Scholars often treat immigrants from the same country as a monolithic group, but intranational ethnicity is usually associated with distinctive premigration backgrounds and migration experiences and plays a role in shaping immigrant adjustment and incorporation in the host country. The authors use census data to distinguish ethnic Chinese from the Vietnamese national group to analyze educational heterogeneity across immigration generations. The results show that first-generation Chinese Vietnamese exhibit much lower levels of education than their Vietnamese counterparts, but this disparity vanishes by the 1.5 generation. The authors also find that both Vietnamese subgroups contribute to the second-generation convergence with Chinese Americans, but Chinese Vietnamese are able to overcome disadvantages more quickly and have slightly higher educational achievement than ethnic Vietnamese. Our case study illustrates how ethnicity and national origin can be disaggregated using nationally representative data and how this approach can provide unique insights into immigration studies in general.

Passing has multiple meanings in African American literature, especially in the area of personal identity in distinct races. In The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, James Weldon Johnson describes many aspects of passing, which mainly focus on suspicious of their individual identity and inquisitiveness between two races. Among the series of passing, James Weldon Johnson lay emphasis on the ethnic passing, which refers to the particular way that both black and white people used to cross the border of racial segregation, which could help them overcome the difficulties or comprehend the other races. It could be physical, emotional, or even cognitive. On the other hand, Johnson also depicts the characters identities passing both from black to white and white to black. This paper analyzed The autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, trying to find out the series of passing and their indicated meanings, which may have repercussions for how future scholars interpret this literature.