Chong, Kelly H.Poudel, Anna2025-02-102025-02-102023-01-312023http://dissertations.umi.com/ku:18965https://hdl.handle.net/1808/35910This study elaborates challenges faced and strategies deployed by Asian/Black, Asian/Brown, and Asian/White mixed-race individuals in asserting hybrid racial identities. Specifically, I ask: What factors influence mixed-race Asian Americans’ assertion of racial identities? When comparing Asian/Black, Asian/Brown, and Asian/White individuals, what different strategies and challenges emerge? To address these questions, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 34 participants, and four major points of comparison emerged. First, Asian/Black participants’ assertions of multiracial or Asian identity were more likely to be constrained by perceptions of their appearance because of their perceived blackness. In comparison, Asian/Brown and Asian/White participants’ appearances were seen as more ambiguous, giving them more flexibility to identify multiracially, as Asian, or as some other racial option. Second, Asian/Black and Asian/Brown participants’ encounters with racism tended to reinforce mixed-race identity, whereas Asian/White participants’ racist interactions were more likely to strengthen Asian identification. Third, Asian/Black and Asian/Brown participants’ family members were more likely to engage in conversation to support mixed-race identification. However, Asian/White participants frequently faced derogatory comments and othering behavior from White family members, which tended to increase self-perceptions of being racially Asian. Fourth, Asian/Black and Asian/Brown participants tended to have less cultural knowledge of their Asian heritages, yet this generally did not prevent them from asserting hybrid Asian identities. On the other hand, Asian/White participants felt cultural knowledge was necessary to assert an Asian identity, and they generally had the option of gaining cultural membership.90 pagesenCopyright held by the author.SociologyAsian American studiesAfro-AsianAsian Americancomparative studymixed-racemixed-race identitiesmultiracialThesis