Asian American Identities: Racial and Ethnic Identity Issues in ...

This shift in thinking allowed individuals who immigrated (first generation) to the United States the ability to embrace their home cultures while simultaneously adopting certain aspects of mainstream culture. The idea of the melting pot is again shifting, but now the shift relates to who is actually considered to be part of the mainstream, dominant group in society. Historically, European ethnic groups, once seen as very dissimilar from mainstream Whites in America, were eventually assimilated into the mainstream, and thus became White (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).

Now, the question “Who is White?” has been posed again. In particular, Yancey (2003) has recently theorized that Latino and Asian Americans are the next racial groups to become part of the White racial category. Similar to their European immigrant counterparts, Yancey argues that Latino and Asian Americans will be incorporated into the White racial category to distinguish them from the African American population. Specifically, it may be that Asian Americans who have achieved some occupational and economic success may see themselves as more similar to Whites in America than to other racial/ethnic minority groups (Philip, Sellers, & Mahalingam, under review). In this scenario, racial/ethnic-specific identity may play an important role in how individuals see themselves in relation to others and how they define themselves as similar or different from others.

The differences in how individuals see themselves in a larger context may be generationally based as those who immigrate (first generation) to the United States may have a very different way of thinking regarding racial dynamics than their children (second generation). It has been noted by many scholars studying the impact of immigration on identity that there are indeed differences in the identity patterns of first, second (and subsequent) generation individuals based on their understanding of racial classifications in the United States, and how other majority group members view them (Hurtado, Gurin, & Peng, 1994; Portes & Rumbaut, 1996).