Four in five Asian Americans feel like they don't belong in the US, and more than half say they feel unsafe on the streets.
By Sunita Sohrabji. Ethnic Media Services.
STANFORD, Calif. ? The Asian-American community is one of the oldest in the US, but many Americans still consider it "foreign."
“Discrimination has always shaped us. We have always been the yellow peril, or the dark peril that threatens the very existence of America. There is a myth that we will always be foreigners,” said Dr. Russell Jeung, co-founder of the Stop AAPI Hate web portal and a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University.
Jeung spoke in a May 16 panel discussion here about Asian American identity. KPIX News Anchor Ryan Yamamoto moderated the discussion, which included speakers Neil Ruiz, director of new research initiatives at the Pew Research Center; Dr. Malathi Srinivasan, Clinical Professor of Medicine at Stanford University; and Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician who served in the California State Senate for seven years.
The discussion, hosted by the Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education in association with the Stanford Asian Staff Forum and the Asian American Journalists Association, San Francisco, comes on the heels of a multi-year survey of Asian Americans, published by Pew Research Center May 8.
Who belongs here?
Another report released May 4 by The Asian American Foundation found that 4 in 5 Asian Americans feel like they don't belong. More than half say they feel unsafe, especially on the streets. "It's amazing to see that more than one in four Americans still think Asian Americans are more loyal to their home country. These unfortunate and long-standing misperceptions erode our sense of belonging and security as AAPI," said Norman Chen, TAAF's chief executive, in an introduction to the report.
In the early 20th century, Asians were associated with the introduction of smallpox, malaria, and leprosy to the US, leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924. Asians have been barred from entering the US and the population already here has been barred from buying land, similar to three bills currently pending in the Texas State Legislature.
Separation of China and Chinese Americans
"History is repeating itself. We knew that as Covid loomed, Asian Americans would be blamed," said Jeung, who founded Stop AAPI Hate in April 2020, with co-founders Manjusha Kulkarni and Cynthia Choi. Since its creation, the portal has recorded more than 11,000 acts of hate violence against AAPI.
In response to a question from EMS, Jeung said that people who believe China is the biggest threat to the US also believe Chinese Americans are a threat. "It's okay to criticize China's policy, but we have to separate China from Chinese Americans," Jeung said.
Pew Study Findings
Ruiz laid out the findings of the Pew Study, the largest AAPI survey ever conducted. Questionnaires were sent to more than 268 thousand people and 7 thousand 6 interviews were completed.
Some key findings regarding self-identity:
Approximately half ?52 percent? of Asian adults say they describe themselves more often by ethnicity, either alone ?26 percent? as Japanese or Korean, or in combination with American ?25 percent? as Vietnamese American.
28 percent describe themselves as Asian, whether it's just ?12 percent? or as Asian-American ?16 percent?.
Only 10 percent describe themselves as American.
41 percent of Indians use only their ethnic identity, without adding American. Japanese Americans are the least likely to identify by ethnicity alone.
Nearly a third of third-generation Asian Americans identify simply as American.
More than half of Asian Americans say that most of their friends are from the same ethnic group. But that changes over time. About 38 percent of second-generation AAPIs only have friends of their ethnicity.
86 percent of Asian Americans say they are comfortable with interracial marriages and marrying outside of their race.
One in 5 Asian American adults have hidden a part of their identity from non-Asians.
Disaggregated health data
Srinivasan discussed the need for disaggregated health data for Asian Americans, noting that genetic differences, income, and lifestyle disparities play a huge role in determining health outcomes. South Asians, for example, are more prone to diabetes and heart problems than the general Asian-American population, while Chinese-Americans have a higher rate of cancer than the general population. Vietnamese Americans have the highest prevalence of hepatitis B.
But such information is largely anecdotal, with no data to back it up, Srinivasan said, noting that the process by which AAPI health data is disaggregated is complex and must be balanced with privacy laws.
Less than 0.15 percent of National Institutes of Health funding is allocated to researchers working on studies specific to the AAPI community, Srinivasan noted.
Related to this, many immigrants face enormous barriers to getting proper health care, including understanding how the American health care system works and describing their medical problems. “We need to better train our doctors and also train our patients on how to request or demand better medical care,” Srinivasan said.
"Where are the Asian Americans?"
Pan echoed Srinivasan's comments, noting that only about 3 percent of articles published in scientific journals have results for AAPIs. "Where are the Asian Americans? And why don't you report it? he often asks his colleagues, who say the numbers are too small to be significant.
“We have to deal with the NIH and the researchers to report the AAPI results. If they don't mention us, we can't make changes," Pan said.
The pediatrician noted that Asian Americans are overrepresented at the lowest levels of health care, but are rarely the decision makers or leadership roles. "As you go up, we disappear," he noted. “We are not in the boardroom. And that has to change".
"Change That Accent"
Both Pan and Yamamoto spoke about the language discrimination they personally faced. When Pan was little, his parents mainly spoke Mandarin at home; they put him in special education because of his poor English skills. "So from then on, I refused to speak Mandarin," he said.
Yamamoto, whose family spent time in internment camps, said his career as a journalist has taken him across the US. "Sometimes, I was the only person who looked like me in the newsroom, but viewers they accepted it."
"But an editor pulled me aside one day and said, 'Ryan, you're going to have a great career in journalism, but you need to work on that accent?'
Yamamoto, who was born in the United States, said he was very upset by the incident. "I do not speak Japanese. My parents don't speak Japanese. The Japanese language was lost to many Americans after World War II."
«My grandmother used to tell my father never to speak Japanese because of what could happen if they heard us utter a single word. So we don't speak Japanese," he said.
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