In the United States, Yen Le Espiritu popularized the term and coined the nominal term panethnicity in reference to Asian Americans, a racial category composed of disparate peoples having in common only their origin in the continent of Asia.
[clarification needed] The concept is to be distinguished from "pan-nationalism", which similarly groups related ethnicities but in the context of either ethnic nationalism (e.g. pan-Arabism, pan-Celticism, pan-Germanism, pan-Indianism, pan-Iranism, pan-Slavism, pan-Turkism) or civic nationalism (e.g. pan-Africanism).
[4] Mainstream institutions and political policies often[quantify] play a big role in the labeling of panethnic groups.
Public policy might dole out resources or make deals with multiple groups, viewing them all as one large entity.
[6] The manner in which the two garnered support for the alliance sheds light on the expressly panethnic approach that was at the core of this new Asian American identity: they went through the roster of the Peace and Freedom Party, a majority white anti-war organization that was protesting the Vietnam War at the time, and telephoned all the individuals they could find with "Asian" surnames.