Pew Analysis: Being Asian in America is so very complicated

Being an Asian in the United States, is hella complicated.

In the fall of 2021, the Pew Research Center undertook the largest focus group study it had ever conducted – 66 focus groups with 264 total participants – to hear Asian Americans talk about their lived experiences in America. 

“This study aims to expand the depth and breadth of our understanding of racial and ethnic identity by asking Asian Americans to describe their attitudes and experiences in their own words, without preset response options,” Associate Director of Race and Ethnicity at the Pew Research Center Neil G. Ruiz said in a Q and A published with the analysis findings.

It has been a week since Pew released the findings of their massive undertaking. One of the common themes, across all ethnic groups, is that using the term “Asian American” for the 50 nationalities and ethnicities of people who come from a region representing over half of the world has outlived its usefulness.

No single experience defines what it means to be Asian in the United States today. Instead, Asian Americans’ lived experiences are in part shaped by where they were born, how connected they are to their family’s ethnic origins, and how others – both Asians and non-Asians – see and engage with them in their daily lives. Yet despite diverse experiences, backgrounds and origins, shared experiences and common themes emerged when we asked: “What does it mean to be Asian in America?”

In the fall of 2021, Pew Research Center undertook the largest focus group study it had ever conducted – 66 focus groups with 264 total participants – to hear Asian Americans talk about their lived experiences in America. 

Asian Americans are the fastest growing immigrant group in the United States outpacing immigration from Latin American countries. That growth from newcomers shows no signs of slowing. 

A majority of Asian America are immigrants. They came to this country long after the term “Asian American” was coined as the result of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act that replaced the previous immigration policies that favored Europe. 

At the same time, there is a growing number of US-born generation of Asian Americans navigating their own way, linking family heritage with their own experiences growing up in the US.

Seeking an identity

The term "Asian American" came into popular usage in 1968 by activists who wanted to be part of the ongoing civil rights movement occurring in the country. Until then, the separate long-standing Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and South Asian communities were seen as separate groups and too small for politically insignificant for government agencies to pay any attention. 

In order to take advantage of the civil rights benefits such as voting rights, ethnic studies, government grants and economic opportunities, the separate groups saw the need of coalescing under a single banner.

However, the joining together as "Asian Americans,"  created another set of problems, especially for those new immigrants.

In Pew's effort, focus group members mainly focused on their experiences living in the United States, immigration and refugee experiences. U.S.-born participants shared how their experiences in school shaped their identity and the pressures to “fit a certain stereotype.”

The topic of how the respondents viewed themselves was covered extensively in all focus groups: how participants viewed their own racial or ethnic identity. Moderators asked respondents how they viewed themselves, and what experiences informed their views about their identity. These discussions not only highlighted differences in how participants thought about their own racial or ethnic background, but they also revealed how different settings can influence how they would choose to identify themselves. 

Across all focus groups, the general theme emerged that being Asian was only one part of how participants viewed themselves. Pew’s researchers highlighted a common sentiment among respondents that using the term “Asian American” or “Asian” is less of an active choice and more of an imposed one. 

For example, an immigrant Pakistani woman remarked how she typically sees “Asian American” on forms, but not more specific options. Similarly, an immigrant Burmese woman described her experience of applying for jobs and having to identify as “Asian,” as opposed to identifying by her ethnic background, because no other options were available. These experiences highlight the challenges organizations like government agencies and employers have in developing surveys or forms that ask respondents about their identity. 

A common sentiment is similar to this statement from a US-born Taiwanese American: “I guess … I feel like I just kind of check off ‘Asian’ [for] an application or the test forms. That’s the only time I would identify as Asian. But Asian is too broad. Asia is a big continent. Yeah, I feel like it’s just too broad. To specify things, you’re Taiwanese American, that’s exactly where you came from.”

Other participants shared how their experiences in explaining the geographic location and culture of their origin country led them to prefer “Asian” when talking about themselves with others. This theme was especially prominent among those belonging to smaller origin groups such as Bangladeshis and Bhutanese. A Lao participant remarked she would initially say “Asian American” because people might not be familiar with “Lao.”

Identity becomes even more complex for those born and raised in the US and by virtue of their social environment, have taken on aspects of that culture. A Filipino woman summed it up this way:

“Now I consider myself to be both Filipino and Asian American, but growing up in (Southern California) … I didn’t start to identify as Asian American until college because in [the Los Angeles suburb where I lived], it’s a big mix of everything – Black, Latino, Pacific Islander and Asian … when I would go into spaces where there were a lot of other Asians, especially East Asians, I didn’t feel like I belonged. … In media, right, like people still associate Asian with being East Asian.”

Add onto that the influence of religion, gender, citizenship, and family customs surrounding language and food, identity result of a mish-mash of all of these factors, says the Pew analysis.

Among the analysis’ other findings, one major takeaway was the damage caused by the “model minority” myth associated with Asian Americans.

“As an Asian person, I feel like there’s that stereotype that Asian students are high achievers academically. They’re good at math and science. … I was a pretty mediocre student, and math and science were actually my weakest subjects, so I feel like it’s either way you lose,” said one focus group participant, a U.S-born woman of Korean descent in her late 20s.

“Teachers expect you to fit a certain stereotype and if you’re not, then you’re a disappointment, but at the same time, even if you are good at math and science, that just means that you’re fitting a stereotype. It’s [actually] your own achievement, but your teachers might think, ‘Oh, it’s because they’re Asian,’ and that diminishes your achievement.”

For more information from the “Being Asian in America” project:

• Read the data essay: What It Means To Be Asian in America
• Watch the documentary: Being Asian in America
• Explore the interactive: In Their Own Words: The Diverse Perspectives of Being Asian in America
• View expanded interviews: Extended Interviews: Being Asian in America
• About this research project: More on the Being Asian in America project
• Q&A: Why and how Pew Research Center conducted 66 focus groups with Asian Americans

Despite the internal feeling for more specific ethnic breakdowns there was a recognition among several respondents who noted how viewing Asians as a monolithic group is becoming more common since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The first (thing people think of me as) is just Chinese. ‘You guys are just Chinese.’ I’m not the only one who felt (this) after the COVID-19 outbreak. ‘Whether you’re Japanese, Korean, or Southeast Asian, you’re just Chinese (to Americans). I should avoid you.’ I’ve felt this way before, but I think I’ve felt it a bit more after the COVID-19 outbreak,” one respondent said.

At the same time, other participants described their own experiences trying to convince others that they are Asian or Asian American. This was a common experience among Southeast Asian participants.

“I have to convince people I’m Asian, not Middle Eastern," said a US-born man of Pakistani origins. "If you type in Asian or you say Asian, most people associate it with Chinese food, Japanese food, karate, and like all these things but then they don’t associate it with you.”

Today’s Asian America is far different than the 20th century Asian America when Asian Americans made up only 4-5% of the US population but sought recognition alongside Black and Hispanic Americans during the civil rights movement that was happening at that time.

Since the 2000 Census, the Asian American population has been the fastest growing rate among all ethnic groups. The Asian population in the U.S. grew 81% from 2000 to 2019, from roughly 10.5 million to a record 18.9 million people. According to the 2020 Census, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders  now number over 24 million, or about 7.7% of the US population.

That growth was due mainly to immigration, especially from China, South Asia and the Philippines. Additionally, thousands of refugees came from Asia, particularly Vietnam, Cambodia and Afghanistan because their families sided with the US  in wars fought there.

As a result, a large percentage of present day Asian America was not born in the US. They know very little of the civil rights struggles that preceded them and the benefits they enjoy from schooling, voting rights to employment.

In addition, there are new waves of immigrants coming from Russia, Syria and Turkey who could, technically, fall under the banner of Asian American since they come from countries that are in Asia. The use  of “Asian American” for the 50 nationalities and ethnicities of people who come from a region representing over half of the world has perhaps outlived its usefulness.

But immigrants are not the sole face of Asian America, there are Asian American families who have been in the US for generations, some from as far back as the 18th century. They still constitute the majority of Asian Americans and have taken on many of the characteristics of the social and cultural environment in which they were born.

What could replace 'Asian American?'

But what should be done? It took 50 years and the advent of a pandemic before newscasters began to refer to us as AAPI. It will take more years for US media and government agencies to get used to using AANHPI, even though the Biden administration has stressed the separation of Native  Hawaiians from Pacific Islanders.

The Biden administration has made it a point in their official documents, executive orders, proclamations and data collection agencies to separate Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders from the widely used designation of AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders).

The awkward designation “AANHPI” is already mouthful. Imagine if we began tacking on other ethnicities. Tharesulting acronym could be as long as the name for a certain Hawaiian fish species, the Lauwiliwilinukunukuʻoiʻoi.

Members of Congress and government agencies must find a way to separate the vastly different ethnic groups that presently fall under the Asian American umbrella but, at the same time, not lose any political or financial clout that they enjoy as 7% of the population. The problem with breaking into smaller groups fighting over the same piece of pie is that Asian America could, once again, fall into the category of “insignificantly irrelevant.”

The Pew effort is a massive one from which academia, journalists, politicians and other analysts will be pulling from for years to come but the research center struggled in earlier attempts to cover the AANHPI communities. 

In 2020 I complained in this blog that the respected Pew Research Center was doing a disservice to Asian Americans and the country by not including that ethnic group in their surveys about race.

A few months later, in response (not to me, personally) they issued an explanation why it is difficult to add Asian Americans to their surveys when they break down responses by race beyond the traditional White, Black and Hispanic categories.

Pew has stumbled when trying to include Asian Americans in its reports. In 2011 Pew released a report, “The Rise of Asian America,” specifically about Asian Americans breaking that large down the demographic to specific groups: ie. Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, etc. The critique by Asian Americans is that it reinforced the “model minority” stereotype was apparently taken seriously by researchers. In 2012, they issued an updated version of the same report that softened the earlier critique.

For this current analysis, Pew researchers last fall created 66 focus groups with a total of 264 participants organized along 18 distinct Asian ethnic group origins.

Another common finding among focus group participants is the disconnect they noted between how they see themselves and how others view them. Sometimes this led to maltreatment of them or their families, especially at heightened moments in American history such as during Japanese incarceration during World War II, the aftermath of 9/11 and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Another shared finding is the multiple ways in which participants take and express pride in their cultural and ethnic backgrounds while also feeling at home in America, celebrating and blending their unique cultural traditions and practices with those of other Americans.

This focus group project is part of a broader research agenda about Asians living in the United States. The findings presented by Pew is but a small glimpse of what participants told researchers, in their own words, about how they identify themselves, how others see and treat them, and more generally, what it means to be Asian in America.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.