Ethnic Nationalism and Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement among Black and Asian Americans

Abstract This paper explores whether attitudes toward ethnic nationalism among Black and Asian Americans influence attitudes toward the Black Lives Matter Movement. Acceptance of a nationalist ideology typically makes an individual animus towards outgroups. Moreover, ethnic/Black nationalism is known to flare in times of perceived intense oppression. Given current racial tensions in the United States, we are interested in examining factors that may help facilitate alliance-building between Black and Asian Americans—two nonwhite groups that exist on different planks of the U.S. racial hierarchy. We begin by recounting historical and contemporary instances of Afro-Asian solidarity and conflict. This is followed by a review of past theoretical articulation and empirical research on nationalist ideology within each community. We develop a set of group-specific indicators of ethnic nationalism for Black and Asian Americans from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey. Our results show clear evidence that being sympathetic to ethnic nationalism can unite rather than divide the two racialized communities in their attitudes toward present-day projects such as the Black Lives Matter Movement.