“Racialized Romance”
Hu, Olivia Y. 2025. “Racialized Romance: An Intersectional Analysis of East Asian Women’s Masculinities Construction Processes.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. doi: 10.1177/23326492251336140.
2025 ASA Section on Sexualities Graduate Student Paper Award (Winner)
2023 ASA Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities James E. Blackwell Graduate Student Paper Award (Honorable Mention)
Abstract: Individuals’ understandings of gender are profoundly shaped by racial formation processes. Yet scholars have not sufficiently investigated how people construct racialized masculinities beyond a White/non-White racial paradigm. The present study begins to address this limitation by analyzing 40 in-depth qualitative interviews with East Asian women in relationships with White, Black, and South Asian men. I ask, How do participants construct racialized masculinities in romantic contexts? Respondents with White partners often constructed Asian masculinity using White masculinity as an idealized benchmark. By associating Asian masculinity with patriarchy and White masculinity with gender egalitarianism, some women with White partners reinforced controlling images of Asian men while rendering White male patriarchy less visible. In contrast, participants with partners of color often linked White masculinity to undesirable traits like ignorance, arrogance, and entitlement. While challenging dominant narratives about the superiority of White masculinity, however, some respondents with partners of color also reproduced race and gender hierarchies by drawing on racial stereotypes to explain their preferences for Black and South Asian men over East Asian men. These findings reveal important mechanisms undergirding the reproduction of social hierarchies in the United States—mechanisms that do not necessarily center White masculinity as an idealized standard but nonetheless (1) homogenize non-White masculinities in ways that reinforce longstanding stereotypes about men of color and (2) entrench White masculinity as the normative standard of desirability.
“Let’s Talk About Race, Baby”
Hu, Olivia Y. 2024. “Let’s Talk about Race, Baby: How Interracial/-Ethnic Relationships Influence East Asian Women’s Understandings of Race and Racism.” Ethnic and Racial Studies. doi: 10.1080/01419870.2024.2431635.
2024 ASA Race, Gender, and Class Section Graduate Student Paper Award (Honorable Mention)
2023 SSSP Division of Critical Race and Ethnic Study Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award (Winner)
Abstract: Interracial intimacy offers analytical leverage to examine one avenue through which people can transform their perspectives on race and racism. This study draws from 47 interviews with East Asian women in relationships with White, Black, and South or Southeast Asian men to analyze how they understand their unions’ role in shaping their racial ideologies. Most participants with Black and darker-skinned South Asian partners developed a heightened awareness of structural racism, while most respondents with White and other Asian partners report little change in their racial views. Moreover, some participants with White partners experienced a shift towards colorblind racism. I coin the term racial resignation to describe the process by which these women reluctantly relinquished elements of their progressive racial worldview to circumvent relationship conflict. Ultimately, this study shows how interactions in the intimate, private sphere can facilitate either the adoption or dislodgement of ideologies that challenge the racial status quo.
“Linking Race and Genes”
Hu, Olivia Y., Xiang Lu (equal authorship), and Wendy D. Roth. 2024. “Linking Race and Genes: Racial Conceptualization among Genetic Ancestry Test-Takers.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 47(8):1574–96. doi: 10.1080/01419870.2023.2224871.
2024 Martin Bulmer Prize for Article of the Year (Shortlist)
Abstract: The genomic revolution is highly relevant to scholarship on racial conceptualization. As genomic research has increasingly focused on small amounts of variation between ancestral groups, it may promote beliefs in racial essentialism. Genetic ancestry tests (GATs) are one of the primary ways the consequences of the genomic revolution are communicated to laypersons, necessitating a better understanding of how test-takers conceptualize race. We analyse 108 in-depth interviews with U.S. and Canadian test-takers to examine how they conceptualize the relationship between race and genes and how they believe GATs influenced their race concepts. We present a typology of racial conceptualization that moves beyond a dichotomy and toward a continuum between social constructivism and genetic essentialism. We also find that test-takers believe GATs reinforce their pre-existing race concepts, regardless of what those were. Our results support an emerging view that people selectively interpret genetic information to confirm rather than transform their race concepts.