As reflected in the surge of anti-Asian discrimination following the outbreak of COVID-19, Asian Americans continue to face subtle and overt forms of racism despite the misguided popular image as the “model minority.” Prior research has found that perceived discrimination experiences are associated with adverse mental health outcomes for Asian Americans. The current study extends the literature by exploring pathways that link perceptions of discrimination and psychological distress and protective factors that disrupt this link. The study tested a moderated mediation model that included internalized racism as a mediator and critical action and ethnic identity as moderators, utilizing the bootstrap-based PROCESS analysis (Hayes, 2013). Participants were 424 Asian American adults ranging in age from 18 to 73 that completed an online survey. Results indicated that internalized racism mediated the relation between perceptions of discrimination and psychological distress. Critical action, but not ethnic identity, significantly moderated the mediated effect of racial discrimination on psychological distress through internalized racism. Specifically, among Asian Americans that reported high levels of critical action, internalized racism did not the mediate the relation between perceived racial discrimination and psychological distress. Findings are discussed in terms of their implication for clinical practice, educational and community programming, and advocacy efforts for Asian Americans.

The study explored experiences of hate, hate crimes and microaggressions among diverse Asian adults living in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic for a sample (N = 831) that was 26.7% Chinese, 13.6% Japanese, 13.4% Korean, 12.4% Taiwanese, 10.6 % Filipino, 10.3% Indian, 8.5% Thai, 54.9% female, and 86.8% U.S. born—with a mean age of 33. Findings showed participants had: better overall physical health before COVID-19 pandemic versus currently; mental/emotional health declined from before the pandemic to currently; moderate social support; closest to moderate past-year mental distress; closest to “more than once” for experiences of microaggressions; a high level of ability for perceiving racism and oppression; and were in the action stage for coping and responding to racism and oppression. Also, 79% (N = 831) personally experienced hate once to a great number of times, and 43.5% (N = 362) endorsed moderate to very high impact; 79.2% (N = 664) witnessed hate against someone else once to a great number of times, and, 44.5% (N = 370) endorsed moderate to very high impact. Those who received counseling in the past experienced more microaggressions than those who did not seek counseling. The higher the frequency of experiencing microaggressions then higher the age, darker the skin color, lower the self-rating of mental health pre-COVID-19, lower the self-rating of physical health pre-COVID-19, lower the self-rating of mental health during COVID-19, higher the past year depression, anxiety and trauma and overall mental distress, greater the feeling of being unable to control important things in life, higher the ability to perceive racism and oppression, higher the stage of change for coping and responding to racism and oppression, greater the impact of hate, and lower the social desirability. Backward stepwise regression showed significant predictors of a higher frequency of experiences of microaggressions were being born in the U.S, not being a student, past year counseling, older age, lower education, higher overall mental distress, and higher ability to perceive racism and oppression—with 77.4% of variance explained by the model. Implications of findings and recommendations are provided for addressing anti-Asian hate.