian woman than with their white community.
Common thread
The topic of biracial identity is familiar territory for Kteily, who has spent years understanding the differences in conflict and status between racial and ethnic groups. His previous research, for example, showed that both blacks and whites tend to see black-white biracial people as blacker.
In their current research, Kteily and colleagues set out to better understand how perceptions of race and identity may differ for Asian-White biracial people.
The researchers surveyed two groups of Asian-white biracial people in the US: 253 students at a large public university and 264 adults in the general population. They were asked how much solidarity they feel with Asians and whites, whether they think they look physically white, and how much discrimination affects the lives of Asians in the US
Overall, Asian-White biracials in both groups reported feeling a stronger bond with Asians than with Whites. Students rated their solidarity with Asians as 4.78, compared to 3.53 with whites (on a scale of one to seven, where seven represented the highest level of solidarity and one no solidarity at all). Adults in the general population rated their solidarity as 5.29 with Asians and 3.65 with whites.
Among white Asian college students (but not the general public), there was a positive relationship between feeling physically white and the degree of solidarity with whites. “Yet, on average, and by a significant margin, Asian-white multiracial people who think they look whiter still express more solidarity with Asians than with whites,” says Kteily.
The researchers also uncovered an unexpected dynamic between discrimination and identity. They found that the more discrimination Asian-White biracials felt against the Asian community in general, the stronger their bond with that community became.
“You could imagine that, as a reaction to anti-Asian discrimination, Asian-white biracials would try to break away from that parent group,” says Kteily. “But it turns out to be just the opposite.”
“In fact,” he adds, “if anything, the perception of discrimination against a group appears to drive the association even further.”
A common misconception
These results prompted Kteily and his colleagues to find out whether the broader Asian community felt good about the perspective of Asian-white biracial people.
So they shared the original survey questions with 283 Asians at the same American university and 521 Asians in the general US population, and then asked them to predict how Asian-white bisexuals might answer those questions.
In general, the Asians were accurate in their predictions: they correctly said that Asian-White bisexuals feel more solidarity with their Asian background and that solidarity is enhanced when they perceive more anti-Asian discrimination.
There was one scenario, however, where the predictions were off. Asians predicted that Asian-White bisexuals who believe they physically look White feel more solidarity with Whites than with Asians, while the reverse was true. “We’re finding a significant mismatch where perceptions are reversed relative to reality,” says Kteily.
This type of disconnection can lead to unnecessary problems. In this case, it can prompt part of the Asian community to reject Asian-white multiracial people who actually feel a strong connection to that community, just because they happen to look physically white.
“Whenever you have a mismatch,” says Catley, “you could have these unfortunate cases where someone doesn’t accept a person on their team simply because of a misunderstanding.”
This kind of near-random rejection is not exclusive to differences in race. It occurs in a wide range of social contexts. For example, Kteily explains, people riding in Uber may mistakenly believe that their driver doesn’t want to talk to them, when the driver really does, and correcting that misconception would allow both parties to enjoy that interaction better.
“In general, there’s a lot of estimation or guesswork that we have to do when we operate in a social world; we try to use our ‘theory of mind’ to try to put ourselves in other people’s shoes,” he says. “But at the end of the day, we definitely make a lot of mistakes.”
Shifting perspectives
Fortunately, there are several ways to deal with the misconception. And the researchers evaluated one possible approach in a final study.
The team asked a different group of 621 Asians in the US to predict the responses of Asian-white biracials to the same surveys as before. This time, however, the researchers showed about half of the participants the actual responses of Asian-white biracial people from previous surveys—giving those participants insight into how Asian-white biracials see themselves.
Participants who had access to the results of the previous survey were significantly more likely to align their views with those of Asian white biracials. Additionally, in follow-up questions, these participants said they felt significantly “more trusting” of Asian-White biracial people and were “more inclusive” of them.
It is worth noting that most Asians in this study still considered Asian-white biracial people who physically look white as whiter than Asians, although those who saw the responses of the previous survey were less likely to do so.
“Whenever these misperceptions exist, you have the ability to correct them—to bring people’s perceptions and lived experiences and decisions more in line with reality,” says Catley. “And our data suggests that box to be done, even if it doesn’t completely close the gap.”
Digging below the surface
The findings also offer lessons for the wider business community, including making sure not to jump to conclusions about people’s preferences or how they see themselves.
Whether it’s a colleague, client or prospective business partner, allowing assumptions or stereotypes to “consciously or unconsciously shape how you categorize or treat them can conflict with their desired lived experience and make them feel unwelcome,” says Kteily. “It’s a dangerous game.”
Many social categories are too broad or crude, if not arbitrary. Even the category of Asian is too broad, Kteily says, acknowledging that there are vast and varied experiences within the Asian community.
So instead of assuming people feel a certain way based on appearance, she suggests people have conversations to try to really understand the people they interact with, including people in the same group. “You really have to dig below the surface to understand people,” he says, “even those who are at least somewhat like you.”
