Survey: Jobs, terrorism, racial bias among top AAPI concerns

By Louis Chan
REPRINTED FROM ASAM NEWS

A multilingual survey of 2,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander voters found that the economy and jobs, terrorism and racial discrimination are their three most important issues entering the election.

Both terrorism and the economy ranked high in a recent poll of the general electorate as well by the Pew Research Center , but AAPIs rank racism and discrimination much higher-third versus tenth.

Ten percent of the AAPIs polled by the National AAPI Survey say racism is the most important issue facing the country. Six percent also rank it as the most important issue facing them personally.

It’s impossible to make a direct comparison to the findings of the Pew poll because the question wasn’t exactly the same. In that survey, voters were asked which issues are “very important.” 63 percent named “treatment of racial minorities.” That was ranked tenth, much behind the No. 1 issue, the economy at 84 percent and the No. 2 issue terrorism at 80 percent.

A quarter of AAPI voters in the Asian/American survey say the economy is the MOST important issue facing the country. 12 percent ranked terrorism as the MOST important.

On policy issues, the National Asian American Survey conducted August 10 to September 29, 2016 found 60 percent support the Affordable Care Act. Sixty-six percent support greater government spending to help undergraduates pay for education, 62 percent oppose a government ban on Muslims, 44 percent support accepting Syrian refugees into the U.S. and 35 percent oppose the idea, and only 33 percent support the legalization of marijuana in small amounts.

The poll surveyed by telephone 274 Asian Indians, 59 Cambodians, 281 Chinese, 201 Filipinos, 151 Hmong, 286 Koreans, 147 Japanese, 295 Vietnamese and 291 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

Interviews were conducted in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Hmong and Cambodian..

Seventy-two percent of the interviews were conducted by landlines versus 28 percent mobile phones.

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Study: The Internet is an Asian/American medium

English-speaking Asian/Americans are more likely to have technical devices than other ethnic groups.

ENGLISH-SPEAKING Asians have flocked to the Internet like no other group of people, according to a new PEW report.

The popular narrative says that Euro/Americans "lead in technology adoption while other racial or ethnic groups struggle to keep up," says the analysis. However, the PEW study says English-speaking Asians are more adept in the new technology that exceeds the rest of the population, including whites.

The PEW analysis qualifies its report by noting that they did not poll non-English-speaking Asian/Americans. A 2012 PEW survey found that 63.5% of Asian/Americans say they speak English "very well."

For several years, many Asian Americans have suspected they had a larger presence on the Internet much higher than their relatively small numbers in the general populace But until now, there hasn't been any hard data to support this thesis.


Not surprisingly, the next group in the categories were whites, followed by African/Americans and Latino/Americans.

RELEASE: Almost everything about Asian/Americans

Here are some of their findings for the English-speaking Asian/Americans:

• 95% use the Internet. It is not even close. In second place, only 87% of Euro/Americans  use the Internet.
• 84% have broadband at home. The gap here is even wider. Only 72% of whites have broadband.
• 91% own have a smart phone. 66% of whites own a smart phone. When including less advanced mobile phones, Asian/American usage jumped to 98%.

Researchers surmise that Asian/
Americans' tendency to have higher education and higher income that contribute to higher use of high-tech devices.

Hopefully, the findings will convince PEW surveyors to include Asians in their other research about the Internet use and social media. 

RELATED: AAPI social networkers make their presence felt

It kind of reminds me of the surveys PEW did in 2011 that gave the education, incomes levels, education, religion, political preference, social attitudes of African Americans and Latinos. The research group skipped Asians because we were numerically too small to get accurate data.

Such a hew and cry came from the Asian/American community that PEW was forced to do a similar analysis of the Asian/Americans resulting in the 2012 "The Rise of Asian Americans."

It appears PEW has fallen into its old habits again. Several followup surveys released after this February 2016 report didn't include Asian/Americans.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.