How Do Asian–White Biracial People Self-Identify?

“As you think about people who have multiracial backgrounds, all sorts of interesting questions arise—about who belongs to which group, about where those people themselves think they belong, about how those perceptions align with one another,” says Nour Kteily, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School and codirector of the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement.  

Surveys have indicated that the majority of multiracial people don’t consider themselves multiracial, often because they believe they look more like one race than another. And about a fifth of multiracial people have felt pressure from their family, friends, or society to identify as a single race. 

Asian–white biracial people are no exception. About half think that others perceive them as more white, and nearly half believe they can often pass as white.  

But how do Asian–white biracial people themselves want to identify? One prevailing argument suggests that they will want to identify with the more dominant group, Kteily says, in part because it may be viewed as higher status and less subject to discrimination. “So you could imagine a world in which somebody who has a background in both a majority group (white) and a minority group (Asian) might 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 Asian–white biracial people in the U.S.—even those who “physically appear white”—feel more solidarity with their Asian than their white community. 

A common thread 

The topic of biracial identity is familiar territory for Kteily, who has dedicated years to understanding conflict and status differences among racial and ethnic groups. His prior research, for example, has shown that both Black and white people tend to view Black–white biracial people as more Black.  

In their current research, Kteily and colleagues set out to better understand how perceptions about race and identity might differ for Asian–white biracial people.  

The researchers surveyed two groups of Asian–white biracial people in the U.S.: 253 students at a large public university and 264 adults in the general population. They asked them how much solidarity they feel with Asians and white people, whether they believe they physically look white, and how much discrimination affects the lives of Asians in the U.S. 

Overall, Asian–white biracial people in both groups reported feeling a stronger bond with Asians than with white people. The students rated their solidarity with Asians as 4.78, compared with 3.53 with white people (on a scale of one to seven, where seven represented the highest level of solidarity and one no solidarity at all). The adults in the general population rated their solidarity as 5.29 with Asians and 3.65 with white people.  

Among Asian–white university students (but not the general public), there was a positive relationship between the feeling that they looked physically white and the degree of solidarity with white people. “Still, on average, and by a meaningful gap, Asian–white multiracial people who think that they look more white still express more solidarity with Asians than with white people,” Kteily says. 

The researchers also uncovered an unexpected dynamic between discrimination and identity. They found that the more discrimination Asian–white biracial people sensed against the Asian community in general, the stronger became their bond with that community.  

“You could have imagined that, in reaction to anti-Asian discrimination, Asian–white biracial people would have tried to disaffiliate with that parent group,” Kteily says. “But it turns out that it’s exactly the opposite.”  

“In fact,” he adds, “if anything, perceiving discrimination against a group seems to be driving even more affiliation.”  

A common misperception  

These results motivated Kteily and colleagues to find out whether the broader Asian community had a good feel for Asian–white biracial people’s perspective.    

So they shared the original survey questions with 283 Asians at the same American university and 521 Asians in the general U.S. population and then invited them to predict how Asian–white biracial people might respond to those questions.   

By and large, Asians were accurate in their predictions: they correctly said that Asian–white biracial people feel more solidarity with their Asian background and that the solidarity grows stronger when they perceive more anti-Asian discrimination.   

There was one scenario, however, where the predictions were off. Asians predicted that Asian-white biracial people who believe they physically look white feel more solidarity with white people than with Asians, whereas the reverse was true. “We identify an important mismatch where perceptions were flipped relative to reality,” Kteily says.    

This type of disconnect can lead to unnecessary issues. In this case, it might push part of the Asian community to reject Asian–white multiracial people who actually feel a strong connection with that community, just because they happen to physically look white.   

“Anytime you have a mismatch,” Kteily says, “you could have these unfortunate cases where someone is not accepting a person into their group simply because of a misunderstanding.”   

This kind of almost-accidental rejection is not exclusive to differences in race. It happens in a wide range of social contexts. For instance, Kteily explains, people riding in an Uber might incorrectly think that their Uber driver doesn’t want to talk with them, when the driver actually does, and correcting that misperception would allow both parties to enjoy that interaction better.   

“In general, there is a lot of estimation or guesstimation that we have to do when we’re operating in a social world; we are trying to engage our ‘theory of mind’ to try to put ourselves in the shoes of other people,” he says. “But at the end of the day, we certainly make lots of errors.”   

Shifting perspectives 

Fortunately, there are a variety of ways to address misperception. And the researchers evaluated one possible approach in a final study.    

The team asked a different group of 621 Asians in the U.S. to predict the responses of Asian–white biracial people to the same surveys, just as before. This time, though, the researchers showed about half of the participants the real responses of Asian–white biracial people from prior surveys—giving these participants insight into how Asian–white biracial people view themselves.

Participants who had access to the prior survey results were much more likely to align their views with that of Asian–white biracial people. What’s more, in follow-up questions, these participants said they felt significantly “greater trust” in Asian–white biracial people and were “more inclusive” of them. 

Of note, most Asians in this study still viewed Asian–white biracial people who physically look white as more white than Asian, though those who saw the prior survey responses were less likely to do so.  

“Anytime there are these misperceptions, you have the possibility of correcting them—of bringing people’s perceptions and lived experiences and decisions better in line with reality,” Kteily says. “And our data are suggesting that that can be done, even if it doesn’t close the gap entirely.”   

Digging beneath the surface   

The findings offer lessons for the broader business community as well, including making sure not to jump to conclusions about people’s preferences or how they view themselves.    

Whether it’s a colleague, client, or prospective business partner, allowing assumptions or stereotypes “to consciously or unconsciously shape how you categorize them or treat them may be at odds with their desired lived experience and causing them to feel unaccepted,” Kteily says. “It’s a dangerous game.”   

Many social categories are very broad or crude, if not arbitrary. Even the category of Asian is overly broad, Kteily says, acknowledging that there are vast and varied experiences within the Asian community.   

So instead of presuming people feel a certain way based on appearance, he suggests that people have conversations to try to really understand the people with whom they are interacting, including people within the same group. “You really got to dig beneath the surface to figure people out,” he says, “even those who are at least somewhat like you.”