Asian American Women’s Antiracist Solidarity during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The year 2020 marked the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and racism targeting Asian and Black communities ravaged the United States, highlighting the urgency for antiracist solidarity. This study examined antiracist solidarity engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic among Asian American women, a group often fetishized and portrayed as submissive and apolitical. Pre-pandemic experiences with Asian fetishism and racial self-negativity were examined as predictors of antiracist solidarity engagement and anxiety symptoms during the pandemic. In a sample of 146 Asian American college women, a directed content analysis revealed the three most prevalent forms of solidarity engagement: collective activism, communicative advocacy, and financial activism. Regression analyses indicated that Asian fetishism positively predicted collective activism, financial activism, and communicative advocacy, while racial self-negativity positively predicted financial activism. A significant interaction between racial self-negativity and collective activism emerged when predicting anxiety symptoms. Contrary to assumptions of activism as a protective factor, this study found that partaking in collective activism worsened, rather than buffered, the longitudinal link between racial self-negativity and anxiety symptoms. Practice implications and future research directions are discussed.