Brief demographic and identity information on Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the US, including origins, population data and English speaking ability. Tweet Email. Definitions In the U. Asian Countries There is no official definition of the boundary between Asia and Europe nor between continents for that matter so the boundaries are merely traditional — and some of the countries listed as Asian might not seem obvious.
Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the U. West Asians This is a contested term, most people from the region do not self-identify as such. Census Data. Asian American Ethnic Groups.
Chinese Americans continue to be the largest Asian American ethnic group, numbering 4. From to , more than three out of four Malasian Americans were foreign-born, the highest rate among Asian American ethnic groups.
Significant percentages of most South and East Asian Americans were also foreign born. Additionally, many of these immigrants entered the U. Refugees and Asylees. However, some traditional monarchies e.
The Pacific Islanders live a very social lifestyle, in which family members, both immediate and extended, work together in a solidified community. Pacific Islanders often have difficulty balancing their traditional "laid-back" lifestyles with the high pressure competitive demands of American pedagogy and marketplace economy.
Pacific Islanders' cultures follow customs and traditions based on ancient principles that promote living an honorable and noble lifestyle. Embedded deeply into the Polynesian culture are traditional music, dance, and food. Cultural storytelling, music, and dance are ancient ways of passing down history from one generation to another.
Colorblind casting means casting actors in roles irrespective of their race. Unfortunately, this has historically meant that white actors can play any role, including characters of color. Rarely has colorblind casting resulted in actors of color playing white characters. To correct this inequality, color-conscious casting takes into consideration the historical impact of race when it comes to the exclusion of people of color on stage and screen.
This also means developing more Asian American stories and not just slotting Asian Americans into white-centered narratives. White savior narratives are storylines in which white characters save communities of color from a myriad of social ills and fantastical enemies such as poverty, racism, armies and monsters.
When mixed with whitewashing, we see films like "Ghost in the Shell" in which the lead Japanese heroine is portrayed by Scarlett Johansson. What does "hapa" mean and where did it come from?
Is there a better term we should be using? This phrase means part European American, with the implication being that the person is also part Native Hawaiian. This is not merely a question of trying to hold on to a word — that like many words encountered in the English language — has been adopted, assimilated or appropriated. This is a question of power. Native Hawaiians, in addition to all of the other ways that their sovereignty has been abrogated, lost for many years the right to their own language through oppressive English-language education.
Given this history and given the contemporary social and political reality and realty — as in real estate of Hawaiian, the appropriation of this one word has a significance deeper than many Asian Americans are willing to recognize. To have this symbolic word used by Asians, particularly by Japanese Americans, as though it is their own, seems to symbolically mirror the way Native Hawaiian land was first taken by European Americans, and is now owned by European Americans, Japanese and Japanese Americans and other Asian American ethnic groups that numerically and economically dominate Native Hawaiians in their own land.
Where did the model minority myth come from? What is the harm in describing Asian Americans as smart and quiet and good at math? Recent research, however, has been critical of such "acclaims" of Asian Americans as the model minority, contending that the socioeconomic success of Asian Americans has been exaggerated.
The model minority image also conceals the fact that the poverty rate among Asian Americans is higher than that of whites. Additionally, the success stories of selected Asian groups are often not a result of individual efforts rewarded by a fair system, but rather a "success" of the American immigration policies that have targeted highly skilled professionals since the s.
The model minority image also obscures the racial subordination of Asian Americans. I have always interpreted the term "desi" to describe people who hail from South Asian countries — a cluster that includes India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bhutan, Nepal and Afghanistan. In my language of Bengali, "desh" means homeland and "deshi" means someone who hails from that homeland.
That said, I think there is also a risk that a word like "desi" might pose — potentially homogenizing the diversity of South Asian cultures into a single, uneven identity that does not equally represent all the nations in this particular region. What are the countries and cultures that the Census Bureau includes in the definition of Asian American and Pacific Islander? Census Bureau must adhere to the Office of Management and Budget standards on race and ethnicity which guide the Census Bureau in classifying written responses to the race question.
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