How Wide is the Arc of Racial Solidarity? People of Color and Middle Easterners and North Africans

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129221076143
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2023, Vol. 76(1) 239–252

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129221076143

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How Wide is the Arc of Racial Solidarity?

People of Color and Middle Easterners and

North Africans

Kaumron Eidgahy

1

and Efr´

en O. P´

erez

2



Abstract

Emerging work suggests that Blacks, Asians, and Latinos sometimes share a strong sense of solidarity as people of color

(PoC), which unif‌ies their political opinions on issues that strongly implicate some of these racial groups (e.g., Black Lives

Matter). Yet much uncertainty remains about whether other non-White groups, beyond these traditional three , are

compelled to engage in politics as PoC via this same mechanism. We investigate this with two studies focused on Middle

Eastern and North African (MENA) individuals: a minoritized group with deep U.S. roots, but sparse theoretical and

empirical attention in political science. Study 1 draws on in-depth interviews with MENA adults (N=20), who suggest that,

insofar as they sense solidarity with other people of color, it is because they feel racially marginalized as foreigners. Study 2

builds on this insight with a pre-registered experiment on MENA adults (N=514), which randomly assigned them to read

an article about Latinos, who are also marginalized as foreign (vs. control article). We f‌ind that exposure to treatment

reliably heightens MENAs’expression of solidarity with other PoC, which then signif‌icantly boosts support for f‌lexible

policies toward undocumented immigrants (which implicate Latinos, but not MENAs) and reduces belief in nega tive

stereotypes of Latinos.

Keywords

people of color, Middle Easterners and North Africans, in-depth interviews, survey experi ments, pre-registration

The 2020 U.S. Census has made one thing crystal clear:

America is signif‌icantly more racially diverse than it was

10 years earlier.

1

Although much media attention has

focused on the observed decline of non-Hispanic Whites,

there has been an even more remarkable increase in the

proportion of people of color (PoC), with African

Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos now repre-

senting 37% of the United States population (Bahrampour

and Mellnik 2021). Many White individuals believe this

increase in PoC augurs greater political power for mi-

noritized groups at the expense of Whites (Knowles,

Tropp, and Mogami 2021;Jardina 2019). Yet prior

work suggests that political unity among people of color is

diff‌icult to harness toward civic ends because Blacks,

Asians, and Latinos hail from distinct groups who arrived to

the U.S. under different conditions; are treated in assorted

ways by U.S. society; and, have varied political priorities

(e.g., Carter 2019;Benjamin 2017;Wilkinson 2015;Mora

2014;Masuoka and Junn 2013;Kim 2003;Tuan 1998).

One mechanism that seems to achieve greater political

unity among PoC is intraminority solidarity: a sharpened

sense of bond and commitment to an ingroup in an im-

mediate situation, which is “associated with approaching the

ingroup and group-based activity”(Leach et al. 2008:147).

Here, a greater sense of camaraderie between Asians,

Blacks, and Latinos is triggered when these groups recog-

nize some of the similar ways they are marginalized, such as

the stereotyping of Asians and Latinos as foreigners (Zou

and Cheryan 2017;Cortland et al. 2017 Craig and Richeson

2012). In light of increased solidarity, PoC become more

supportive of policies that implicate other minoritized groups

beyond their own (P´

erez 2021a,2021b;P´

erez et al. 2021).

While this evidence highlights the viability of this in-

tergroup mechanism, less certain is whether the observed

1

Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA, USA

2

Political Science and Psychology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Efr´

en O. P´

erez, Political Science, UCLA, 4289 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles,

CA 90095, USA.

Email: perezeo@ucla.edu