Some notable findings:

Almost everyone gets something: 88% of respondents had experienced at least one of these stereotypes and the difference between Asia and US born men was minimal.

The nerd stereotype is strong: between 69-71% of Asian men have experienced stereotypes around being good at math, while 65–69% of Asian men have been stereotyped as being good with computers or technology

Egregious stereotypes hit hard for US born: Asians born in the US were statistically more likely to experience stereotypes around having a small penis (67%) and slanted eyes (64%) than Asian-born men (53% and 43%)

Comparisons to Whites and other Minorities

To understand how Asian men are treated, we asked them to respond to the question “Overall, you believe people treat you _____ compared to [White people] [Non-Asian minorities] [Asian women].”

Their possible responses were “Better”, “The same”, “Worse”, or “I’m not sure”.

Overall, more than a third of respondents indicated they were treated worse than Whites people, while three-quarters said they were treated better than non Asian minorities. Responses were most scattered when it came to treatment vs Asian women.

We were not able to find any good explanatory factors that indicated whether someone was more likely to say “worse” vs “the same” when it came to treatment against white people.

However, when looking at treatment vs non-Asian minorities, immigration status played an important role. While both groups were more likely to say they were treated “better” than non-Asian minorities, those born in Asian were 2x more likely to say “the same” compared to those born in the US.

Finally, when looking at how Asian men compared to Asian women, the results were pretty mixed. In aggregate, the findings showed a fairly even split between all four answers. However, when breaking it down by subethnicity, we found some surprising differences.

South Asian men compared to the other groups, are more likely to respond “better” while Southeast Asian were less likely to respond “better”. East Asian men fell somewhere in between the two groups.

Race Within Institutions

Race and Work

To try to understand how Asian men feel their race plays a role in their careers today, we asked them two different questions.

The first was their agreement to the statement “I do not face any obstacles towards advancing in my career due to my race / ethnicity”. This was aimed at exploring their personal experience in work as it pertained to their career. This question had an average score of 3.0 with 1 being “strongly disagree” and 5 being “strongly agree” (90% range of 2.9 — 3.1).

The second question asked their agreement to the statement “People of my race / ethnicity are adequately recognized for their contributions at my place of work”. This was meant to get their sense of their workplace and what they saw as the overall trend. This question had an average score of 3.4 (90% range of 3.3–3.5).

What this says to us is that while overall, Asians do see their peers being recognized at work, many still feel that there are race-related obstacles holding them back from career success.

Harassment at School and Work

Bullying is a known phenomena at school, and it’s sometimes also experienced at work. When we asked Asian men to share their experiences about physical aggression and verbal harassment, we found that while nearly 20% of respondents had experienced this at school, the number dropped to under 4% at work.

Dating Behavior

These next set of questions asks about dating and race, perhaps the most interesting but also most contentious part of the study. I’ve done my best to separate out subethnicities where it makes sense because this factors so closely into results.

Remember because people were allowed to check multiple ethnicities (i.e. a man born to an Indonesian father and an Indian mother might check “South Asian” AND “Southeast Asian”), the responses of mixed race Asians will be reported multiple times when we break these findings out into subethnicity groups.

Dating History

When asked about their dating history, Asian men most frequently report dating Asians of their subethnicity, with the second most frequently reported ethnicity was White.

83% of East Asians report having dated other East Asians

71% of SE Asians have dated other SE Asians

67% of South Asians have dated other South Asians.

Between 60–73% of Asian men reported having dated a White person. There was no statistical difference between Asian men born in the US vs Asia when it came to having dated someone who was White.

Preference

Beyond simply who they have dated, I also asked what ethnic groups Asian men prefer to date. Note that they could check more than one preference. What we found:

Again, Asian men indicated an affinity to their own subethnicities — with 62% of East Asians, 55% of SE Asians, and 53% of South Asian men indicating they preferred partners of their own subethnicity.

However, a nontrivial percentage of men indicated that they have no preference for race when dating.

White partners emerge as a popular choice, with between 46% — 52% of Asian men stating they prefer to date White people. Note that there was no statistical difference between Asian men born in the US vs Asia when it came to White preference.

Serious Relationships

We also asked specifically about Asian men who were married or in self-reported “serious relationships” to tell us about the ethnicity of their partner.

About one in two men in our study were married or in self-reported “serious relationships”, which

Of the men in relationships, about 45% of them had an East Asian partner and 28% had a White partner. This seems to support the idea that Asian men are marrying or at least getting into serious relationships with people of the ethnicity they have stated preferences for

Reminder: SE Asian and South Asian men represented only 21% and 10% of respondents respectively, and likely we’d see higher representation in their subethnicity as partners in serious relationships, given what we saw earlier with preference.

Perceptions

Finally, we’ll look at some of the perceptions Asian men have about themselves, and the perceptions they believe others have for them.

First, we asked men to discuss how they felt Asian men were represented in the media.

We found that the vast majority of men feel that they are underrepresented in the media, with 89% saying “agree” or “strongly agree”. Similarly, Asian men feel that when they do appear in the media, they are depicted as desexualized characters, with 78% responding “agree” or “strongly agree”.

In the survey, we wanted to explore Asian men’s belief that they could be / are attractive romantic partners.

We asked if Asian men themselves believed that Asian men could make attractive romantic partners, to see if the issue was in confidence or limiting self-beliefs. Then we asked them what they believe society thought about Asian men’s ability to be an attractive romantic partner.

What we found was that the vast majority of Asian men (90%) believe they, as a group, are, for lack of a better word, dateable. However, they felt that society did not share this sentiment, with 56% indicating “disagree” or “strongly disagree” to society thinking Asian men could make attractive romantic partners.

Neither age, immigration status, or subethnicity had any statistical relationship to either of these metrics.

Finally, we also looked at whether Asian men actually felt that race was a relevant factor in their dating life. We wonder if it was possible that while in theory, they believed these things about their race, but in practice their race didn’t affect them.

What we found was that an overwhelming majority (79%) of Asian men feel that their race in fact mattered when it came to dating.

Their answers to this question was negatively correlated with their response to the society’s views on Asian men as attractive romantic partners (r=-0.323, p-value <0.00001)

That is, when “My race/ethnicity is a relevant factor in my dating life” increases by one, “I think society believes that Asian men can make attractive romantic partners” decreases by 0.415 on average.

This may suggest that Asian men sense that race playing a role in their dating life is not conducive to being seen by society as dateable.

“I Don’t Date Asian Men”

Supporting this belief is the fact that Asian men often are told to their face that they are not viable dating options.

46% of Asian indicated that they can recall at least one instance when they heard someone state in their presence “I don’t date Asian men”. 11% of men have heard this statement 6 or more times.

In our analysis we found that, unsurprisingly, the more often Asian men have heard someone say “”I don’t date Asian men”, the more likely they are to disagree with the statement “I think society believes Asian men can make attractive romantic partners.”

Looking at other factors that might affect the response to the “datability” of Asian men, we found that people who have dated White people have statistically higher values for “I think society believes that Asian men can make attractive romantic partners” than people who have not dated White people. (2.56 vs 2.28, p-value of 0.03)

Conclusions

Little research has gone into understanding the experience of Asian men in America. Through this sample of a specific segment of this population, we were able to reveal some interesting perspectives on what it is like to be a man of Asian descent living in America.

While often grouped with Whites in many conversations about race or diversity because of their often high income levels and advanced educational backgrounds, this study makes it clear that Asian men do not feel treated the same as Whites. While perhaps not as overtly aggressive as other minorities, Asian men are the target of stereotyping, experience race-related obstacles in the workplace, and perceive a society-wide unappreciation when it comes to dating.

Whether born in the United States or in Asia, Asian men are proud of their ethnic heritage, and prefer to date people of their own ethnicity, as well as Whites. Very few experience overt harassment in the workplace, and as they get older, they are more likely to want to uphold traditional Asian values in their own lives.

This study is not meant to be a definitive look at the lives of Asian men in America, but we hope it sparks a conversation about this important but often overlooked segment of the American people.

Edit Jan 25: an earlier version of this article stated that “most respondents indicated they were treated worse than Whites” while the actual number was closer to 1/3.

Edit Jan 26: an earlier version of this article used the term “the median participant”, and since median has a very specific meaning, wasn’t the most accurate phrasing. It has replaced with the wording: “You can roughly imagine that the typical respondent to this survey has these attributes:”