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This study aims to understand public reactions to statements about racial discrimination made by elected officials of color on Twitter. We argue that statements about race made by elected officials of color will be overlooked in most political contexts. However, during events when race is made a salient issue, the public will look to elected officials of the afflicted group for guidance and, through this, the public will be more likely to interact with these leaders on Twitter. In this way, periods of crises create a window of opportunity when statements against racism made by elected officials of color receive greater public attention. To assess this hypothesis, we use the case study of Asian American members of Congress and their discussion of anti-Asian racism on Twitter. We examine the pattern of Twitter interactions to their posts in 2021. We find that Asian American members of Congress receive more social media attention (likes and retweets) relative to other members of Congress when condemning anti-Asian violence, but only in the immediate wake of the March 2021 mass shooting of Asian Americans in Atlanta, Georgia. This study offers important new insight into when elected officials of color can draw public attention to the communities that they descriptively represent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of context on the mobilization of politicized racial group consciousness among Asian American and Latino youth. We investigate group membership by analyzing face-to-face interview data with Latino and Asian American youth in New York and California on their responses to questions about the meaning of their race and ethnicity to politics. Next, we use survey data from a nationally representative sample of Asian American and Latino youth taken during the 2004 election. We also analyze the extent to which the contextual circumstances of systematic exposure to an experimental frame prompting racial and ethnic group pride influence racial group consciousness. The data help to illuminate the extent to which racial and ethnic identities of Asian American and Latino youth are manifest in their unique political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]