Are we really surmounting the binary? Visualizing race and ethnicity group relations via embedded relational diagrams
PMCID: PMC12001281
PMID: 40241975
Abstract
Social theories explain the current state of affairs between social groups. In the sociological race literature, theories traditionally explained White-Black relations. In the ethnicity literature, theories explained native-born and immigrant relations. What happens to social theorizing of current group relations when new third groups emerge in society? Because social reconfigurations unfold in the longue durée and are less amenable to controlled tests, social sciences are still in the process of theorizing the effects of third groups on the old racial and ethnic relations. To outline the theorizing process, its elements, and its challenges, we propose a novel embedded relational visual diagram of the triadic relationship between Asian American, Black American, and White American groups. We use a range of six theories from the race and ethnicity literature as case studies to illustrate the applicability of the visualizing method. We show why these triadic social relations inevitably collapse into a new social duality.
Full Text
In everyday life, human cognition perceives the social world though an us-them lens wherein the “us” group has some form of consistent relation with the “them” individuals or groups (Barth, 1969; Cerulo et al., 2021; Lamont et al., 2014). It is true that each of the us-them groups has infinite internal diversities, but when pushed to the extremes, these diversities coalesce behind the cognitive us-them boundaries. In the social sciences, there is a tendency is to theorize futures where the old duality is undone and new diversities materialize. This is often done by creating a continuum and scattering the new groups along the two ends which represent the old two groups; adding new concepts or categorization for the third group such as “ethnoracial”, “fluidity”, “intersectional”, “hybrid”, “liminal”, “localized”, “mixed-race”, “multiracial”, “overlapping”, “shifting”, “transcendent”, “transnational”; or by using some combination of these strategies (Brubaker and Fernández, 2019; Brunsma et al., 2013; Cornell and Hartmann, 2006; Bynner, 2005; Modi, 2023; Valdez and Golash-Boza, 2017; Wacquant, 2024).
The logic is effectively that the third group transcends the duality and hence occupies a positionality that requires these other concepts. Fundamentally, in relation to the “either/or” logic of the duality, these third groups entail an “and/both” or a “neither/nor” categorization. Theorizings of diverse and egalitarian futures based on third groups are buttressed by sophisticated (methodological) interventions such as such as fuzzy-set (Bail, 2008; Monk, 2022) and ordinalization analyses (Fourcade, 2016) both of which, it is said, surmount the pre-existing categorizations. Then, it appears that the theory and its society no longer reference a duality but a multiplicity of super diversities (Vertovec, 2007, 2019) and hyper-mobilities (Guo, 2022).
In this paper, we illustrate that, at a fundamental level, social sciences' three-body problem is not much different from the natural sciences' 300-year-old challenge of navigating phenomenological dualities. Given that the three-body problem of three collapsing into two remains unsolved in physics, it is improbable that the solution is a simple matter of movement of third groups into different positionalities. Indeed, because social changes unfold in the longue durée, outside of lab-like controlled environments, or perhaps due to Hawthorne effect (or observer bias), the observation that three or more social groups ultimately collapse into two is masked but not solved.
To uncover the challenges of theorizing the three-group situation, we focus on particular theories from the race and ethnicity (assimilation) paradigms as case studies. We follow the U.S. lens on race and ethnicity (for the European approach see Wimmer, 2013; Wacquant, 2024). We use a range of six theories which are eminent and represent the dynamism of the race and ethnicity paradigms. These include theories of White supremacy (Christian, 2019; Feagin and Elias, 2013; Ren and Feagin, 2021), racial triangulation (Aronson and Stohry, 2023; Kim, 1999; Wong and Ramakrishnan, 2023), anti-Blackness (Davies, 2022; Kim, 2023; Sexton, 2010), as well as segmented assimilation (Portes and Zhou, 1993); ethnic economy (Light et al., 1994), and neo-assimilation (Alba and Nee, 1997, 2003).
We develop a new embedded relational method of visual diagramming the triadic relationship between the Asian American, Black American, and White American groups. Visual articulations of theory continue to be a relative rarity in the race and assimilation literatures and a growing body of literature suggests that visual representation is important not only for representation and illustration but also for theoretical development (Brett et al., 2020; Brett and Silver, 2024; Silver, 2020; Swedberg, 2016). The visualizations portray the old duality and the three-group relations side by side. This visual comparison allows for intuitively illustrating the emerging duality among the three groups in ways that may be less apparent with text alone.
In the following sections, we begin by outlining our proposed visualization method, and proceed to discussing and visualizing the race and ethnicity paradigms. We show that the three-group versions of each of the theories still reproduce as a new two-group duality. Race theories' duality is about groups' positions vs. one another while the ethnicity theories' duality is about which group experiences SES mobility and groups' do not experience SES mobility over time. Accordingly, the white supremacy and racial triangulation models reproduce a White—non-White perspective and anti-Blackness a Black—non-Black view while the ethnicity (assimilation) theories reproduce an Asian vs. non-Asian duality whereby assimilation and upward mobility is expected from Asian American but not the White and Black American groups. We then consider the theoretical implications of a change to the triadic group rankings in the Discussion section. Whether by including or excluding the new third group, human cognition and its theories appear to construct new us-them boundaries (Barth, 1969).
The core objective is to intuitively visualize multiple race and assimilation theories via graphs that use simple XY axes and a few arrows. The underlying value of this method is its capacity to condense manifold textual descriptions of theories into coherent graphs and to facilitate comparative analyses across numerous social theories. We call the method “embedded relational” insofar as it embeds relationships within the XY axes. The embedded relational graphing approach meets the standard for “theorizing diagrams” insofar as the “diagram should also be able to guide you in certain directions without locking you into a single solution” (Swedberg, 2016, p. 259).
At its most basic form, a social theory outlines an observable relationship between a minimum of two entities such as proletariat-bourgeois or White-Black. The relationship is a meaning or value system is a matter of consensus and impositions and is between a minimum of two groups such as oppressed-oppressor or superior-inferior. Because there is one concept, such as class or race, and two groups within the concept, the relationship between the two groups remains descriptive and limited to their status quo. The goal of theorizing, across sciences, is to make predictions about future outcomes that go beyond the status quo (Popper, 2002 [1935]; Hempel, 1965). Predictions occur when a new group (within the same concept) or a totally new concept appears on the empirical scene. The appearance is either artificial or natural; that is, either the researcher adds a third entity to the calculations or that a third entity organically shows up and compels the researcher to contend with its effect. Either way, this is how theories become dynamic and future-oriented so as to build better hypotheses and better societies (see Fuhse, 2022).
Accordingly, each dynamic future-oriented theory requires several components to calculate and predict the forms of new group positions and their social relations. The primary analytical challenge is to distinguish the concepts, their categories, and the groups which are then attached to each of the categories (see Abend, 2019 on the contents of “thick concepts”). As Loveman (1999) notes, these analytical steps must be disentangled such that they are not treated as one and the same in, for instance, the case of race: concept (race) = category (Black Am.) = group (Black Am.). This lack of distinction between the elements shows that the concept, categories, and groups are essentialized and, hence, devoid of theoretical and social dynamism. With this in mind, we underline the elements of a social theory as follows:
In embedded relational graphs, categories denote the endpoints of each axis. It is possible to theorize more nuanced gradations and categories in the middle of the continuum but from the perspective of the individual on the end of the continuum, the next person on the continuum is the “them” individual. From the perspective of the individual in the middle, either/both ends of the continuum are the “them” individual. No matter how fine-grained of a continuum, the first-person perspective reproduces the us-them duality (Karimi and Wilkes, 2025; Tilly, 1998; Wilkes and Karimi, 2023).
Groups: these are social groups such as White-Black, bourgeoisie-proletariat, and male-female. In the graphs, each group is assigned to one category in each concept and, as a result of this cross-classification, the group occupies one spot along the XY axes. Again, these categorical assignations are fluid and contain both self- or other-ascriptions (Barth, 1969; see Brubaker, 2004 category of practice vs. category of analysis). Examples include the affixation of the White-Black groups to the superior-inferior categories for the race concept and the affixation of the bourgeois-proletariat groups to the wealthy-poor categories for the class concept.
Relationships: these are the ways that groups see one another from their own first-person perspectives. Examples include the class oppression relation where the proletariat sees itself as oppressed and the bourgeois as the oppressor. In embedded relational visualizations, a relation is represented by an arrow. If groups are placed in the same spot on the XY axes, then they are in the same category and lack an inter-categorical relation. The presence of these (relationship) arrows between groups hints at why categorization is contentious (see Barth, 1969 on this point).
Overall, the visualizations comprehensively encompass these four theoretical elements. Then, to create a graph, the process of outlining all of the elements of a theory, concept by concept, should be explicitly identified. We call these graphs embedded relational graphs for the following reason: To connect the visualization method with the routine methods of creating 2 × 2 tables in preparation for noting the appropriate equations for data analyses, we underline that the visualization approach combines the 2 × 2 table and group-arrow (network-relational) approaches to hypothesis generation. In effect the embedded relational diagrams combine theoretical structural geometries or what have been called “Parsons four-field schemes” and “Levi-Strauss triangles” (Guggenheim, 2024, p. 179).
Returning to the main goal of this paper, which is to breakdown and visualize the race-assimilation paradigms and their theories, Figure 1 applies the embedded relational visualization method to the original arguments that propagated the current (critical) race paradigm.
Figure 1 reflects the original idea of racial thinking in the U.S. and the theoretical elements which shaped it. The graph shows two arrows between White and Black Americans delineating racism as multidimensional. Undergirding the critical race paradigm is an understanding of the arrows as delineating forms of racism. While other paradigms might understand the arrows to have a meaning other than racism each arrow can only ever reflect a single concept. We also note the direction of the X (race) and Y (color) axes delineated by arrows. As per standard graphical practices, the zero point is where the arrows meet with the bottom to up and left to right delineating a movement from 0 to 1 (racism). Without these arrows, racial groups and their positions are reflected in the quadrants but not the relationship between them. While it has been common to represent White supremacy such as spatially top-down or in a pyramidal manner (e.g., see Christian, 2019) with the arrows going in a different direction than shown here, the axes of the graph that determine the direction of the relationship. Thus, since the direction goes from the meeting of the axes outwards, the position of the different groups must be organized accordingly. The arrows comprising the axes are theorized as delineating racism and then the arrows within the graph (also delineating racism) should follow this direction. That said, even if the positions of the White and Black groups were reversed such that White was on the visual top, the number of arrows between the groups, and hence the implications, would not change.
Historically, religion had shaped group boundaries in Europe. The main duality was Christians vs. non-Christians with the latter entailing another duality within in it, Moors and Jews (Heng, 2011; see Wacquant, 2024, p. 48 on three roots of race in Europe). With the advent of imperialism and colonialism across the world at the time of Enlightenment and scientific thinking, Enlightenment thinkers assimilated the previous cultural-religious categories to develop new categories (Arendt, 1944; Greer et al., 2008; Painter, 2010). As early as the eighteenth century, European social scientist and philosophers perceived a new color line division which divided the world's geographies and their populations: White European, Yellow Asiatic, Red Aboriginal of the Americas, and Black African (Carter, 2008, p. 88). Hence, Du Bois' (2014): (1) assertion that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line; the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea”. As we shall see in the upcoming figures for the ensuing racial theories, the older religious or color division evolved, in the twentieth and the twentieth centuries, into a nation(alism) concept which determines the insider-outsider categories (Gorski, 2003; Whitehead and Perry, 2020).
In Figure 1, the duality between the two groups is created by positioning each group based on their individual categorization on the X and Y axes. At the ends of each axis, the categories for color are light/dark and the categories for race are superior/inferior (e.g., see Benedict, 1959, p. 87 on the latter). Then, the White and Black groups are, over time and via struggles and conflicts, slotted into these categories. The progenitors of racial thinking filled out the concepts by allocating White group to the light and superior categories and the Black group (and other groups) to dark and inferior categories such that the White Europeans came out on the top of the racial hierarchy. Inside the graph, one arrow goes from White to Black Americans to show the colorism relation and a parallel arrow shows the racism relation.
Below the graph we have labeled these relationships as racism and indicate that this outcome contrasts a duality between the White and Black groups. Racism is the outcome of the combination of color and race. Racism, in its modern form, refers to the relationship between the groups based on their color-race categorization. While the White-Black duality has long been theorized as multidimensional, multilevel, and/or a continuum rather than a duality (Christian, 2019), it is still the case that for this paradigm the theorized relationships of racism run in the same direction from White to Black on every dimension at every level. While the alternative—a theorized relationship from Black to White—is also possible under the race paradigm, under this paradigm this would, rather than domination, reflect a politics of liberation. Therefore, the use of more than one dimension, or more than one level, while providing more nuance and assisting in explicating the process through which this relationship operates, does not fundamentally change the underlying relationship presented in this figure. To identify the duality, the research counts the number of arrows directed (or not) at each group. Here White American is 0 and Black American is 2. The duality is not identified by the groups per se but by the relationships between them.
Next, in Figure 2 we provide an embedded relational visualization of the ethnic-native or alternatively immigrant-native duality undergirding the original classic assimilation literature. This duality is somewhat more complex because it entails three groups and because it has a dynamic temporal element. Instead of, say, oppressor-oppressed relation and duality, assimilation theory's duality emerges primarily in the form of a mobility vs. a non-mobility.
In Figure 2, there are two concepts, SES and time, that comprise the axes of the graph. The categories of these concepts are, respectively, mainstream/underclass and time 1/time 2. The temporal axis denotes assimilation theories' emphasis that immigrants' upward mobility into the mainstream category is a multigenerational process which unfolds over several decades (Alba, 2024; Alba and Nee, 2003). Assimilation, then, can be thought of in terms of one group moving upwards to join another (cf. Gans, 2007; Luthra et al., 2018 on SES mobility vs. assimilation). In other words, who transforms in relation to whom (Asad, 2024). The interest was in the assimilation of the ethnics or immigrants into the White mainstream (Gordon, 1964; Park, 1928; but see Park, 1914). The idea was that, over time, successive generations of ethnic groups would make various gains in these areas and become more and more similar with the White mainstream eventually becoming part of it —in its original formulation in the first half of the twentieth century, the reference group was the middle-class White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans. However, this logic, as well as much of the assimilation theorizing, largely omitted Black Americans as if they are destined to remain stuck at the bottom of society (Wilson, 1987; Metzger, 1971; Jung, 2009; for an exception see Jiménez, 2017). Treitler (2013), to underline assimilation theory's lack of explicitly accounting for Black Americans, uses the metaphor of a chest of racial drawers to show that some groups, such as the ethnics, are theorized to be upwardly mobile across the drawers but that the White-Black racial chest does not change. The inclusion of Black Americans means that the initial duality in assimilation theory in fact entails three rather than two groups, ethnic, White American and Black American. These three groups are then conceptually categorized based on SES and Time.
In sum, embedded relational visualizations outline all four components of social theorizing and illustrate the dualities that emerge amongst groups in race and assimilation literatures (in the U.S. context). In the following sections, we apply these blueprints to the theories that have emerged in race and ethnicity paradigms. The particular focus is on Asian and Asian Americans. Not only is the latter the fastest growing minority group (Budiman and Ruiz, 2021), but is also expected to be the largest non-White group by 2055 (Colby and Ortman, 2015). We unpack the evolution of social theorizing to accommodate this new third-group within race and assimilation paradigms. The underlying thread in these theories has been to surpass dualities so as to maintaining a healthy social balance between groups. Yet, once we apply the embedded relational visualizations, it becomes visible that these triadic social relations reproduce new dualities in the future.
It is in relation to the White-Black duality that the problematic of where to position Asian Americans (as well as other groups) arises. Akin to but also different from Black Americans in the U.S., Asians and Asian-Americans have long histories of being racialized under a system of White supremacy (Lee and Sheng, 2023; Omi and Winant, 1994). Historically, Asians were kept out (the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act), constrained (anti-miscegenation laws and labor practices), and violently interned (Japanese from 1942 to 1945) (Sohoni, 2007; Ngai, 2014). Asians were legally, socially, and physically scapegoated for societal problems including disease and economic downturns (Kwoh, 1993). Accompanying this attack were “Yellow Peril” narratives of Asians and Asian-Americans as predatory and invading (Yang, 2011). Variants of these same tropes have fueled the rising anti-Asian hate tied to the recent COVID-19 pandemic (Li and Nicholson, 2021; Mallapragada, 2021).
At other times, Asian Americans have been stereotyped as culturally “docile”, “stoic”, and “hard-working” model minority (Park, 2008; Chen and Buell, 2018). White Americans used these positive stereotypes to relatively racialize Asian Americans as culturally superior than Black Americans (Kim, 1999). The superior/inferior contrast is then used to pressure Asians to work even harder (as well as deny Asians' minority status) and to critique Black as deficient (e.g., see Chou, 2008; Lee and Zhou, 2015).
The concepts of White supremacy as a system and the racial state were adapted and deployed as a means of bridging across these disparate experiences of race (Bonilla-Silva, 1997, 2005; Feagin, 2006; Omi and Winant, 1994). The idea is that prejudice and discrimination are not simply about individual attitudes and actions but are structural and systemic. Yet the theory isn't simply about social systems, but also about racial groups. Feagin and Elias (2013, p. 947) note, “broadly speaking, we observe in historical and contemporary US data two primary racial projects: that of White Americans who seek to maintain their exploitation, oppression and domination of groups of color, and that of people of color who constantly battle uphill to overcome oppressive and systemic racism”. In effect White supremacy theory draws attention to the different ways that different groups are subject and participate (whether intentionally or not) in racial oppression. Here, in Figures 3A, B we contrast the visualization of the initial White vs. Black duality with the triadic relationship theorized by White supremacy theory.
Figure 3A is the initial White-Black duality. Figure 3B shows the triadic relationship implied by White supremacy theory. The two concepts in this figure differ from the concepts in the racial duality figure. The color concept is replaced with a nation concept designed to reflect the racism of national, political, and civic exclusion of Asian (Americans). The categories of this concept are insider/outsider. The placement of White Americans in the bottom left reflects the theory's group conceptual categorization of White as superior on the race concept and insider on the nation dimension. The placement of Black Americans on bottom right reflects the theory's group conceptual categorization as inferior on the race concept and insider on the nation concept. The placement of Asian Americans at the top left reflects the group conceptual categorization as outsider on the nation dimension and superior on the race dimension. The graph shows that, logically, the only way that Black Americans and Asian Americans can be equally but differentially oppressed by White supremacy is if the arrows between Asian and Black Americans are included. Without these additional arrows, racial oppression would refer to the White-Black relationship only and civic oppression would exclusively refer to the White-Asian relationship.
Racial triangulation theory was developed in order to surmount a number of limitations of the existing theories on Asian-Black-White relationship (Kim, 1999; Kim C. J., 2022; Yoon et al., 2024; King, 2010). The theory is “widely taught and cited as the premier explanation of Asian Americans' racial position in the United States” (Wong, 2024, p. 313). Some racial hierarchy theories had added Asian Americans in the middle of the Black-White race duality thereby overlooking the specificity of the Asian American experience (Kim, 1999). Other theories, while emphasizing the ways that different groups of color were differently racialized by white supremacy, dropped or discounted the Asian-Black relationship (Kim, 1999). Racial triangulation theory combines the two. The argument is that, on the racial dimension, White Americans relatively valorize Asian Americans as racially inferior to White Americans but as racially superior to Black Americans. However, on the nation dimension, Asian Americans are excluded in ways that differ from both White and Black Americans. This combination places Asian Americans in the middle or triangulated in a field of racial positions between White and Black Americans.
Empirical and theoretical applications of racial triangulation theory articulate the ways that Asian Americans are positioned between the White and Black (or other minority) groups. Dhingra (2021), for example, describes how high achieving Asian Americans are resented by White Americans for being inferior and are also resented by Black Americans for having surpassed them. Liu's (2018, p. 431) interviewees thought that “Chinese people should stand up for themselves and not to get ‘harassed' or ‘put down by the Americans' anymore”. As Liu explains, this not only means “the white Americans who occupy a superior position in society but also other racial minorities, particularly Black Americans, whose demands seem to be taken more seriously by the state” (Liu, 2018). Fujikane (2022) provides a critical accounting of Asians in Hawaii. They are understood as doubly victimized by the anti-immigrant sentiment of White people over job theft and by Native Hawaiians over land theft. Similarly, in regards to media coverage of anti-Asian violence during Covid-19, Cheng's (2024) finterview participants drew attention to a triangular dynamic in which “‘White media' upholds the framework of the ‘Black attacker' and ‘Asian victims”'. In Figures 4A, B, we visualize the logic of racial triangulation theory. We then explain why this graph is different from Kim's (1999) original graph.
Figure 4A, on the left side, is the initial White-Black duality and Figure 4B shows the triadic relationship theorized by racial triangulation. The two concepts, nation and race, are the same as the visualization of White supremacy theory. The categories on the nation concept are the same and the categories of the race concept are the same except that there is a new middle position labeled as inferior-superior. The placement of the White group in the bottom left reflects the group conceptual categorization of White as superior on the race concept and insider on the nation dimension. The placement of the Black group on the bottom right reflects the group conceptual categorization as inferior on the race concept and insider on the nation concept. The relationships delineated by the arrows between the groups denote the two kinds of racism. In comparison with the White supremacy model, there are now five arrows between the pairs of groups. When these arrows are tallied, there are 0 arrows directed at the White American group, 2 arrows directed at the Black American group, and 3 arrows directed at the Asian American group. Although this numerical count appears to be a ranking, it nevertheless reproduces a White vs. Black & Asian duality since, based on the arrows, both the Black and Asian American groups are numerically closer to one another and similarly distant from the White group.
The Figure 4B for racial triangulation differs from how Kim (1999) had initially imagined the categories, groups, and relations. The direction of the nation and race axes in the original graph was in the opposite direction of the arrows within the graph. Two of the arrows included here—between White-Black on the race dimension and between Black-Asian on the nation dimension—were missing in Kim's original diagram. The visualization adds these missing elements, providing a comprehensive cross-classification of all groups according to the two nation and race concepts. Further, the placement of Asian American in the middle reflects the new categorization of Asian American as outsider on the nation dimension and as inferior-superior (or the middle) on the race dimension. Yet, as motioned above, regardless of amending the visualization, the theory implies that Asian Americans are more disadvantaged than the White and Black American groups: there are no arrows directed at the White American group, two nation and race discrimination arrows are directed at the Black American group, but three nation and race discrimination arrows are directed at the Asian American group. As we discuss in the next section, this count helps to further illuminate why racial triangulation theory was critiqued by the anti-Blackness theory (Sexton, 2010; Davies, 2022).
More recently, in Asian-Americans in an Anti-Black World, Kim (2023) amends her racial triangulation theory and outlines the Asian-Black-White relations so as to further engage with anti-Blackness (see also Aronson and Stohry, 2023; Harpalani, 2021; Matriano et al., 2021 on Asian-Black solidarity and anti-Blackness). In this view, U.S. society is based on a fundamental distinction, not so much between White/Black or White/non-White, but between non-Black and Black (Gordon, 1997; Wilderson, 2003; Sexton, 2010; Yancey, 2003). Anti-Blackness refers to the unique ways that Black people have experienced race and to the ways that other minority groups are implicated in anti-Blackness (Stewart et al., 2023). Kim, taking this argument on board, has developed a newer theorization entailing White supremacy, the racism that contrasts White people with non-White people, and anti-Blackness, the racism that contrasts Black people with non-Black people. To re-visit the earlier theorization of the Asian-Black differences, she writes that, in relation to the White-Black duality, while Asian Americans may not have been White, they were also “not Black” (Kim, 2023, p. 121). The magnitude and scale of racism experienced by the two groups is not equivalent.
Drawing on archival documents, Kim (2023) contrasts the historical treatment of Chinese immigrants as aliens within the larger project of Black enslavement. She notes that while Chinese immigrants were barred and ejected, this was “from the nation, but not from the Family of Man” (19). Similarly, Wong (2024, p. 319) situates the horrific 1871 lynching of 100 Chinese Americans as taking place within a “broader backdrop of racialized violence against Black people” that includes the lynching of more than 5,000 individuals. Further, addressing the research that presents Asian-American economic and educational success as a myth, Kim (2024) states that this outcome has, at least partially, been facilitated by the latter's non-Blackness. As such, the new approach to social theorizing repositions Asian and Black Americans in very different ways from racial triangulation theory (Pinderhughes, 2024). In Figures 5A, B we provide an embedded relational visualization of the anti-Blackness theory and its focus on both race (i.e., White supremacy) and anti-Blackness.
Figure 5A is the initial White-Black duality and Figure 5B shows the triadic relationship implied by anti-Blackness theory. Here, in line with the new theory, the color and race concepts are replaced with different concepts and categories. The color concept has become an anti-Blackness concept with the categories referencing Blackness and non-Blackness. The race concept remains but with new categories of whiteness and non-Whiteness—as discussed above, such changes imply the reality that these concepts and categories are social constructs and the outcome of social and scientific change. The placement of White American in the bottom left doesn't change from either the White supremacy or the racial triangulation models and reflects the group conceptual categorization of White as affixed to the non-Blackness and Whiteness categories. The placement of Asian American on bottom right reflects the group conceptual categorization as non-White on the race concept and as non-Black on the anti-Blackness concept. The placement of Black American reflects the categorization as Blackness and non-Whiteness.
The relationships, delineated by the arrows between the groups, include four arrows. When these arrows are counted, there are 0 arrows directed at the White American group, 3 arrows directed at the Black American group, and 1 arrow directed at the Asian American group. Accordingly, the new theorization does not simply place Asian American in the middle. Rather it pushes Asian American over to the White American side as there is an even cutpoint or distance between White and Asian vs. Black Americans. The new contrast is White-Asian vs. Black.
In classic assimilation theory, while theorizing the assimilation of the ethnics into the White mainstream, the idea was that, over time, European ethnic groups would make various socio-economic and cultural gains. As they become more similar with the White mainstream, they would eventually become part of it (Gordon, 1964; Park, 1928). Since the 1980s, segmented assimilation theory shifted the analytical focus to newer immigrants from outside of Europe and to the native-born Black population. Proponents of this model argued that the straight-line assimilation model that applied to early generations of primarily European immigrants no longer held (Gans, 1992; cf. Diaz and Lee, 2023 on ethnics' segmented assimilation; Kazemipur, 2014). Immigrant groups not only assimilate upwards to the mainstream, but can also have two other trajectories. On the one hand, some immigrant youths experience bi-cultural assimilation since they stay within their family and ethnic communities but also find affiliations within the White mainstream institutions. For this group, assimilation is slower than the first group, but ultimately this second group also becomes upwardly mobile over third and further generations (Portes et al., 2005). On the other hand, a third group of second-generations follow a downwards path toward the underclasses of, mainly, Black American and dark skin groups (Portes and Zhou, 1993; Portes and Rumbaut, 2001; Haller et al., 2011). Overall, racialized immigrants experience two main multigenerational outcomes of upward and downward mobility (see the Table in Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 283).
Here the underclass references the Black American group as “an American population whose ancestors, although neither white nor Anglo-Saxon, were Protestants some of whom have been here since before the Declaration of Independence was signed” (Gans, 2007, p. 160). While the model retains the idea from traditional assimilation theory that the upwards pathway is a function of immigrant attainments, the downwards pathway to the underclass is treated as an outcome of racism, bifurcated labor markets, and exposure to oppositional culture found in schools and the inner-city areas (Portes et al., 2005). In terms of empirical results, Zhou and Xiong (2005), for example, find that the patterning of indicators of assimilation such as language, ethnic identification, and sense of belonging, show trajectories that go up and down (or little change) among and within groups such as Vietnamese and Filipino (see also Thomas and Zhou, 2022; Zhou and Yang, 2022 on Chinese immigrants).
Figures 6A, B contrast the initial ethnic vs. White-Black duality to the new group positioning and relationships in segmented assimilation theory.
Figure 6A is the initial mobility duality and Figure 6B shows the triadic relationship outlined by segmented assimilation theory. The SES and time concepts are identical to the concepts in the original mobility duality. The categories are also the same. The placement of the Black group and White groups reflects each group's conceptual categorization as, respectively, underclass and mainstream and does not change over time. This is because, according to the theory, White Americans retain their SES and Black Americans linger in the low SES echelon over time. The Asian American group in this theory occupies a different initial position in contrast to ethnics' position in classic assimilation theory. The relationships delineated by the arrows denote the two outcomes that Asian immigrants can take over time. There are no arrows for either the Black American or White American groups since these groups are not theorized as mobile. The comparison between the groups with and without mobility arrows shows that, even though segmented assimilation theory hypothesizes multiple forms of mobility for the Asian immigrant group, the theory does not break from classic assimilation's ethnic vs. White-Black duality. Segmented-assimilation's new form of duality is Asian mobility with White and Black immobility.
In the ethnic (enclave) economy theorization, self-employment, co-ethnic workplaces, and business ownership are theorized as income generating strategies that help immigrants to move out of, or avoid, the underclass (Light et al., 1994; see also Cao, 2022 on Black American economies). This mobility is facilitated by a host of factors including education, social networks, and knowledge of multiple languages and social policies (Gold and Light, 2000). In terms of the relationship between the immigrant group and the underclass, insofar as the middle group is providing an important service (Wong, 1985; Yu, 2022), or because the less-advantaged groups enjoy support from the upwardly mobile ethnic entrepreneurs (Zhou, 2004; Thomas and Zhou, 2022), the relationship between the two groups is thought to be more positive.
To fine-tune the theory, ensuing debate has centered on what, in particular, makes an economy “ethnic” with eight different definitions emphasizing the ethnicity of the entrepreneur, the ethnicity of the employees as well as the geographic context (Pécoud, 2010). The purpose of these definitions is to clarify the boundaries around the concept since if every economy is ethnic, then the concept risks becoming meaningless (Pécoud, 2010). An accompanying discussion has delineated the boundaries of ethnic economies to outline whether they are spatially-delimited or network-based (e.g., see Sharma and Koh, 2019). In terms of geography, there has been an expansion in focus of the ethnic economy as existing in, for example, traditional “Chinatowns” in traditional immigrant-receiving cities to a more recent focus on new immigrant destinations, satellite and ethnoburb economies (Xiong, 2023). Similarly, early work on network linkages, for example, counted the number of Chinese firms in Los Angeles across neighborhoods (Tseng, 1994) whereas more recent scholarship emphasizes the importance of transnational linkages (Thomas and Zhou, 2022).
The ethnic enclave economy is often treated as a response to blocked mobility and discrimination by the dominant native-born group that keep immigrants out of mainstream organizations and occupations (e.g., see Pullés and Lee, 2019). Yet the evidence as to the utility of this strategy is somewhat mixed. At the individual level, a study of the experiences of Korean workers at American and Korean multinational enterprises, found that when, after experiencing discrimination in the mainstream, immigrants “turn to co-ethnic employment out of disappointment and frustration”, they are sometimes faced with new forms of mistreatment (Kim E., 2022). Jang (2021) also found that working in co-ethnic firms lead to worse outcomes for Korean immigrant women.
Figure 7A is the initial mobility duality and Figure 7B shows the triadic relationship implied by ethnic economy theory.
Alba and Nee (1997, p. 863) define assimilation as “the decline, and at its endpoint, the disappearance of an ethnic/racial distinction and the cultural and social differences that express it.” The task of studying assimilation typically often entails a comparison between an immigrant's initial position at one point in time to their position at another point in time (or to a groups' intergenerational mobility) (Marrow, 2013). Among the areas subject to such comparisons are socio-economic status (Kim and Zhao, 2014); language acquisition (Mouw and Xie, 1999), and intermarriage (Alba and Nee, 2003; Qian and Lichter, 2007). Other studies treat individual characteristics such as socio-economic status as predictors of other outcomes such as spatial location (White et al., 1993; Iceland and Scopilliti, 2008; see Schachter, 2016 for a critique of SES is an outcome and as a variable). Some scholars note that, for non-citizens, the lack of citizenship status precludes the acquisition of the socio-economic and other attainments used to denote assimilation (Drouhot and Nee, 2019). Similarly, some Asian refugees did not attain their place of residence they were assigned this location by the state (Waters and Jiménez, 2005). Still, the placement of immigrants on the underclass side is not so much about immigrant agency or lack thereof. Rather, the initial placement of immigrant on one side has to do with who they are not: the reference group which is the non-Hispanic White mainstream.
Alba and Nee (2003) later stressed that, unlike earlier straight-line assimilation theory in which the immigrant group became mainstream (or White), neo-assimilation has a relational component. Over time, the boundary between immigrant and mainstream is blurred thereby altering the character of the mainstream (see also Alba and Duyvendak, 2019). Therefore, it is not simply the minority who changes, the majority also changes; this also changes the overall composition of the groups on each side of the boundary (cf. Alba, 2020 on “decategorization”).
Considering Asian immigrants, it is acknowledged that may have started as underclass due to their educational and occupational achievement (Neckerman et al., 1999; Suzuki, 1977; Nee and Sanders, 1985), but they have moved up to the mainstream. Within this latter literature, there is a discussion about the mechanisms such as values leading to the groups' attainment and academic and occupational achievement (Ryan and Bauman, 2016). Debates have ensued over the particularities of what is meant by values and culture that have enabled Asians to match the attainments of the mainstream group. Culture has been referred to as Confucian values that prioritize academic aspirations (Huang and Gove, 2015) and work ethics or effort more broadly (Hsin and Xie, 2014; Sakamoto and Kim, 2018). Finally, selectivity arguments either highlight how government policies favor the more advantaged immigrants (Zhou and Lee, 2018) or the mechanisms through which such individuals self-select for immigration (Feliciano and Lanuza, 2017). Regardless of the origins of such differences, these arguments have a common focus on some positive characteristic of the immigrant population as accounting for the differences in outcome. Figure 8A is the initial mobility duality and Figure 8B shows the triadic relationship implied by neo-assimilation theory.
The analysis considered the case of Asian Americans and Asian immigrants in relation to a White-Black racial and ethnic duality. The essential argument is that, while the Asian American categorization as neither Black nor White is “post” the old Black or White racial duality, this new duality is not “post” duality writ large. We proposed a new embedded relational method of visualization to help further illustrate and identify these resulting dualities. When Asian Americans and Asian immigrants are situated vis-à-vis the existing White—Black dualities, the net result will be the new White—non-White, Black—non-Black, or Asian—non-Asian dualities. This patterning and the embedded relational method can be further adapted for a multi-axis context (see also Tawa et al., 2013), other groups, quadrants, categories, as well as additional contexts. Still, no matter the change, when the categorization and cross-classification of all three groups on all elements is taken into account, a new duality will emerge.
The visualizations help to show the extent to which the theories operating under the critical race paradigm problematize the group in the superior/or higher “above” position (even if this is not explicit on the two-dimensional plane). That is, even though it is materially better to be in the superior position, the paradigm is such that racism (or the problem) is emanating from the superior group and hence the White side of the White—Black duality (Applebaum, 2010; Bonilla-Silva, 2019; c.f. Iceland and Silver, 2024; Sites, 2025 on epistemic privileging). This problematization adds a built-in incentive to move away from the White group/side and/or the “superior” position. By contrast, assimilation problematizes the group in the inferior or lower “below” position. It is the supposedly inferior group(s) which must “become”, or fail to become, like the supposedly superior group (Karimi and Wilkes, 2023). Thus, the assimilation paradigm implicitly problematizes the underclass (read Black) side of the mainstream-underclass duality (Jung, 2009). Still, as long as Asians Americans and Asian immigrants are below the White American group and/or above the Black American group, then when added as a “third” group there is a logical consistency to who is problematized within each paradigm.
The new challenge for both paradigms is the growing body of recent empirical evidence showing Asian Americans equalling or surpassing White Americans on a host of outcomes including income, education, occupation, health, work ethic, and rates of imprisonment (Bailey et al., 2017; Goyette et al., 2024; Iceland and Hernandez, 2017; Jiménez and Horowitz, 2013; Lee and Sheng, 2023; Sakamoto and Hsu, 2020). While the embedded relational diagrams could be adapted to account for this evidence and the consequent theories surrounding this evidence, the theoretical implications of this evidence are potentially controversial for the theories emanating from each paradigm, albeit for different reasons.
In terms of theories emanating from the critical race paradigm, one response has been to reject this evidence. This rejection might entail dropping Asian Americans from the written or graphical analysis (see Wilkes and Karimi, 2023), invoking other evidence such as heterogeneity within the Asian American population, immigrant selectivity, bamboo ceilings, positive stereotyping and the model minority myth (for critique see Kim, 2024; Sakamoto and Kim, 2018), or making use of alternative measures of Asian American disadvantage entailing only the White group (e.g., see Wu et al., 2021). Another option would be to accept the evidence that a new ranking is developing and to develop theoretical arguments that problematize the middle (read White American) position rather than the top (Asian American) position. Still, no matter which approach is used, the challenge is going to be that such approaches largely invisibilize Black Americans. Empirically, regardless of whether Asian Americans are equal to, above, or below White Americans, the Black-Asian gap is, on most indicators, almost inevitably larger than the White-Asian or Asian-White gap. Theories operating within the critical race perspective might have to adopt more of a Black vs. non-Black or historically marginalized—AsianWhite perspective. This is normatively challenging because, insofar as the paradigm problematizes the group(s) on the non-Black side of the duality, it then problematizes the Asian American group and positionality along with White group and positionality.
The assimilation literature has been more likely to invoke evidence that Asian Americans have equalled or surpassed White Americans (and therefore also Black Americans). While an Asian-White mainstream helps to buttress assimilation theory against charges of upholding implicitly White-centric logics (Jung, 2009), this multiracial mainstream does not resolve the implication that Black Americans must somehow become like the former (see also Karimi and Wilkes, 2023). As with race theories, some research discounts this new evidence by adding new measures of assimilation (Lee and Sheng, 2023) or by questioning whether White and Asian Americans are practically in similar positionalities (Jiménez, 2017). Furthermore, insofar as Asian Americans are above White Americans, then either “the mainstream” is now Asian American and White Americans are pushed down into a “sub-mainstream”, alternatively, White Americans continue to be mainstream and Asian Americans are pushed up into an “uber-mainstream”. Regardless, if this new evidence is to fit with the logic of assimilation theory whereby the groups below should become like the groups above then the implication is that both the White and Black American groups need to become more like Asian Americans.
It has long been argued that middle categories, new concepts, and other such classificatory options surmount racial and ethnic dualities (Brubaker and Fernández, 2019; Brubaker, 2016; Bynner, 2005; Cornell and Hartmann, 2006; Valdez and Golash-Boza, 2017; Wacquant, 2024). In this paper we used a new embedded relational approach to visualize the theorized relationships of the Asian-Black-White triad as outlined by selected theories from the critical race and assimilation paradigms. In case of the critical race paradigm, we applied these visualizations to three theories—White supremacy, racial triangulation, Asian Americans and anti-Blackness. In case of the assimilation paradigm, we used the embedded relational graphs to visualize the group-specific mobility trajectories for the Asian-Black-White groups as theorized by segmented assimilation, ethnic economy, and neo-assimilation. We showed why, in all cases, each of these theories, when applied to three groups, collapses into a new duality.
Sections
"[{\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B14\", \"B31\", \"B86\", \"B25\", \"B26\", \"B39\", \"B28\", \"B98\", \"B141\", \"B144\"], \"section\": \"Introduction\", \"text\": \"In everyday life, human cognition perceives the social world though an us-them lens wherein the \\u201cus\\u201d group has some form of consistent relation with the \\u201cthem\\u201d individuals or groups (Barth, 1969; Cerulo et al., 2021; Lamont et al., 2014). It is true that each of the us-them groups has infinite internal diversities, but when pushed to the extremes, these diversities coalesce behind the cognitive us-them boundaries. In the social sciences, there is a tendency is to theorize futures where the old duality is undone and new diversities materialize. This is often done by creating a continuum and scattering the new groups along the two ends which represent the old two groups; adding new concepts or categorization for the third group such as \\u201cethnoracial\\u201d, \\u201cfluidity\\u201d, \\u201cintersectional\\u201d, \\u201chybrid\\u201d, \\u201climinal\\u201d, \\u201clocalized\\u201d, \\u201cmixed-race\\u201d, \\u201cmultiracial\\u201d, \\u201coverlapping\\u201d, \\u201cshifting\\u201d, \\u201ctranscendent\\u201d, \\u201ctransnational\\u201d; or by using some combination of these strategies (Brubaker and Fern\\u00e1ndez, 2019; Brunsma et al., 2013; Cornell and Hartmann, 2006; Bynner, 2005; Modi, 2023; Valdez and Golash-Boza, 2017; Wacquant, 2024).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B12\", \"B99\", \"B49\", \"B142\", \"B143\", \"B61\"], \"section\": \"Introduction\", \"text\": \"The logic is effectively that the third group transcends the duality and hence occupies a positionality that requires these other concepts. Fundamentally, in relation to the \\u201ceither/or\\u201d logic of the duality, these third groups entail an \\u201cand/both\\u201d or a \\u201cneither/nor\\u201d categorization. Theorizings of diverse and egalitarian futures based on third groups are buttressed by sophisticated (methodological) interventions such as such as fuzzy-set (Bail, 2008; Monk, 2022) and ordinalization analyses (Fourcade, 2016) both of which, it is said, surmount the pre-existing categorizations. Then, it appears that the theory and its society no longer reference a duality but a multiplicity of super diversities (Vertovec, 2007, 2019) and hyper-mobilities (Guo, 2022).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"fn0001\"], \"section\": \"Introduction\", \"text\": \"In this paper, we illustrate that, at a fundamental level, social sciences' three-body problem is not much different from the natural sciences' 300-year-old challenge of navigating phenomenological dualities. Given that the three-body problem of three collapsing into two remains unsolved in physics, it is improbable that the solution is a simple matter of movement of third groups into different positionalities. Indeed, because social changes unfold in the longue dur\\u00e9e, outside of lab-like controlled environments, or perhaps due to Hawthorne effect (or observer bias), the observation that three or more social groups ultimately collapse into two is masked but not solved.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B152\", \"B144\", \"B36\", \"B47\", \"B121\", \"B10\", \"B79\", \"B155\", \"B40\", \"B81\", \"B126\", \"B117\", \"B90\", \"B6\", \"B7\", \"fn0002\"], \"section\": \"Introduction\", \"text\": \"To uncover the challenges of theorizing the three-group situation, we focus on particular theories from the race and ethnicity (assimilation) paradigms as case studies. We follow the U.S. lens on race and ethnicity (for the European approach see Wimmer, 2013; Wacquant, 2024). We use a range of six theories which are eminent and represent the dynamism of the race and ethnicity paradigms. These include theories of White supremacy (Christian, 2019; Feagin and Elias, 2013; Ren and Feagin, 2021), racial triangulation (Aronson and Stohry, 2023; Kim, 1999; Wong and Ramakrishnan, 2023), anti-Blackness (Davies, 2022; Kim, 2023; Sexton, 2010), as well as segmented assimilation (Portes and Zhou, 1993); ethnic economy (Light et al., 1994), and neo-assimilation (Alba and Nee, 1997, 2003).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B22\", \"B21\", \"B129\", \"B134\"], \"section\": \"Introduction\", \"text\": \"We develop a new embedded relational method of visual diagramming the triadic relationship between the Asian American, Black American, and White American groups. Visual articulations of theory continue to be a relative rarity in the race and assimilation literatures and a growing body of literature suggests that visual representation is important not only for representation and illustration but also for theoretical development (Brett et al., 2020; Brett and Silver, 2024; Silver, 2020; Swedberg, 2016). The visualizations portray the old duality and the three-group relations side by side. This visual comparison allows for intuitively illustrating the emerging duality among the three groups in ways that may be less apparent with text alone.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B14\"], \"section\": \"Introduction\", \"text\": \"In the following sections, we begin by outlining our proposed visualization method, and proceed to discussing and visualizing the race and ethnicity paradigms. We show that the three-group versions of each of the theories still reproduce as a new two-group duality. Race theories' duality is about groups' positions vs. one another while the ethnicity theories' duality is about which group experiences SES mobility and groups' do not experience SES mobility over time. Accordingly, the white supremacy and racial triangulation models reproduce a White\\u2014non-White perspective and anti-Blackness a Black\\u2014non-Black view while the ethnicity (assimilation) theories reproduce an Asian vs. non-Asian duality whereby assimilation and upward mobility is expected from Asian American but not the White and Black American groups. We then consider the theoretical implications of a change to the triadic group rankings in the Discussion section. Whether by including or excluding the new third group, human cognition and its theories appear to construct new us-them boundaries (Barth, 1969).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B134\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"The core objective is to intuitively visualize multiple race and assimilation theories via graphs that use simple XY axes and a few arrows. The underlying value of this method is its capacity to condense manifold textual descriptions of theories into coherent graphs and to facilitate comparative analyses across numerous social theories. We call the method \\u201cembedded relational\\u201d insofar as it embeds relationships within the XY axes. The embedded relational graphing approach meets the standard for \\u201ctheorizing diagrams\\u201d insofar as the \\u201cdiagram should also be able to guide you in certain directions without locking you into a single solution\\u201d (Swedberg, 2016, p. 259).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B114\", \"B64\", \"B50\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"At its most basic form, a social theory outlines an observable relationship between a minimum of two entities such as proletariat-bourgeois or White-Black. The relationship is a meaning or value system is a matter of consensus and impositions and is between a minimum of two groups such as oppressed-oppressor or superior-inferior. Because there is one concept, such as class or race, and two groups within the concept, the relationship between the two groups remains descriptive and limited to their status quo. The goal of theorizing, across sciences, is to make predictions about future outcomes that go beyond the status quo (Popper, 2002 [1935]; Hempel, 1965). Predictions occur when a new group (within the same concept) or a totally new concept appears on the empirical scene. The appearance is either artificial or natural; that is, either the researcher adds a third entity to the calculations or that a third entity organically shows up and compels the researcher to contend with its effect. Either way, this is how theories become dynamic and future-oriented so as to build better hypotheses and better societies (see Fuhse, 2022).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B2\", \"B92\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"Accordingly, each dynamic future-oriented theory requires several components to calculate and predict the forms of new group positions and their social relations. The primary analytical challenge is to distinguish the concepts, their categories, and the groups which are then attached to each of the categories (see Abend, 2019 on the contents of \\u201cthick concepts\\u201d). As Loveman (1999) notes, these analytical steps must be disentangled such that they are not treated as one and the same in, for instance, the case of race: concept (race) = category (Black Am.) = group (Black Am.). This lack of distinction between the elements shows that the concept, categories, and groups are essentialized and, hence, devoid of theoretical and social dynamism. With this in mind, we underline the elements of a social theory as follows:\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B76\", \"B137\", \"B150\", \"fn0003\"], \"section\": \"\", \"text\": \"In embedded relational graphs, categories denote the endpoints of each axis. It is possible to theorize more nuanced gradations and categories in the middle of the continuum but from the perspective of the individual on the end of the continuum, the next person on the continuum is the \\u201cthem\\u201d individual. From the perspective of the individual in the middle, either/both ends of the continuum are the \\u201cthem\\u201d individual. No matter how fine-grained of a continuum, the first-person perspective reproduces the us-them duality (Karimi and Wilkes, 2025; Tilly, 1998; Wilkes and Karimi, 2023).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B14\", \"B23\", \"fn0004\"], \"section\": \"\", \"text\": \"Groups: these are social groups such as White-Black, bourgeoisie-proletariat, and male-female. In the graphs, each group is assigned to one category in each concept and, as a result of this cross-classification, the group occupies one spot along the XY axes. Again, these categorical assignations are fluid and contain both self- or other-ascriptions (Barth, 1969; see Brubaker, 2004 category of practice vs. category of analysis). Examples include the affixation of the White-Black groups to the superior-inferior categories for the race concept and the affixation of the bourgeois-proletariat groups to the wealthy-poor categories for the class concept.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B14\"], \"section\": \"\", \"text\": \"Relationships: these are the ways that groups see one another from their own first-person perspectives. Examples include the class oppression relation where the proletariat sees itself as oppressed and the bourgeois as the oppressor. In embedded relational visualizations, a relation is represented by an arrow. If groups are placed in the same spot on the XY axes, then they are in the same category and lack an inter-categorical relation. The presence of these (relationship) arrows between groups hints at why categorization is contentious (see Barth, 1969 on this point).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B60\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"Overall, the visualizations comprehensively encompass these four theoretical elements. Then, to create a graph, the process of outlining all of the elements of a theory, concept by concept, should be explicitly identified. We call these graphs embedded relational graphs for the following reason: To connect the visualization method with the routine methods of creating 2 \\u00d7 2 tables in preparation for noting the appropriate equations for data analyses, we underline that the visualization approach combines the 2 \\u00d7 2 table and group-arrow (network-relational) approaches to hypothesis generation. In effect the embedded relational diagrams combine theoretical structural geometries or what have been called \\u201cParsons four-field schemes\\u201d and \\u201cLevi-Strauss triangles\\u201d (Guggenheim, 2024, p. 179).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F1\", \"fn0005\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"Returning to the main goal of this paper, which is to breakdown and visualize the race-assimilation paradigms and their theories, Figure 1 applies the embedded relational visualization method to the original arguments that propagated the current (critical) race paradigm.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F1\", \"B36\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"Figure 1 reflects the original idea of racial thinking in the U.S. and the theoretical elements which shaped it. The graph shows two arrows between White and Black Americans delineating racism as multidimensional. Undergirding the critical race paradigm is an understanding of the arrows as delineating forms of racism. While other paradigms might understand the arrows to have a meaning other than racism each arrow can only ever reflect a single concept. We also note the direction of the X (race) and Y (color) axes delineated by arrows. As per standard graphical practices, the zero point is where the arrows meet with the bottom to up and left to right delineating a movement from 0 to 1 (racism). Without these arrows, racial groups and their positions are reflected in the quadrants but not the relationship between them. While it has been common to represent White supremacy such as spatially top-down or in a pyramidal manner (e.g., see Christian, 2019) with the arrows going in a different direction than shown here, the axes of the graph that determine the direction of the relationship. Thus, since the direction goes from the meeting of the axes outwards, the position of the different groups must be organized accordingly. The arrows comprising the axes are theorized as delineating racism and then the arrows within the graph (also delineating racism) should follow this direction. That said, even if the positions of the White and Black groups were reversed such that White was on the visual top, the number of arrows between the groups, and hence the implications, would not change.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B65\", \"B144\", \"B9\", \"B59\", \"B106\", \"B30\", \"B45\", \"B57\", \"B148\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"Historically, religion had shaped group boundaries in Europe. The main duality was Christians vs. non-Christians with the latter entailing another duality within in it, Moors and Jews (Heng, 2011; see Wacquant, 2024, p. 48 on three roots of race in Europe). With the advent of imperialism and colonialism across the world at the time of Enlightenment and scientific thinking, Enlightenment thinkers assimilated the previous cultural-religious categories to develop new categories (Arendt, 1944; Greer et al., 2008; Painter, 2010). As early as the eighteenth century, European social scientist and philosophers perceived a new color line division which divided the world's geographies and their populations: White European, Yellow Asiatic, Red Aboriginal of the Americas, and Black African (Carter, 2008, p. 88). Hence, Du Bois' (2014): (1) assertion that \\u201cthe problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line; the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea\\u201d. As we shall see in the upcoming figures for the ensuing racial theories, the older religious or color division evolved, in the twentieth and the twentieth centuries, into a nation(alism) concept which determines the insider-outsider categories (Gorski, 2003; Whitehead and Perry, 2020).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F1\", \"B15\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"In Figure 1, the duality between the two groups is created by positioning each group based on their individual categorization on the X and Y axes. At the ends of each axis, the categories for color are light/dark and the categories for race are superior/inferior (e.g., see Benedict, 1959, p. 87 on the latter). Then, the White and Black groups are, over time and via struggles and conflicts, slotted into these categories. The progenitors of racial thinking filled out the concepts by allocating White group to the light and superior categories and the Black group (and other groups) to dark and inferior categories such that the White Europeans came out on the top of the racial hierarchy. Inside the graph, one arrow goes from White to Black Americans to show the colorism relation and a parallel arrow shows the racism relation.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"fn0006\", \"B36\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"Below the graph we have labeled these relationships as racism and indicate that this outcome contrasts a duality between the White and Black groups. Racism is the outcome of the combination of color and race. Racism, in its modern form, refers to the relationship between the groups based on their color-race categorization. While the White-Black duality has long been theorized as multidimensional, multilevel, and/or a continuum rather than a duality (Christian, 2019), it is still the case that for this paradigm the theorized relationships of racism run in the same direction from White to Black on every dimension at every level. While the alternative\\u2014a theorized relationship from Black to White\\u2014is also possible under the race paradigm, under this paradigm this would, rather than domination, reflect a politics of liberation. Therefore, the use of more than one dimension, or more than one level, while providing more nuance and assisting in explicating the process through which this relationship operates, does not fundamentally change the underlying relationship presented in this figure. To identify the duality, the research counts the number of arrows directed (or not) at each group. Here White American is 0 and Black American is 2. The duality is not identified by the groups per se but by the relationships between them.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F2\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"Next, in Figure 2 we provide an embedded relational visualization of the ethnic-native or alternatively immigrant-native duality undergirding the original classic assimilation literature. This duality is somewhat more complex because it entails three groups and because it has a dynamic temporal element. Instead of, say, oppressor-oppressed relation and duality, assimilation theory's duality emerges primarily in the form of a mobility vs. a non-mobility.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F2\", \"B4\", \"B7\", \"B53\", \"B93\", \"B11\", \"B56\", \"B109\", \"B108\", \"B151\", \"B97\", \"B74\", \"B72\", \"B139\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"In Figure 2, there are two concepts, SES and time, that comprise the axes of the graph. The categories of these concepts are, respectively, mainstream/underclass and time 1/time 2. The temporal axis denotes assimilation theories' emphasis that immigrants' upward mobility into the mainstream category is a multigenerational process which unfolds over several decades (Alba, 2024; Alba and Nee, 2003). Assimilation, then, can be thought of in terms of one group moving upwards to join another (cf. Gans, 2007; Luthra et al., 2018 on SES mobility vs. assimilation). In other words, who transforms in relation to whom (Asad, 2024). The interest was in the assimilation of the ethnics or immigrants into the White mainstream (Gordon, 1964; Park, 1928; but see Park, 1914). The idea was that, over time, successive generations of ethnic groups would make various gains in these areas and become more and more similar with the White mainstream eventually becoming part of it \\u2014in its original formulation in the first half of the twentieth century, the reference group was the middle-class White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans. However, this logic, as well as much of the assimilation theorizing, largely omitted Black Americans as if they are destined to remain stuck at the bottom of society (Wilson, 1987; Metzger, 1971; Jung, 2009; for an exception see Jim\\u00e9nez, 2017). Treitler (2013), to underline assimilation theory's lack of explicitly accounting for Black Americans, uses the metaphor of a chest of racial drawers to show that some groups, such as the ethnics, are theorized to be upwardly mobile across the drawers but that the White-Black racial chest does not change. The inclusion of Black Americans means that the initial duality in assimilation theory in fact entails three rather than two groups, ethnic, White American and Black American. These three groups are then conceptually categorized based on SES and Time.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B27\", \"B38\", \"fn0007\"], \"section\": \"Embedded-relational visualization method\", \"text\": \"In sum, embedded relational visualizations outline all four components of social theorizing and illustrate the dualities that emerge amongst groups in race and assimilation literatures (in the U.S. context). In the following sections, we apply these blueprints to the theories that have emerged in race and ethnicity paradigms. The particular focus is on Asian and Asian Americans. Not only is the latter the fastest growing minority group (Budiman and Ruiz, 2021), but is also expected to be the largest non-White group by 2055 (Colby and Ortman, 2015). We unpack the evolution of social theorizing to accommodate this new third-group within race and assimilation paradigms. The underlying thread in these theories has been to surpass dualities so as to maintaining a healthy social balance between groups. Yet, once we apply the embedded relational visualizations, it becomes visible that these triadic social relations reproduce new dualities in the future.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B87\", \"B105\", \"B131\", \"B104\", \"B85\", \"B159\", \"B89\", \"B94\"], \"section\": \"White supremacy theory\", \"text\": \"It is in relation to the White-Black duality that the problematic of where to position Asian Americans (as well as other groups) arises. Akin to but also different from Black Americans in the U.S., Asians and Asian-Americans have long histories of being racialized under a system of White supremacy (Lee and Sheng, 2023; Omi and Winant, 1994). Historically, Asians were kept out (the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act), constrained (anti-miscegenation laws and labor practices), and violently interned (Japanese from 1942 to 1945) (Sohoni, 2007; Ngai, 2014). Asians were legally, socially, and physically scapegoated for societal problems including disease and economic downturns (Kwoh, 1993). Accompanying this attack were \\u201cYellow Peril\\u201d narratives of Asians and Asian-Americans as predatory and invading (Yang, 2011). Variants of these same tropes have fueled the rising anti-Asian hate tied to the recent COVID-19 pandemic (Li and Nicholson, 2021; Mallapragada, 2021).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B107\", \"B33\", \"B79\", \"B35\", \"B88\", \"fn0008\"], \"section\": \"White supremacy theory\", \"text\": \"At other times, Asian Americans have been stereotyped as culturally \\u201cdocile\\u201d, \\u201cstoic\\u201d, and \\u201chard-working\\u201d model minority (Park, 2008; Chen and Buell, 2018). White Americans used these positive stereotypes to relatively racialize Asian Americans as culturally superior than Black Americans (Kim, 1999). The superior/inferior contrast is then used to pressure Asians to work even harder (as well as deny Asians' minority status) and to critique Black as deficient (e.g., see Chou, 2008; Lee and Zhou, 2015).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B18\", \"B19\", \"B46\", \"B105\", \"B47\", \"F3\", \"F3\"], \"section\": \"White supremacy theory\", \"text\": \"The concepts of White supremacy as a system and the racial state were adapted and deployed as a means of bridging across these disparate experiences of race (Bonilla-Silva, 1997, 2005; Feagin, 2006; Omi and Winant, 1994). The idea is that prejudice and discrimination are not simply about individual attitudes and actions but are structural and systemic. Yet the theory isn't simply about social systems, but also about racial groups. Feagin and Elias (2013, p. 947) note, \\u201cbroadly speaking, we observe in historical and contemporary US data two primary racial projects: that of White Americans who seek to maintain their exploitation, oppression and domination of groups of color, and that of people of color who constantly battle uphill to overcome oppressive and systemic racism\\u201d. In effect White supremacy theory draws attention to the different ways that different groups are subject and participate (whether intentionally or not) in racial oppression. Here, in Figures 3A, B we contrast the visualization of the initial White vs. Black duality with the triadic relationship theorized by White supremacy theory.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F3\", \"F3\"], \"section\": \"White supremacy theory\", \"text\": \"Figure 3A is the initial White-Black duality. Figure 3B shows the triadic relationship implied by White supremacy theory. The two concepts in this figure differ from the concepts in the racial duality figure. The color concept is replaced with a nation concept designed to reflect the racism of national, political, and civic exclusion of Asian (Americans). The categories of this concept are insider/outsider. The placement of White Americans in the bottom left reflects the theory's group conceptual categorization of White as superior on the race concept and insider on the nation dimension. The placement of Black Americans on bottom right reflects the theory's group conceptual categorization as inferior on the race concept and insider on the nation concept. The placement of Asian Americans at the top left reflects the group conceptual categorization as outsider on the nation dimension and superior on the race dimension. The graph shows that, logically, the only way that Black Americans and Asian Americans can be equally but differentially oppressed by White supremacy is if the arrows between Asian and Black Americans are included. Without these additional arrows, racial oppression would refer to the White-Black relationship only and civic oppression would exclusively refer to the White-Asian relationship.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B79\", \"B80\", \"B160\", \"B84\", \"B154\", \"B79\", \"B79\"], \"section\": \"Racial triangulation theory\", \"text\": \"Racial triangulation theory was developed in order to surmount a number of limitations of the existing theories on Asian-Black-White relationship (Kim, 1999; Kim C. J., 2022; Yoon et al., 2024; King, 2010). The theory is \\u201cwidely taught and cited as the premier explanation of Asian Americans' racial position in the United States\\u201d (Wong, 2024, p. 313). Some racial hierarchy theories had added Asian Americans in the middle of the Black-White race duality thereby overlooking the specificity of the Asian American experience (Kim, 1999). Other theories, while emphasizing the ways that different groups of color were differently racialized by white supremacy, dropped or discounted the Asian-Black relationship (Kim, 1999). Racial triangulation theory combines the two. The argument is that, on the racial dimension, White Americans relatively valorize Asian Americans as racially inferior to White Americans but as racially superior to Black Americans. However, on the nation dimension, Asian Americans are excluded in ways that differ from both White and Black Americans. This combination places Asian Americans in the middle or triangulated in a field of racial positions between White and Black Americans.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B41\", \"B91\", \"B91\", \"B51\", \"B34\", \"F4\", \"F4\", \"B79\"], \"section\": \"Racial triangulation theory\", \"text\": \"Empirical and theoretical applications of racial triangulation theory articulate the ways that Asian Americans are positioned between the White and Black (or other minority) groups. Dhingra (2021), for example, describes how high achieving Asian Americans are resented by White Americans for being inferior and are also resented by Black Americans for having surpassed them. Liu's (2018, p. 431) interviewees thought that \\u201cChinese people should stand up for themselves and not to get \\u2018harassed' or \\u2018put down by the Americans' anymore\\u201d. As Liu explains, this not only means \\u201cthe white Americans who occupy a superior position in society but also other racial minorities, particularly Black Americans, whose demands seem to be taken more seriously by the state\\u201d (Liu, 2018). Fujikane (2022) provides a critical accounting of Asians in Hawaii. They are understood as doubly victimized by the anti-immigrant sentiment of White people over job theft and by Native Hawaiians over land theft. Similarly, in regards to media coverage of anti-Asian violence during Covid-19, Cheng's (2024) finterview participants drew attention to a triangular dynamic in which \\u201c\\u2018White media' upholds the framework of the \\u2018Black attacker' and \\u2018Asian victims\\u201d'. In Figures 4A, B, we visualize the logic of racial triangulation theory. We then explain why this graph is different from Kim's (1999) original graph.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F4\", \"F4\"], \"section\": \"Racial triangulation theory\", \"text\": \"Figure 4A, on the left side, is the initial White-Black duality and Figure 4B shows the triadic relationship theorized by racial triangulation. The two concepts, nation and race, are the same as the visualization of White supremacy theory. The categories on the nation concept are the same and the categories of the race concept are the same except that there is a new middle position labeled as inferior-superior. The placement of the White group in the bottom left reflects the group conceptual categorization of White as superior on the race concept and insider on the nation dimension. The placement of the Black group on the bottom right reflects the group conceptual categorization as inferior on the race concept and insider on the nation concept. The relationships delineated by the arrows between the groups denote the two kinds of racism. In comparison with the White supremacy model, there are now five arrows between the pairs of groups. When these arrows are tallied, there are 0 arrows directed at the White American group, 2 arrows directed at the Black American group, and 3 arrows directed at the Asian American group. Although this numerical count appears to be a ranking, it nevertheless reproduces a White vs. Black & Asian duality since, based on the arrows, both the Black and Asian American groups are numerically closer to one another and similarly distant from the White group.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F4\", \"B79\", \"B126\", \"B40\"], \"section\": \"Racial triangulation theory\", \"text\": \"The Figure 4B for racial triangulation differs from how Kim (1999) had initially imagined the categories, groups, and relations. The direction of the nation and race axes in the original graph was in the opposite direction of the arrows within the graph. Two of the arrows included here\\u2014between White-Black on the race dimension and between Black-Asian on the nation dimension\\u2014were missing in Kim's original diagram. The visualization adds these missing elements, providing a comprehensive cross-classification of all groups according to the two nation and race concepts. Further, the placement of Asian American in the middle reflects the new categorization of Asian American as outsider on the nation dimension and as inferior-superior (or the middle) on the race dimension. Yet, as motioned above, regardless of amending the visualization, the theory implies that Asian Americans are more disadvantaged than the White and Black American groups: there are no arrows directed at the White American group, two nation and race discrimination arrows are directed at the Black American group, but three nation and race discrimination arrows are directed at the Asian American group. As we discuss in the next section, this count helps to further illuminate why racial triangulation theory was critiqued by the anti-Blackness theory (Sexton, 2010; Davies, 2022).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B81\", \"B10\", \"B63\", \"B96\", \"B55\", \"B149\", \"B126\", \"B158\", \"B132\", \"B81\"], \"section\": \"Anti-Blackness theory\", \"text\": \"More recently, in Asian-Americans in an Anti-Black World, Kim (2023) amends her racial triangulation theory and outlines the Asian-Black-White relations so as to further engage with anti-Blackness (see also Aronson and Stohry, 2023; Harpalani, 2021; Matriano et al., 2021 on Asian-Black solidarity and anti-Blackness). In this view, U.S. society is based on a fundamental distinction, not so much between White/Black or White/non-White, but between non-Black and Black (Gordon, 1997; Wilderson, 2003; Sexton, 2010; Yancey, 2003). Anti-Blackness refers to the unique ways that Black people have experienced race and to the ways that other minority groups are implicated in anti-Blackness (Stewart et al., 2023). Kim, taking this argument on board, has developed a newer theorization entailing White supremacy, the racism that contrasts White people with non-White people, and anti-Blackness, the racism that contrasts Black people with non-Black people. To re-visit the earlier theorization of the Asian-Black differences, she writes that, in relation to the White-Black duality, while Asian Americans may not have been White, they were also \\u201cnot Black\\u201d (Kim, 2023, p. 121). The magnitude and scale of racism experienced by the two groups is not equivalent.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B81\", \"B154\", \"B78\", \"B112\", \"F5\", \"F5\"], \"section\": \"Anti-Blackness theory\", \"text\": \"Drawing on archival documents, Kim (2023) contrasts the historical treatment of Chinese immigrants as aliens within the larger project of Black enslavement. She notes that while Chinese immigrants were barred and ejected, this was \\u201cfrom the nation, but not from the Family of Man\\u201d (19). Similarly, Wong (2024, p. 319) situates the horrific 1871 lynching of 100 Chinese Americans as taking place within a \\u201cbroader backdrop of racialized violence against Black people\\u201d that includes the lynching of more than 5,000 individuals. Further, addressing the research that presents Asian-American economic and educational success as a myth, Kim (2024) states that this outcome has, at least partially, been facilitated by the latter's non-Blackness. As such, the new approach to social theorizing repositions Asian and Black Americans in very different ways from racial triangulation theory (Pinderhughes, 2024). In Figures 5A, B we provide an embedded relational visualization of the anti-Blackness theory and its focus on both race (i.e., White supremacy) and anti-Blackness.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F5\", \"F5\"], \"section\": \"Anti-Blackness theory\", \"text\": \"Figure 5A is the initial White-Black duality and Figure 5B shows the triadic relationship implied by anti-Blackness theory. Here, in line with the new theory, the color and race concepts are replaced with different concepts and categories. The color concept has become an anti-Blackness concept with the categories referencing Blackness and non-Blackness. The race concept remains but with new categories of whiteness and non-Whiteness\\u2014as discussed above, such changes imply the reality that these concepts and categories are social constructs and the outcome of social and scientific change. The placement of White American in the bottom left doesn't change from either the White supremacy or the racial triangulation models and reflects the group conceptual categorization of White as affixed to the non-Blackness and Whiteness categories. The placement of Asian American on bottom right reflects the group conceptual categorization as non-White on the race concept and as non-Black on the anti-Blackness concept. The placement of Black American reflects the categorization as Blackness and non-Whiteness.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"fn0009\"], \"section\": \"Anti-Blackness theory\", \"text\": \"The relationships, delineated by the arrows between the groups, include four arrows. When these arrows are counted, there are 0 arrows directed at the White American group, 3 arrows directed at the Black American group, and 1 arrow directed at the Asian American group. Accordingly, the new theorization does not simply place Asian American in the middle. Rather it pushes Asian American over to the White American side as there is an even cutpoint or distance between White and Asian vs. Black Americans. The new contrast is White-Asian vs. Black.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B56\", \"B109\", \"B52\", \"B42\", \"B77\", \"B115\", \"B117\", \"B116\", \"B62\", \"B116\"], \"section\": \"Segmented assimilation theory\", \"text\": \"In classic assimilation theory, while theorizing the assimilation of the ethnics into the White mainstream, the idea was that, over time, European ethnic groups would make various socio-economic and cultural gains. As they become more similar with the White mainstream, they would eventually become part of it (Gordon, 1964; Park, 1928). Since the 1980s, segmented assimilation theory shifted the analytical focus to newer immigrants from outside of Europe and to the native-born Black population. Proponents of this model argued that the straight-line assimilation model that applied to early generations of primarily European immigrants no longer held (Gans, 1992; cf. Diaz and Lee, 2023 on ethnics' segmented assimilation; Kazemipur, 2014). Immigrant groups not only assimilate upwards to the mainstream, but can also have two other trajectories. On the one hand, some immigrant youths experience bi-cultural assimilation since they stay within their family and ethnic communities but also find affiliations within the White mainstream institutions. For this group, assimilation is slower than the first group, but ultimately this second group also becomes upwardly mobile over third and further generations (Portes et al., 2005). On the other hand, a third group of second-generations follow a downwards path toward the underclasses of, mainly, Black American and dark skin groups (Portes and Zhou, 1993; Portes and Rumbaut, 2001; Haller et al., 2011). Overall, racialized immigrants experience two main multigenerational outcomes of upward and downward mobility (see the Table in Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 283).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B53\", \"B115\", \"B164\", \"B136\", \"B165\"], \"section\": \"Segmented assimilation theory\", \"text\": \"Here the underclass references the Black American group as \\u201can American population whose ancestors, although neither white nor Anglo-Saxon, were Protestants some of whom have been here since before the Declaration of Independence was signed\\u201d (Gans, 2007, p. 160). While the model retains the idea from traditional assimilation theory that the upwards pathway is a function of immigrant attainments, the downwards pathway to the underclass is treated as an outcome of racism, bifurcated labor markets, and exposure to oppositional culture found in schools and the inner-city areas (Portes et al., 2005). In terms of empirical results, Zhou and Xiong (2005), for example, find that the patterning of indicators of assimilation such as language, ethnic identification, and sense of belonging, show trajectories that go up and down (or little change) among and within groups such as Vietnamese and Filipino (see also Thomas and Zhou, 2022; Zhou and Yang, 2022 on Chinese immigrants).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F6\", \"F6\"], \"section\": \"Segmented assimilation theory\", \"text\": \"Figures 6A, B contrast the initial ethnic vs. White-Black duality to the new group positioning and relationships in segmented assimilation theory.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F6\", \"F6\"], \"section\": \"Segmented assimilation theory\", \"text\": \"Figure 6A is the initial mobility duality and Figure 6B shows the triadic relationship outlined by segmented assimilation theory. The SES and time concepts are identical to the concepts in the original mobility duality. The categories are also the same. The placement of the Black group and White groups reflects each group's conceptual categorization as, respectively, underclass and mainstream and does not change over time. This is because, according to the theory, White Americans retain their SES and Black Americans linger in the low SES echelon over time. The Asian American group in this theory occupies a different initial position in contrast to ethnics' position in classic assimilation theory. The relationships delineated by the arrows denote the two outcomes that Asian immigrants can take over time. There are no arrows for either the Black American or White American groups since these groups are not theorized as mobile. The comparison between the groups with and without mobility arrows shows that, even though segmented assimilation theory hypothesizes multiple forms of mobility for the Asian immigrant group, the theory does not break from classic assimilation's ethnic vs. White-Black duality. Segmented-assimilation's new form of duality is Asian mobility with White and Black immobility.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B90\", \"B29\", \"B54\", \"B153\", \"B161\", \"B162\", \"B136\", \"fn0010\"], \"section\": \"Ethnic economy theory\", \"text\": \"In the ethnic (enclave) economy theorization, self-employment, co-ethnic workplaces, and business ownership are theorized as income generating strategies that help immigrants to move out of, or avoid, the underclass (Light et al., 1994; see also Cao, 2022 on Black American economies). This mobility is facilitated by a host of factors including education, social networks, and knowledge of multiple languages and social policies (Gold and Light, 2000). In terms of the relationship between the immigrant group and the underclass, insofar as the middle group is providing an important service (Wong, 1985; Yu, 2022), or because the less-advantaged groups enjoy support from the upwardly mobile ethnic entrepreneurs (Zhou, 2004; Thomas and Zhou, 2022), the relationship between the two groups is thought to be more positive.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B111\", \"B111\", \"B127\", \"B157\", \"B140\", \"B136\"], \"section\": \"Ethnic economy theory\", \"text\": \"To fine-tune the theory, ensuing debate has centered on what, in particular, makes an economy \\u201cethnic\\u201d with eight different definitions emphasizing the ethnicity of the entrepreneur, the ethnicity of the employees as well as the geographic context (P\\u00e9coud, 2010). The purpose of these definitions is to clarify the boundaries around the concept since if every economy is ethnic, then the concept risks becoming meaningless (P\\u00e9coud, 2010). An accompanying discussion has delineated the boundaries of ethnic economies to outline whether they are spatially-delimited or network-based (e.g., see Sharma and Koh, 2019). In terms of geography, there has been an expansion in focus of the ethnic economy as existing in, for example, traditional \\u201cChinatowns\\u201d in traditional immigrant-receiving cities to a more recent focus on new immigrant destinations, satellite and ethnoburb economies (Xiong, 2023). Similarly, early work on network linkages, for example, counted the number of Chinese firms in Los Angeles across neighborhoods (Tseng, 1994) whereas more recent scholarship emphasizes the importance of transnational linkages (Thomas and Zhou, 2022).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B118\", \"B83\", \"B71\"], \"section\": \"Ethnic economy theory\", \"text\": \"The ethnic enclave economy is often treated as a response to blocked mobility and discrimination by the dominant native-born group that keep immigrants out of mainstream organizations and occupations (e.g., see Pull\\u00e9s and Lee, 2019). Yet the evidence as to the utility of this strategy is somewhat mixed. At the individual level, a study of the experiences of Korean workers at American and Korean multinational enterprises, found that when, after experiencing discrimination in the mainstream, immigrants \\u201cturn to co-ethnic employment out of disappointment and frustration\\u201d, they are sometimes faced with new forms of mistreatment (Kim E., 2022). Jang (2021) also found that working in co-ethnic firms lead to worse outcomes for Korean immigrant women.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"F7\", \"F7\"], \"section\": \"Ethnic economy theory\", \"text\": \"Figure 7A is the initial mobility duality and Figure 7B shows the triadic relationship implied by ethnic economy theory.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B6\", \"B95\", \"B82\", \"B100\", \"B7\", \"B119\", \"B147\", \"B69\", \"B125\", \"B43\", \"B146\"], \"section\": \"Neo-assimilation theory\", \"text\": \"Alba and Nee (1997, p. 863) define assimilation as \\u201cthe decline, and at its endpoint, the disappearance of an ethnic/racial distinction and the cultural and social differences that express it.\\u201d The task of studying assimilation typically often entails a comparison between an immigrant's initial position at one point in time to their position at another point in time (or to a groups' intergenerational mobility) (Marrow, 2013). Among the areas subject to such comparisons are socio-economic status (Kim and Zhao, 2014); language acquisition (Mouw and Xie, 1999), and intermarriage (Alba and Nee, 2003; Qian and Lichter, 2007). Other studies treat individual characteristics such as socio-economic status as predictors of other outcomes such as spatial location (White et al., 1993; Iceland and Scopilliti, 2008; see Schachter, 2016 for a critique of SES is an outcome and as a variable). Some scholars note that, for non-citizens, the lack of citizenship status precludes the acquisition of the socio-economic and other attainments used to denote assimilation (Drouhot and Nee, 2019). Similarly, some Asian refugees did not attain their place of residence they were assigned this location by the state (Waters and Jim\\u00e9nez, 2005). Still, the placement of immigrants on the underclass side is not so much about immigrant agency or lack thereof. Rather, the initial placement of immigrant on one side has to do with who they are not: the reference group which is the non-Hispanic White mainstream.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B7\", \"B5\", \"B3\"], \"section\": \"Neo-assimilation theory\", \"text\": \"Alba and Nee (2003) later stressed that, unlike earlier straight-line assimilation theory in which the immigrant group became mainstream (or White), neo-assimilation has a relational component. Over time, the boundary between immigrant and mainstream is blurred thereby altering the character of the mainstream (see also Alba and Duyvendak, 2019). Therefore, it is not simply the minority who changes, the majority also changes; this also changes the overall composition of the groups on each side of the boundary (cf. Alba, 2020 on \\u201cdecategorization\\u201d).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B102\", \"B133\", \"B103\", \"B122\", \"B67\", \"B66\", \"B124\", \"B163\", \"B48\", \"F8\", \"F8\"], \"section\": \"Neo-assimilation theory\", \"text\": \"Considering Asian immigrants, it is acknowledged that may have started as underclass due to their educational and occupational achievement (Neckerman et al., 1999; Suzuki, 1977; Nee and Sanders, 1985), but they have moved up to the mainstream. Within this latter literature, there is a discussion about the mechanisms such as values leading to the groups' attainment and academic and occupational achievement (Ryan and Bauman, 2016). Debates have ensued over the particularities of what is meant by values and culture that have enabled Asians to match the attainments of the mainstream group. Culture has been referred to as Confucian values that prioritize academic aspirations (Huang and Gove, 2015) and work ethics or effort more broadly (Hsin and Xie, 2014; Sakamoto and Kim, 2018). Finally, selectivity arguments either highlight how government policies favor the more advantaged immigrants (Zhou and Lee, 2018) or the mechanisms through which such individuals self-select for immigration (Feliciano and Lanuza, 2017). Regardless of the origins of such differences, these arguments have a common focus on some positive characteristic of the immigrant population as accounting for the differences in outcome. Figure 8A is the initial mobility duality and Figure 8B shows the triadic relationship implied by neo-assimilation theory.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B135\"], \"section\": \"Discussion\", \"text\": \"The analysis considered the case of Asian Americans and Asian immigrants in relation to a White-Black racial and ethnic duality. The essential argument is that, while the Asian American categorization as neither Black nor White is \\u201cpost\\u201d the old Black or White racial duality, this new duality is not \\u201cpost\\u201d duality writ large. We proposed a new embedded relational method of visualization to help further illustrate and identify these resulting dualities. When Asian Americans and Asian immigrants are situated vis-\\u00e0-vis the existing White\\u2014Black dualities, the net result will be the new White\\u2014non-White, Black\\u2014non-Black, or Asian\\u2014non-Asian dualities. This patterning and the embedded relational method can be further adapted for a multi-axis context (see also Tawa et al., 2013), other groups, quadrants, categories, as well as additional contexts. Still, no matter the change, when the categorization and cross-classification of all three groups on all elements is taken into account, a new duality will emerge.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B8\", \"B20\", \"B70\", \"B130\", \"B75\", \"B74\"], \"section\": \"Discussion\", \"text\": \"The visualizations help to show the extent to which the theories operating under the critical race paradigm problematize the group in the superior/or higher \\u201cabove\\u201d position (even if this is not explicit on the two-dimensional plane). That is, even though it is materially better to be in the superior position, the paradigm is such that racism (or the problem) is emanating from the superior group and hence the White side of the White\\u2014Black duality (Applebaum, 2010; Bonilla-Silva, 2019; c.f. Iceland and Silver, 2024; Sites, 2025 on epistemic privileging). This problematization adds a built-in incentive to move away from the White group/side and/or the \\u201csuperior\\u201d position. By contrast, assimilation problematizes the group in the inferior or lower \\u201cbelow\\u201d position. It is the supposedly inferior group(s) which must \\u201cbecome\\u201d, or fail to become, like the supposedly superior group (Karimi and Wilkes, 2023). Thus, the assimilation paradigm implicitly problematizes the underclass (read Black) side of the mainstream-underclass duality (Jung, 2009). Still, as long as Asians Americans and Asian immigrants are below the White American group and/or above the Black American group, then when added as a \\u201cthird\\u201d group there is a logical consistency to who is problematized within each paradigm.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B13\", \"B58\", \"B68\", \"B73\", \"B87\", \"B123\"], \"section\": \"Discussion\", \"text\": \"The new challenge for both paradigms is the growing body of recent empirical evidence showing Asian Americans equalling or surpassing White Americans on a host of outcomes including income, education, occupation, health, work ethic, and rates of imprisonment (Bailey et al., 2017; Goyette et al., 2024; Iceland and Hernandez, 2017; Jim\\u00e9nez and Horowitz, 2013; Lee and Sheng, 2023; Sakamoto and Hsu, 2020). While the embedded relational diagrams could be adapted to account for this evidence and the consequent theories surrounding this evidence, the theoretical implications of this evidence are potentially controversial for the theories emanating from each paradigm, albeit for different reasons.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B150\", \"B78\", \"B124\", \"B156\"], \"section\": \"Discussion\", \"text\": \"In terms of theories emanating from the critical race paradigm, one response has been to reject this evidence. This rejection might entail dropping Asian Americans from the written or graphical analysis (see Wilkes and Karimi, 2023), invoking other evidence such as heterogeneity within the Asian American population, immigrant selectivity, bamboo ceilings, positive stereotyping and the model minority myth (for critique see Kim, 2024; Sakamoto and Kim, 2018), or making use of alternative measures of Asian American disadvantage entailing only the White group (e.g., see Wu et al., 2021). Another option would be to accept the evidence that a new ranking is developing and to develop theoretical arguments that problematize the middle (read White American) position rather than the top (Asian American) position. Still, no matter which approach is used, the challenge is going to be that such approaches largely invisibilize Black Americans. Empirically, regardless of whether Asian Americans are equal to, above, or below White Americans, the Black-Asian gap is, on most indicators, almost inevitably larger than the White-Asian or Asian-White gap. Theories operating within the critical race perspective might have to adopt more of a Black vs. non-Black or historically marginalized\\u2014AsianWhite perspective. This is normatively challenging because, insofar as the paradigm problematizes the group(s) on the non-Black side of the duality, it then problematizes the Asian American group and positionality along with White group and positionality.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B74\", \"B75\", \"B87\", \"B72\"], \"section\": \"Discussion\", \"text\": \"The assimilation literature has been more likely to invoke evidence that Asian Americans have equalled or surpassed White Americans (and therefore also Black Americans). While an Asian-White mainstream helps to buttress assimilation theory against charges of upholding implicitly White-centric logics (Jung, 2009), this multiracial mainstream does not resolve the implication that Black Americans must somehow become like the former (see also Karimi and Wilkes, 2023). As with race theories, some research discounts this new evidence by adding new measures of assimilation (Lee and Sheng, 2023) or by questioning whether White and Asian Americans are practically in similar positionalities (Jim\\u00e9nez, 2017). Furthermore, insofar as Asian Americans are above White Americans, then either \\u201cthe mainstream\\u201d is now Asian American and White Americans are pushed down into a \\u201csub-mainstream\\u201d, alternatively, White Americans continue to be mainstream and Asian Americans are pushed up into an \\u201cuber-mainstream\\u201d. Regardless, if this new evidence is to fit with the logic of assimilation theory whereby the groups below should become like the groups above then the implication is that both the White and Black American groups need to become more like Asian Americans.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC12001281\", \"pmid\": \"40241975\", \"reference_ids\": [\"B25\", \"B24\", \"B28\", \"B39\", \"B141\", \"B144\"], \"section\": \"Conclusion\", \"text\": \"It has long been argued that middle categories, new concepts, and other such classificatory options surmount racial and ethnic dualities (Brubaker and Fern\\u00e1ndez, 2019; Brubaker, 2016; Bynner, 2005; Cornell and Hartmann, 2006; Valdez and Golash-Boza, 2017; Wacquant, 2024). In this paper we used a new embedded relational approach to visualize the theorized relationships of the Asian-Black-White triad as outlined by selected theories from the critical race and assimilation paradigms. In case of the critical race paradigm, we applied these visualizations to three theories\\u2014White supremacy, racial triangulation, Asian Americans and anti-Blackness. In case of the assimilation paradigm, we used the embedded relational graphs to visualize the group-specific mobility trajectories for the Asian-Black-White groups as theorized by segmented assimilation, ethnic economy, and neo-assimilation. We showed why, in all cases, each of these theories, when applied to three groups, collapses into a new duality.\"}]"
Metadata
"{\"section-at-acceptance\": \"Race and Ethnicity\"}"