US Census: Leaked documents reveal plans to stop collecting race & ethnicity data

                                                                                                                      Pew Research Center

If they don’t count us, we don’t exist — and that’s precisely the point. Donald Trump and his followers would like nothing better than to have people of color disappear.

Leaked draft proposals reveal the Trump administration is pushing to erase race and ethnicity categories from the 2030 US Census, a move Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) leaders and civil rights advocates warn is a calculated strike to strip political power, gut federal funding, and force non-white communities into back to society's edges —uncounted and unseen.

Under the guise of streamlining government, draft proposals first reported by
Talking Points Memo frame the sweeping changes as routine administrative housekeeping:

Official rhetoric claims dropping race and ethnicity questions simplifies the questionnaire, cuts costs, and saves households a few minutes.

Administration allies argue that classifying residents by race promotes "racial stereotyping" and triggers reverse discrimination, pushing a rigid "colorblind" policy onto national data collection.

The regime's alleged proposal redirects government focus toward collecting strict legal status and citizenship metrics — a clear precursor to not counting noncitizens from congressional apportionment and redistricting counts.

A direct blow to AANHPI visibility

For AANHPI communities—currently the fastest-growing demographic in the country—stripping these metrics threatens to undo decades of progress toward data disaggregation, the vital process that exposes severe inequalities hidden beneath broad labels.

• Burying Subgroup Disparities: The "model minority" myth relies on aggregated data to paint a picture of universal success. Broad "Asian American" stats mask stark realities: while overall averages look prosperous on paper, disaggregated data shows groups like Burmese Americans face poverty rates as high as 39%. Scrapping ethnicity tracking leaves these critical needs completely undetected by policymakers.

• Gutting Language Access & Local Funding: Trillions in federal funding for public education, community health centers, and emergency services depend on hyper-local census counts. Without granular demographic data, local governments will lose both the funding and the legal mandate to provide crucial non-English language services.

Pew Research Center

Stripping away civil rights and political power

The stakes extend far beyond federal dollars — they strike at the core of legal protections and democratic representation for all communities of color. We've witnessed the regime's attack against inclusion and diversity, the lack of data would make it next to impossible to prove the need for equal rights.

• Eroding Voting Rights: If the historically disenfranchised  ever want  the Voting Rights Act back to spot gerrymandering and stop vote dilution, racial and ethnic data is the first step. Without baseline census figures, proving illegal district manipulation in court becomes almost impossible.

• Neutering Civil Rights Accountability: From fair housing audits to employment discrimination claims, establishing "disparate impact" requires statistical proof. Scrubbing racial categories deprives civil rights agencies and citizens of the evidence needed to hold institutions accountable under the law.

Corporations would be happy

Perhaps not too surprising but the elimination of racial and ethnic data would make corporations happy. For 60 years, in order to comply with federal regulations, the private sector begrudgingly installed DEI programs to improve their workforce representation. The corporations have also had to submit reports about the gender, racial and ethnic composition of their workforces

For 60 years, private businesses have had to submit their hiring data to make sure that the corporations are not discriminating by gender, race or ethnicity in their hiring or promotions. Without that data, it would be harder for employees or equal rights advocates to bring charges of discrimination.

And there's the bottom line to consider. Tracking and auditing demographic data requires dedicated software, time, and human resources. Many for-profit companies believe this requirement to be an unnecessary financial burden.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has already issued a proposal reflecting what the Trump regime wants to do with the federal workforce. The EEOC's Republican majority voted 2-1 last month to rescind the data collection requirement, submitting the proposal to a 30-day public commentary period before final approval. 

EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, an outspoken critic of diversity and inclusion, argues that requiring companies to submit the annual demographic reports risks encouraging companies to justify discriminatory practices to diversify their workforce.

"It may promote racial stereotyping at work, and it may encourage employers to engage in discrimination," Lucas said during a hearing.

View from the edge

If you think you are seen, think again. The federal government is playing peek-a-boo with our community. Just when we thought we were finally getting counted, they pulled the rug out.

The quiet battle happening inside the Department of Commerce could completely change the 2030 Census. They want to stop collecting race and ethnicity data. They want to act like we do not exist. Conservative groups say these questions are too hard. But without this data, we cannot fight for our rights. Civil rights groups warn this will hurt our voting power.

For years, we have been lumped together as one huge group. That hides the truth. It makes us invisible.

Each group has different needs. When you mix us all together, you miss the high poverty rates in some communities. You miss the health struggles in others. You support the false idea that all Asians are doing great.

Last year, things looked good. The government passed Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 (SPD 15). It promised to make detailed subgroup tracking the standard.

Now, those plans are dead. The Census Bureau quietly cancelled these updates for the upcoming 2027 American Community Survey (ACS). They pushed the deadlines way back to 2029. Advocacy groups like SEARAC and AAPIData are sounding the alarm. They know that delayed justice is denied justice.

“Disaggregated data is not optional; it’s essential,” said Quyên Đinh, Executive Director of SEARAC. “Without it, Southeast Asian American communities remain unseen and underserved. The updated data standards in SPD 15 are necessary to ensure our communities are visible in the data that drive decisions on resources, services, and policies.

Advocates aren't buying the administrative excuses. This isn't about saving paperwork or streamlining government — it is a deliberate political attempt to advance a "colorblind" mandate that erases diversity, dilutes minority political power, and masks entrenched racial inequities. 

Community advocates emphasize that data collection is fundamental to equity, noting that a community cannot be served if it is not counted. Community groups are already mobilizing to oppose the proposal, vowing to fight any policy changes that threaten to render minority communities invisible in federal accounting.

If you do not count us, you cannot serve us. Without separate numbers for each group, our schools will not get money for language help. Our health clinics will not get tools to fight specific diseases.

We cannot let them make us invisible again. We have to stand up and demand to be counted.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news, views and chismis from an AANHPI perspective, follow me on Threads, on X, BlueSky or at the blog Views From the Edge. If you find this perspective interesting, please repost.

NJ Asian American advocates call for more detailed demographic data to improve public policy

RUTGERS

AANHPI students at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

A bill, AB 3092, requiring disaggregating data collected by the state of New Jersey in order to better serve the diverse Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities passed the New Jersey Assembly Wednesday by a vote of 71-2 with 4 abstentions, 

Below an article written before the vote is reprinted from the New Jersey Monitor.

By Dana Difilippo
REPRINTED FROM THE NEW JERSEY MONITOR

From doctor’s offices to new employers, people filling out forms are given usually just a few choices to define their race and ethnicity — white, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian or sometimes just “other.”

In New Jersey, where Asians are the fastest-growing racial demographic and comprise 11% of the population, the catch-all categories of Asian and “other” can be frustrating.

“Our countries of origin span over 50 countries that speak hundreds of languages, with as many cultures,” said Laura Zhang Choi of advocacy group Make Us Visible New Jersey.

And for policymakers, such a broad category can result in bad policies that exclude or hurt the populations they’re meant to serve.

Several state lawmakers aim to right that oversight. They introduced legislation this year that would require state agencies to widen the demographic data they collect on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to include Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian and Indian diaspora residents.

The bill, which the Assembly’s state and local government committee advanced unanimously last week, is set for a full Assembly vote Wednesday. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a similar bill into law in December.

“The principle behind this is that good policy comes from good data,” said Assemblywoman Sadaf Jaffer (D-Somerset), a prime sponsor of the bill.

As communities become more diverse, breaking demographics into smaller, more specific categories — called data disaggregation — helps uncover trends and inequities in those groups, Jaffer said.

Such information, then, can help community leaders better target services and solutions to erase those disparities, said Assemblyman Raj Mukherji (D-Hudson), another sponsor. Mukherji said it’s unfair to “homogenize folks from an entire continent.”

(Photo courtesy of Laura Choi)

Laura Zhang Choi of Make Us Visible NJ rallies at the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice’s Immigrant Heritage Day of Action on June 22, 2022, at the Statehouse in Trenton. 

“And it puts certain subgroups at risk of being underserved. When you’re serving such diverse immigrant and ethnic communities, it’s important to break down the regional categorization so that you don’t make any one group invisible when you’re trying to figure out how to make government work for them,” he said.

People from different demographics can have vastly different experiences in everything from education to health care to financial stability, and those experiences should shape services and policies for those communities, said Assemblyman Sterley Stanley (D-Middlesex), another sponsor.

South Asians have higher risks of cardiovascular diseases than the general population and consequently have different health needs, Stanley said. Taiwanese Americans have far higher rates of educational attainment than people from Bhutan, where ethnic tensions created a refugee crisis, Choi said.

“Ensuring equity through data representation means we can get a better understanding of the health and socioeconomic needs of our Asian populations,” Stanley said.

U.S. health care relies on Filipinxs while ignoring their health needs

PHILIPPINE NURSES ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

By Carlos Irwin A. Oronce, MD

REPRINTED FROM THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

In the US, Filipinxs are the third largest Asian subgroup and have represented a crucial part of the country’s health care workforce since the mid-20th century. Although the 2.9 million Filipinxs in the US represent about 1% of the population, approximately 1 of 4 Filipinx working adults are frontline health care workers. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacted a disproportionate toll on Filipinx communities in the US and on Filipinx health care workers, specifically. 

The absence of disaggregated race/ethnicity data for COVID-19 has masked how the pandemic has affected Filipinxs in the US. Policy makers and researchers must recognize that these disparities are not limited to COVID-19 but are a critical example of how data aggregation under a single Asian category has hidden the health needs of the Filipinx population.

Missing in the Data, Missing in Policy Discussions

Aggregate race/ethnicity data for COVID-19 cases and deaths mask the disproportionate burden on Asian subgroups, including Filipinxs in the US, leaving these disparities unrecognized and unaddressed. Asians comprise nearly 6% of the US population but only about 3% of COVID-19 cases and 4% of its deaths, suggesting that Asian Americans are not disproportionately affected by COVID-19. 

Yet a different picture has emerged for Filipinxs in Hawaii, the only state which publicly reports disaggregated Asian data: Filipinx residents comprise 16% of the population but 22% of COVID-19 deaths. 

Similar analyses are not possible nationally or in any other state. While some states may collect data on Filipinxs, these data are typically restricted and only available through public information requests. For example, Filipinxs comprise 42% of COVID-19 deaths among Asian adults (18-64 years) in California despite making up just 20% of the state’s nonelderly Asian adult population. No other Asian subgroup accounted for more than 15% of deaths.

Filipinx Share of COVID-19 Deaths Among Asians and Share of the Asian Population of California in 2020, by Single Race Non–Latino Asian Subgroup of Adults (18-64 Years)

Importantly, this disparate impact of COVID-19 would have remained undetected without the media, research, and advocacy efforts that exposed the higher burden on Filipinxs, especially among health care workers. The grassroots transnational organization, AF3IRM has a poignant online tribute to fallen Filipinx health care workers (https://www.kanlungan.net/). A report by National Nurses United showed that Filipinxs comprise an estimated 32% of COVID-19 deaths among nurses in the US despite representing only 4% of nurses nationally.

Moreover, the lack of disaggregated COVID-19 mortality data in public health surveillance systems hides the mortality burden among Filipinx health care workers. Researchers have undertaken “work-around” studies that use the conventional data available to corroborate inferences made by online tributes and ad hoc reports. 

One such work-around study by Escobedo and colleagues using data from the 2018 American Community Survey 5-year estimates showed that having a higher percentage of Filipinxs in a county’s health care workforce was significantly associated with a greater share of COVID-19 deaths among Asian Americans. In the conventional data surveillance infrastructure used to assess health disparities, the toll of COVID-19 among Filipinx communities has not been recognized.

The disproportionate mortality among Filipinx nurses is particularly alarming given the historical reasons that contributed to the high representation of Filipinxs in the health care workforce. US-sponsored nursing schools were established in the Philippines during the American colonial period (1898-1946), followed by a deliberate immigration policy that recruited health care workers from the Philippines to address US workforce shortages. 

Currently, nurses from the Philippines represent a majority of internationally educated nurses in the US and are more likely to work in inpatient and critical care units, thereby facing a higher risk of occupational exposure to COVID-19. 

Moreover, 18% of Asian Americans live in a household with at least 1 health care worker, the second highest percentage across all race/ethnicity groups. This proportion is even higher among Filipinx households, 38% of which are both multigenerational and include at least 1 health care worker. These data suggest that occupational and structural factors have contributed to a greater risk of COVID-19 exposure and transmission among Filipinxs.

Data Aggregation as a Contributor to Filipinx Health Disparities

Data aggregation has not only obscured the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on specific racial/ethnic subgroups, but it has also hampered the ability to monitor for preexisting risk factors contributing to higher mortality among subgroups. 

Efforts to identify health disparities among Filipinxs often rely on data from the California Health Interview Survey because, to our knowledge, it is the only large-scale health survey in the US that disaggregates Filipinx data and therefore allows robust analyses. A study of this survey data by Adia and colleagues found that Filipinxs were three times more likely to have hypertension and two times more likely to have diabetes—both of which are risk factors for severe COVID-19—compared with White individuals in California. 

The aggregation of Asian groups in most public health data has systematically obscured Filipinx disparities related to long-term conditions, limiting the ability to leverage official statistics to garner support for investment and interventions focused on addressing these disparities.

The idea that data disaggregation is imperative for identifying health disparities among individual Asian American groups, including Filipinxs, has long preceded the COVID-19 pandemic. While efforts by organizations in civil society have provided important signals regarding Filipinx health, these organizations do not have the same capacity as federal and state governments, which carry the ultimate responsibility for collecting data to guide public health response. The success of the California Health Interview Survey in drawing attention to health disparities for Asian subgroups, such as Filipinxs, illustrates that high quality race/ethnicity data can be collected feasibly.9

Without disaggregated data for Asian subgroups, Filipinxs have been ignored in public health planning efforts, perpetuating health disparities within a community that has shouldered a disproportionate share of the frontline health care work. Therefore, the inaction of government and health care institutions to collect and report detailed race/ethnicity information must be reframed not as the default choice, but as an active choice that perpetuates preventable disparities.

Implications for COVID-19 and Beyond

While the increased availability of COVID-19 vaccines will provide an end to the pandemic, policy makers should take concrete steps to ensure an equitable recovery that will also prepare the country for a more equitable response to future health challenges. Public health surveillance and health care delivery systems must adequately capture granular self-reported race and ethnicity data. The routine collection of these data would be consistent with the proposed data collection standards issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services for population surveys.10 Adoption of such policies are important first steps toward keeping an equity focus during the post–COVID-19 recovery, particularly for Filipinx health care workers and Filipinx communities in the US.

About the author: Carlos Irwin A. Oronce, MD, MPH, National Clinician Scholars Program, University of California Los Angeles, (coronce@mednet.ucla.edu). Originally published July 23, 2021. Read the entire article here.

Opinion: View from the 'statistically insignificant' or 'How do AAPI become statistically relevant?'

PEW GRAPHIC

The Pew Research Center has been invaluable in getting a gauge on Americans' economic well-being, social status and opinions but it falls woefully short when addressing racial or ethnic issues, especially in regards to Asian Americans.

Their latest survey taken by Pew, how different ethnic groups react or affected by to the coronavirus pandemic is a case in point.

Pew asked questions of their American Trends Panel (ATP), which  is "a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. Panelists participate via self-administered web surveys."

The survey neatly categorized those responses according to White, Black and Latino. One would think, if the panel is "randomly selected" there would be a few Asian Americans responding, especially if the random selection process delved into the states of Hawaii, California or Nevada, where Asian Americans make up a significant portion of the population. In the case of Hawaii, AAPI make up the majority of the population.

The usual response is that Asian American responses are "statistically insignificant." In other words. so few AAPI responded to make the numbers gained to be questionable as truly representative of that ethnic group.

Asian Americans make up about 22 million, or almost 7%, of the US population. But in California, the US's largest state by population, Asian Americans make up almost 18% of the population. In Hawaii, Asian Americans make up about 40% of the island state's 1.4 million inhabitants.

Drilling down even further, getting information about specific ethnic groups, ie, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, South Asian, etc.) is even more difficult.

Its not the first time that Pew's surveys have been criticized for its outdated view of America. When the research center released its survey of the country's social trends after the 2010 Census, Asian Americans raised a ruckus when, once again, they were deemed "statistically insignificant." You can imagine the protests that came from the AAPI community to be brushed aside by a reputable statistic-oriented research institution such as Pew.

In an effort to rectify their omission, in 2012, Pew released a follow-up report, “The Rise of Asian Americans,” The researchers were heavily criticized again for painting Asian Americans as the “model minority”  by presenting all the positive attirubtes of Asian Americans. As a result, Pew revised their findings in 2013. 

Subsequent follow-ups to the follow-up continue to this day with Pew researchers taking more care in its interpretation of the raw data that they glean about Asian Americans. 

However, Pew's Asian American surveys are not combined with that of Whites, Blacks and Hispanics. It is usually in a form of a special report focusing in on Asian Americans as if AAPI are not part and parcel of the the American fabric. In other words, Asian Americans are unintentionally being "otherized" thus reinforcing the "perpetually foreign" image of AAPI no matter how many generations removed they may be from the initial immigrant generation.

It is human nature for a person of a particular ethnicity to look at the statistics that tell that person about the ethnic group he or she belongs to. By not including Asian Americans in with the other ethnicities, Whites, Blacks and Hispanics learn nothing about Asian Americans. Conversely, Asian Americans can't easily compare themselves with the other ethnicities without further effort.

Groups like AAPI Data that specializes in surveys of AAPI subgroups provide invaluable data about Asian America and Pacific Islanders, fill in the blindspot of bigger research institutions like Pew. Most of the time, AAPI Data is able to break down the data into the different AAPI subgroups, something -- for some reason -- the mainstream data collectors and researchers find difficult to do. The more cynical among us might conclude that the researchers just don't want to spend the time (and money) doing the extra digging.

Sample questions from E.J.R. David's survey.
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The difficulty in attaining information specific to a particular Asian subgroup forces researchers to divine other methods of collecting that data.

Prof. E.J.R. David of the University of Alaska, saw the shortcomings of the recent Pew study regarding opinions of the coronavirus by going online to get the sentiments of  Filipino Americans. 

In a Psychology Today article, that while he admits the information he's collected is unscientific, he was able to surmise that Filipino Americans might be more vulnerable to COVID-19 than other AAPI groups because of the high number of Filipinos in the healthcare industry, ie. 20% of the nurses in California are Filipino; and because of the polyglot nature of Filipino racial lines, Filipino Americans might be less susceptible -- or at least experience -- the racist attacks hurled at AAPI being blamed for the spread of the coronavirus. 

David's findings is an example for the need for more disaggregated data collection to understand the vast differences among the peoples who come from a score of countries and cultures of Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Demographers predict that by 2040, the United States will be a majority minority country. That apparent eventuality scares the bejeebers out of white supremacists and people of that ilk. Although Whites will no longer be in the majority, they will still be the largest group numerically. Despite the fears of white supremacists, the institutions that form the basis of the US will most likely still keep Whites entrenched as the most powerful racial group in the country. 

Perhaps the wide disparities and cultural differences between the some-2 dozen ethnicities and nationalities typically classified under the all-encompassing category of Asian American has something to do with the reluctance of Pew to do the hard data gathering, but I would argue, that is exactly why more effort needs to be put into gathering the raw data if we're to get a better picture of today's -- and tomorrow's -- America.

That's all the more reason to take into account the views of Asian Americans, the fastest growing and the largest provider of immigrants, who will play increasingly important roles in the US workforce and as taxpayers, since the 2010 Census.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow me at Threads.net/eduardodiok, @DioknoEd on Twitter or at the blog Views From the Edge.

Disaggregated data reveals hidden health disparities among Asian Americans

Asians in America appear to be healthier than non-Hispanic whites, however, when the data is disaggregated, health disparities among the different subgroups become apparent. 

A new study, "Health Conditions, Outcomes, and Service Access Among Filipino, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Adults in California, 2011–2017," published in the American Journal of Public Health has appearances don't match the data. It found that Asian Americans tend to have worse health indicators than whites. especially among Vietnamese, Japanese and Koreans. Filipinos had the worst health among all Asian Americans.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Brown University found the importance of disaggregated data. They found that when Asian Americans are treated as as a monolithic group, it masks the real health needs of the different subgoups. 

“What we’re just trying to call out here is that the more we choose to treat data aggregation as the standard and then disaggregation as a novelty and nice to have, the more we choose to be blind to the health issues faced by the community,” said Alexander Adia, one of the study's authors.

The authors found that Filipino Americans appeared to be in the worst health of all Asian subgroups in the study. Filipinos were found to have a greater prevalence of high blood pressure, asthma, heart disease and delayed medication usage compared to Asians overall. Filipinos also had higher levels in the first three health outcomes compared to non-Hispanic whites.

The irony is that “Filipino Americans are disproportionately involved in the provision of health care, but it seems the data practices that we currently employed aren’t great at identifying their needs,” Adia said.

DAILY BRUIN GRAPHIC

On the other hand, Chinese Californians appear to be the healthiest subgroup with the fewest negative disparities compared with non-Hispanic white adults.

Chinese adults ranked highest in the category of no doctors visits in the past year, and the Japanese subgroup topped high blood pressure at the same rate as Filipino adults.

The study also found that Vietnamese adults had the highest rates of fair or poor health and disability while Korean adults suffered from the highest rates of serious distress. Additionally, Korean adults ranked highest in no usual source of care and delayed care in terms of health service access.

Researchers analyzed data from the California Health Interview Survey, a web and telephone survey that provides data on the state's health and health care needs. They specifically looked at data from about 13,000 Asians from 2011 to 2017, said Adia. One of the flaws of the study is that the data is self-reported and the respondents were only from California.

The findings, the researchers said, proves that further studies of health needs of the different subgroups through the use of disaggregated data is needed.

They explained that the idea of Asian Americans as a “model minority” has been debunkedin other areas such as educational attainment, employment, and income. The idea of the model minority myth doesn't apply in health, either, they learned.

Second study author Jennifer Nazareno said, “When we think of model minority, a lot of the academic research focuses on identity politics and the difference between social classes. But in terms of health disparities and health inequities, that is severely under-researched.”

STUDY: Schools lack a clear view of AAPI discipline disparities

By David Washburn

REPRINTED BY PERMISSION / EDSOURCE

When examining school discipline disparities, data consistently show that Asian American students, compared to other racial and ethnic groups, have the lowest rates of suspensions and expulsions.

But educators and researchers have long said the numbers don’t paint an accurate picture of what many students who fall within the Asian category experience in school because the classification itself is such a gross generalization of the many ethnicities and nationalities in that category, which makes up nearly half the world’s population.

It is against this backdrop that a team of researchers from UCLA, the University of Washington and Lewis & Clark College in Oregon released findings this month showing that discipline outcomes varied considerably among Asian and Pacific Islander subgroups. Students from Southeast Asian countries, like Vietnam and Cambodia, had suspension and expulsion rates that were 2 to 3 times higher than those from China, Japan and other East Asian countries, according to the study.

The study also found that rates for Pacific Islander subgroups — which include students from Hawaii, Guam, Samoa and other Pacific islands — were significantly higher than any of the Asian subgroups. The research focused on Washington state because it is the only state that requires schools to break out data by Asian and Pacific Islander subgroups. California schools report Pacific Islanders separate from Asians but do not report Pacific Islander subgroups.

Pedro Noguera, one of the study’s co-authors and director of UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools, said the research team was not surprised by the differences. Students from Southeast Asia are far more likely than their East Asian counterparts to come from families who came to the U.S. as refugees and live in low-income communities.

Southeast Asian students “have higher rates of trauma and instability due to the refugee trauma…they live in poor communities and their parents often don’t speak English,” Noguera said. “That is why generalizing about different groups is so unhelpful.”

Today more than 20 million people, including nearly 3 million K-12 students, from 20 countries in East and Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent call the United States home. And the circumstances that brought them here, as well as the conditions they now live in, are as diverse as the people themselves.

UCLA’s Noguera said he would expect results in California, which is home to nearly a third of all Asians living in the U.S., to be similar to those in Washington. He said families from refugee communities throughout the U.S. suffer from many of the same inequities and struggle to navigate school systems.

However, the research team was surprised that the rates of suspensions and expulsions for Southeast Asians were still lower than they were for whites. These results could be related to what researchers and youth advocates call the “model minority myth,” said the study’s lead author, Bach Mai Dolly Nguyen of Lewis and Clark College.

A long-held stereotype of Asian as well as Pacific Islander students is they are smarter and work harder than whites and other racial and ethnic groups and they are also non-confrontational. This “monolithic” view of Asians and Pacific Islanders is both inaccurate and harmful, the researchers say.

While data show that some Asian and Pacific Islander groups are consistently high-achieving academically, others are far less so. For example, the high school graduation rate among Japanese and Taiwanese students is around 95 percent, the report stated. But it’s below 70 percent for Cambodian and Laotian students.

Yet, these disparities often go unnoticed by school officials and school-based health and mental health providers and the underlying issues that these students face are not addressed, the authors wrote.

“The prevalence of the model minority stereotype distorts and renders invisible the experiences of these smaller groups,” the report’s authors wrote. “However, the few studies that are available on these subgroups reveal that they face significant structural barriers that often impede their educational achievement…and, thus, their life circumstances.”

In previous research, Noguera delved into how discipline disparities suffered by African-American, Native American and Latino students might impact their academic achievement. These student groups, especially Native Americans and African-Americans, are disciplined at significantly higher rates than their white classmates.

Noguera and his co-authors concluded that in some respects the discipline gap and the achievement gap — which refers to disparities among racial and ethnic groups in various measures of student success, like standardized tests and graduation rates — are “two sides of the same coin.” The argument being that the same factors that contribute to the achievement gap — high rates of neighborhood poverty and schools with few resources — lead to the discipline gap.

However, they ultimately found that a clear correlation can’t be made without more robust research. It’s even more difficult to gain insight into the relationship when it comes to Asian and Pacific Islander students because of the lack of data and almost non-existent research, the authors of the current study said.

“There are aspects of these broader racial categories that are either misunderstood or entirely invisible,” Nguyen said.

Lailan Huen, the program manager for Oakland Unified’s Asian Pacific Islander Achievement Program, said her experiences with students jibe with the study’s overall hypothesis.

Oakland Unified has just begun to collect discipline data and doesn’t have enough to determine trends among subgroups, she said. However, she added, data the district does have on academic performance among the Asian and Pacific Islander subgroups show that broad model-minority assumptions are usually inaccurate.

For example, she said, Vietnamese student scores can vary widely by school, with scores considerably higher in schools with a strong academic culture. And though many Vietnamese students come from families that are first- or second-generation refugees from the Vietnam War, they tend to have lower rates of trauma than Cambodian students from families that suffered through the Khmer Rouge genocide of the early 1970s.

“You find more families [with significant trauma] who are survivors of that genocide — entire families were murdered or disappeared,” Huen said. “Because what happened was so violent and the trauma was so intense, the ability of some of the elders to even function is in disrepair.”

Huen said a large percentage of Pacific Islander students live in neighborhoods with high poverty and family trauma. “Pacific Islanders are among the least-resourced communities in the Bay Area,” she said. “It’s one of the really overlooked populations.”

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