Resentment, belonging and the feelings behind Asian American anti-democratic drift

Findings from social listening research

This year, Asian American Futures is launching groundbreaking research into a growing and urgent question with profound implications for racial justice and democracy: Why do many Asian Americans—despite broadly inclusive values—drift toward positions that align with authoritarianism or reinforce structural inequities? This tension threatens multiracial solidarity, complicates coalition-building, and exposes a narrative gap exploited by the right. Issues like affirmative action in college admissions–which 70% of Asian Americans supported, but who also became the face of dismantling it–is a classic example. We’ve also seen this happen with public safety, education, and more. Through listening sessions, interviews, and surveys, we aim to unpack this complex paradox and identify pathways toward justice-aligned engagement. We are sharing a look into our process and learnings as this project unfolds.

Most of us in the social justice space know from lived experience, tracking mis- and disinformation and observing elections that anti-democratic attitude drift is happening. We’ve seen how visible and visceral that drift is through issues like public safety or affirmative action. But how does it sound, in real-time, when a policy campaign may not be in the news? How might we strengthen our ability to recognize drift and understand the underlying motivations driving it–not just the policy campaigns where we encounter resistance?

In our last post, we shared the results of our social listening sessions and the ensuing mind-mapping that helped make sense of the wide range of issues and concerns related to anti-democratic drift. I hypothesized that underlying questions, and our lack of answers to these questions were driving drift and polarization. These questions could sound like:

• “How do I succeed in America, and what should success look like, if the American Dream may not be accessible to all?”

• “What’s enough, in a time when everything is so expensive?”

• “What is the racial positionality of Asian Americans, as people who experience both privilege and marginalization?”

• “Where do I truly have agency, and where am I beholden to the system I’m part of?”

My next step was to see, were these questions real? With the help of my colleague Hapshiba Kwon, we embarked on a process we call “social listening” to gather evidence and map the stories being told through content, journalism, events, and online conversations about anti-democratic drift.

Our goal with social listening is to understand how narratives about a topic are moving and sounding in real-life. It looks like this: First, we spend hours scouring the internet for evidence of our topic of inquiry. We look at new sites, reddit, instagram, tiktok, and published research. We dump all of it on a Miro board, then organize it by topic. We pull-out themes, patterns and insights, and draw lines between linked topics. Then, we speak with researchers, organizers or others familiar with our topic to validate, complicate and make sense of it all.

Social listening is one of my favorite parts of the narrative analysis process. I love it because I get to see how people–not just journalists, researchers or thought leaders–are understanding and interpreting narratives in their own words. The content is often raw and emotive, which helps me pull-out the underlying feelings and motivations behind their opinions. And, it’s helpful to analyze our social justice narratives compare to dominant narratives and storytelling in our society and culture. Yes, it takes hours, and yet, it has always uncovered insights that help me message to and connect better with persuadable audiences.

Here is what our social listening uncovered. We saw how these patterns and narratives are rooted in real lived experiences, and are stoked by anti-democratic actors who see how effective they are at winning support, sometimes through misinformation or simply talking about current events. While the majority of these insights are specific to Asian American communities, a few of them are drawn from research on the multiracial right more broadly.

• Racial resentment. First, an event, incident or attack leads people to feel unsafe or threatened. For example, people feel understandably scared and upset when hearing about anti-Asian violence against elders, or the recent attacks in Kashmir. The perceived lack of supportive media coverage or concern from friends outside their community leads people to feel like their discrimination doesn’t matter compared to discrimination against people perceived to be more marginalized. The conclusion is that they can’t rely on other groups to show up for them, so they need to look out for themselves and align with those who center and acknowledge their problems. In addition to resentment, the feeling of alienation feels strong within this bucket.

• Failure of government to prioritize “common sense” and the needs of deserving taxpayers: distribution of government resources is another area where we observed resentment. We saw posts complaining about tax dollars in California being used to provide healthcare for undocumented immigrants, as well as the failure of government to do the basics, like clean up sidewalks or reduce public disorder. The “good immigrant / bad immigrant” binary showed up frequently. Racism or a lack of attention from political parties, as well as the feeling that liberal politics prioritize cultural over material issues, was present. The overall narrative that “progressivism has failed” came up here.

• Meritocracy: zero-sum attitudes are an underlying theme in both racial resentment and resentment about government (in)action. From education to immigration to data disaggregation, people fear that those who are less hard-working, educated or otherwise deserving could be getting an unfair advantage.

• Belonging: the most complex and layered bucket centered around belonging. Researchers who visited the Turning Point USA conference brought back images of hip-hop merch, posters with multicultural imagery, and reported feeling very welcome despite holding marginalized identities. Another researcher described right wing organizers as surprisingly charming and welcoming–very unlike the typical image of conservatives held by many. There was no shortage of disdain for the left or liberal political parties. An organizer working with Chinese immigrants in the Bay Area framed it succinctly: People want to feel good, and they just don’t. How might people, especially working class people, find joy in who they are? Feelings of loneliness, alienation, and welcome in unsuspecting spaces permeated posts in this bucket, as did the right’s embrace of belonging over belief.

• Masculinity: masculinity was another area where feelings of resentment and alienation was present. We saw examples of Asian men lamenting challenges around dating, to backlash in Korea against pro-feminist movements decrying traditional gender roles and expectations for women. Researchers also noted that loneliness and a decrease in male friendships was also a factor in male radicalization.

Back to my original question: were the underlying questions real? I think they are. As our research consultant, Milan de Vries, observed, there seems to be a big storytelling gap that is preventing audiences from aligning with racial justice. Our social listening shows how this gap is pervasive, and rooted more in ideas about belonging, fairness, the role of government and simply feeling seen, than about specific policies.

It’s striking that these posts are showing attitude drift outside of policy campaigns. It’s not as though people weren’t talking about policies. Indeed, immigration and gender are areas where specific policies around healthcare, education and sports do get mentioned. However, it’s striking how much people had to say without talking about policies. The vibes around resentment, belonging and feeling seen, didn’t need specific policies to surface. This is a strong reminder of how these feelings likely influence opinions about policies, and can be stoked to induce wedging.

Our social listening findings highlight the need for more effective, emotionally resonant narrative strategies that address not just policy, but identity, belonging, and justice. This work is foundational to reimagining narrative power in the face of rising authoritarianism. Without addressing these narratives head-on, social justice movements risk losing key constituencies to politicized resentment and disinformation campaigns that weaponize identity, economic anxiety, and racial triangulation.

Our next step in the research process will be to launch a series of surveys. We are looking forward to comparing how issue opinions compare to opinions about some of the underlying themes uncovered in social listening and listening sessions, like racial resentment or meritocracy.