Sexual Racism and Mental Health Among Asian American Sexual Minority Men: The Moderating Role of Internalized Racism.

Sexual racism reinforces a harmful racialized hierarchy of desirability and disproportionately affects Asian American sexual minority men (ASMM). Although researchers have demonstrated that sexual racism negatively impacts mental health, few quantitative studies have focused expressly on the experiences of ASMM using validated measures of sexual racism. The present study surveyed ASMM who use dating apps (N = 155) to explore the interrelations between sexual racism, internalized racism, and mental health. Participants, recruited online, reported on demographic information, sexual racism experiences, and mental health (depression, anxiety, stress symptoms & problematic alcohol use). Partial correlations, adjusting for age, income and education, revealed that sexual racism was significantly and positively correlated with anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms (rs = .24-.25, ps < .01). At the subscale level, higher reports of White rejection were significantly correlated with elevated anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms (rs = .22-.38, ps < .01). Same-race physical objectification (r = .22, p = .007) and degradation (r = .25, p = .002) were significantly correlated with anxiety symptoms. Moderation analyses demonstrated that the association between experiences of sexual racism and depression symptoms varied across levels of internalized racism, ΔR 2 = .033, F(1, 147) = 6.53, p = .012; elevated internalized racism amplified the association between sexual racism and depressive symptoms. Our study supplies evidence of the connections between sexual racism, internalized racism, and poorer mental health. These findings can inform multi-level prevention and intervention efforts to minimize experiences of sexual racism and mitigate its negative effects among ASMM.