‘Good at math’: Andrew Yang, Asian Americans and racialized campaign rhetoric

Racial minority candidates have often been encouraged to deploy racially neutral rhetoric in their appeals to voters beyond their own racial group. Developed in the US with African American candidates in mind, this strategy, known as ‘deracialization’, was premised on the idea that white voters held negative stereotypes about racial minority candidates. In this article, we argue that many of the premises of the deracialization strategy do not hold when it comes to Asian American candidates. While Asian Americans are victims of racial prejudice, many stereotypes about Asian Americans are positive, sometimes collectively known as the ‘model-minority myth’. In this article, we explore how Andrew Yang, an Asian American candidate for president of the US and mayor of New York City, deployed racially coded campaign rhetoric. Rather than downplay his racial identity, Yang highlighted it, both explicitly and implicitly, in his rhetoric. Although Yang’s candidacy was primarily centred around a policy issue – universal basic income – his racial identity was an acknowledged and celebrated part of his campaign rhetoric.