Prevalent cultural representations of masculinity depict men as aggressive, emotionally distant individuals whose hard and muscular bodies epitomize these traits. These traditional representations of masculinity have also been linked to sexism and male dominance, which has encouraged many men to distance themselves from these representations. This study employed grounded theory methods to analyze interviews with twenty-five men about their understanding and construction of their masculinity. The analysis revealed that some men construct a hybrid masculinity by describing themselves as caring or being in touch with their feminine side to create social distance between themselves and men who adhere to traditional representations of masculinity. While men incorporated what they viewed as feminine characteristics into their identities, they reinforced, rather than challenged, the symbolic boundaries of gender and the resulting gender hierarchy. Ultimately, the men in this study were able to co-opt the language of caring to gain more prestige while reinforcing gender inequality and male dominance.

Asian American panethnicity was conceptualized to unify ethnic groups and represent their sociopolitical interests. Increasingly however, scholars have questioned whether panethnicity accurately reflects the diversity of different ethnic groups’ experiences and identities. In mainstream culture, “Asian American” has become synonymous with East Asian Americans and stereotypes—albeit biased ones—of their affluence, thus erasing the realities of working-class, South, and Southeast Asian Americans (SEAAs). I focus on the last group and join other scholars in emphasizing how ethnic groups’ unique historical relationships with the United States differentially impact their racial identities and attachments to panethnicity. Using 62 interviews with Southeast Asian refugees and service providers in North Carolina, I explore how a term I call “quiet neglect”—the U.S. institutionalized silence around the Vietnam and Secret Wars that has led to an erasure of SEAAs’ needs—shape their connections to Asian American panethnicity and decision to align with alternative identities. At stake in this study is our capacity to recognize individuals’ agency to challenge racial boundaries and assert identities that they find meaningful. In addition, I examine how SEAAs situate themselves within our broader racial structure and harness their identities to connect with other people of color.

As one of the most racially diverse U.S. states, Hawai'i is a reputed multicultural paradise. Its residents (locals) thus freely engage in racist jokes and stereotypes with one another as an example of their plurality compared to “racist” continental Americans. While previous studies have examined how racist comedy discursively naturalizes discrimination, I argue that these jokes are also connected to racialized emotions that uphold the islands’ unequal social structure. Using 44 interviews with locals who grew up in Hawai'i, I illustrate how racist jokes promote locals’ apathy toward the islands’ racial issues. I first describe how interviewees developed identity boundaries between “multicultural locals” and “racist mainlanders.” Then, I examine how these identity boundaries are tied to emotional scripts prompting respondents to ignore racism in Hawai'i. While many respondents uncritically engaged in racist comedy, a significant number of participants felt marginalized by racist humor. I use their experiences to show how locals must trade their “emotional labor,” laughing along with their peers, in order to maintain their local identities. I conclude by showing how racial apathy is reaffirmed as the affective consequences of racist jokes were trivialized and locals taught to roll with the punch(lines) of ethnic humor.