If you grew up Korean or Japanese American, you’ve probably been asked if you were from China. If you grew up Pakistani American, you’ve probably been asked if you were from India. If you grew up Samoan or Laotian, you’ve probably had people ask, “Where is that?”
These all-too-common feats of ignorance, though committed with little ill will, are perceived as exclusionary and can impact the development and culture of Asian Americans. Around our nation, many children face the harsh reality of the general populace’s stunning ignorance. Knowing this, Asian groups around the nation have attempted to band together for greater collective political representation.
While the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) label has been successful in tying together otherwise distinct Asian communities to drive sociopolitical progress and fight discrimination, the overarching cultural signifier risks diminishing many of its member groups. Intentional or not, this practice has had a quiet but resounding impact upon Asian American communities.
Since large-scale immigration to the United States began in the 1850s, Asian communities have steadily grown, whether it be in ethnic enclaves like San Francisco’s Chinatown or in the integrated Cambodian neighborhoods of Los Angeles. From the Bengalis arriving in Harlem as sellers to the Chinese workers who laid the tracks of the Transcontinental Railroad, Asian Americans have become an integral part of the American story.
The progressive implementation of immigration reform following the 1965 Civil Rights Act helped expand the Asian American population from 1.5 million to 12 million between 1970 and 2000 alone. While the Nationality Act first abolished race-based caps on immigration, the hallmark legislation of this movement was the Immigration Act of 1990, which overhauled immigration caps and expanded employment visa access for foreigners. Today, the Asian American population stands at approximately 25 million.
But, the nation has come a long way in regards to the integration of Asian Americans, despite there still being substantive roadblocks. Legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 – the first-ever immigration restriction law based solely on race – was a reflection of the rampant xenophobia of the time. From the Exclusion Act to being barred from upper-class society, Asian Americans have overcome unique historic hurdles. That being said, Asian hate crimes were commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic, rising considerably in frequency between 2019 and 2020.
Things have, of course, changed since the first Asian Americans arrived, thanks to the continued efforts of courageous leaders throughout the last 60 years. The term “Asian American” originated in 1968 when UC Berkeley activists Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka employed it to rally community members to support the creation of an ethnic studies department at the university. The inception of this coalition generated waves of solidarity within the still-small Asian citizenry.
And so, alongside other minority groups, Asian Americans took a stand during the tumultuous Civil Rights Era of the 1960s. According to Olivia Hewang, junior fellow with the Library of Congress, activists rallied Asians from all corners of America into a “pan-ethnic political identity” circa 1968. This allowed smaller groups, who otherwise would not have been able to organize at scale, to expand political presence through collective action.
This coalition sought to overcome a laundry list of issues, including rampant housing discrimination, model minority status, unfair employment practices, and cultural representation. Through persistent effort, change was brought about and millions of Asians found solidarity under the blanket term Asian American. The political progress this coalition achieved was admirable, but that didn’t necessarily translate into complete assimilation into American society. Rather, it left them with new hurdles in overcoming widespread cultural invisibility due in part to Asians’ small relative populations.
Due to these developments, the U.S. government saw fit to create a unique descriptor for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for the first time, effective in the 1990 decennial census. The formation of the coalition, now codified in federal law, was a key factor in the 15.5 percentage point increase in Asian American political participation following 1992. This resulted in a changing political reality for members of the AAPI coalition, as change became increasingly attainable.
Despite the progress made during the Civil Rights Era and thereafter, there is still work to be done. In Texas, politicians and campaigns still routinely disregard Asian voters due to their relatively small population, with an enormous 80% of Texan Asian-Americans feeling that they are not represented in their own government. In addition, parties do not give equal attention to Asian American voters: only 9% of Asian American respondents reported being contacted “a great deal” by the Democratic Party, while just 6% of respondents said the same of the Republican Party.
Increasingly, the “pan-ethnic solidarity” Hewang spoke of successfully pushed Asian American voting behavior in favor of the Democrats. In the latter half of the 20th century, clashing perspectives on immigration and civil rights saw the Democrats take a stronger stance in favor of both. Naturally, many Asian Americans drifted to voting for the Democrats. What this represents is not the power of Democrat mobilization, but the reality of campaigning to a coalition rather than individual groups. Simply put, pan-ethnic solidarity allowed leaders of movements and parties to campaign for one large group despite real in-group differences.
Of course, campaigns or surveys naturally pursue a focus on larger groups within the coalition. However, this practice can be damaging to minority presence in the United States, as it reduces the need for institutional figures to actually recognize certain groups. So, while net political participation has increased due to the nature of coalitions, that very nature has disincentivized institutions from looking into specific groups’ issues.
In 1997, a coalition of Pacific Islanders requested to be removed from the broader AAPI census category, citing the very issues mentioned above. The Pacific Islander community felt underrepresented and underserved by the large label in issues from historical representation to healthcare discrimination, where their small population resulted in their individuality being flattened by the larger category.
There are real consequences to this sort of flawed representation beyond political participation, however. One such example is the issue of the model minority status, which essentially classifies Asian Americans as uniquely successful and qualified under aggregate statistics. Unfortunately, this aggregate data lacks uniform representation because some high-earning groups under the AAPI classification inflate the statistic. This results in less aid allocation for members of the government’s AAPI classification, which can erase struggling groups like Mongolian and Burmese Americans from statistics.
That’s not to say the AAPI designation is completely useless. It has been an integral part of Asian American history – it was what gave us the term Asian American to begin with. For starters, as a pure means of political mobilization, it has been and continues to be effective. But as it expands to a cultural purpose under history months, school curriculum, and corporate training, we must proceed with caution. What was once meant to be a political tool should not be appropriated into a cultural one for convenience’s sake at the expense of identity.
By removing these overgeneralizing categories, there are tangible benefits. People deserve to be represented and have their problems recognized in the legislature, their culture be appreciated in the classroom, and their opinions heard in politics. As individuals, we can disaggregate culture from politics. The next time someone asks me what I am, I won’t let myself be generalized. Labels cannot and should not be used to describe what we are. So let’s not let them.
