Asian American
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An Asian American is a person of Asian ancestry or origin who was born in or is an immigrant to the United States.
The term "Asian American" is credited to the historian Yuji Ichioka who, in the late 1960s, used it to describe members of a new pan-ethnic radical political identity who shared common histories, experiences, and goals. In the United States, this term has widely supplanted the term "oriental" which was popularly used before the 1990s to describe East Asian peoples regardless of nationality, upbringing, or origin. Some have argued "oriental" is politically loaded and referenced a colonial "other" (see orientalism).
Additionally, although the term "Asian" in the United States is most popularly used as a term to group peoples with physical characteristics resembling East Asian mongoloid people, Asians from the Indian Subcontinent, and Southeast Asia (including the Philippines, Indonesia, and Insular Malaysia) are also included in the Asian American grouping for cultural studies and academic works, as well as for official government and census purposes.
USA_2000_asian_density.jpg
While immigrants from the "Middle East" (term for Iran, Southwest Asia, and Central Asia) are geographically Asian, they have generally neither been sufficiently visibly distinct as a group in America nor have they historically arrived in such large numbers to warrant attention as a major American racial or ethnic group until very recently (see September 11, 2001 attacks). As a result, they are not considered by most Americans to be typical Asians or Asian Americans, but grouped with Caucasians for official purposes and popularly referred to as "Middle Eastern". For these same reasons, northern Asians such as Siberians and peoples from formerly Soviet Central Asian states are usually not spoken of as "Asian Americans" either.
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Demographics
| Metropolitan Area | Total Pop'n | Pct Asian |
|---|---|---|
| Honolulu, HI MSA | 876,156 | 46.0 |
| San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, CA CMSA | 7,039,362 | 18.4 |
| Los Angeles/Riverside/ Orange County, CA CMSA | 16,373,645 | 10.4 |
| Sacramento/Yolo, CA CMSA | 1,796,857 | 9.0 |
| San Diego, CA MSA | 2,813,833 | 8.9 |
| Seattle/Tacoma/Bremerton, WA CMSA | 3,554,760 | 7.9 |
| New York/N. New Jersey/Long Is., NY/NJ/CT/PA CMSA | 21,199,865 | 6.8 |
| Washington/Baltimore, DC/MD/VA/WV CMSA | 7,608,070 | 5.3 |
| Houston—Sugar Land—Baytown, TX CMSA | 4,669,571 | 4.9 |
| Las Vegas, NV/AZ MSA | 1,563,282 | 4.7 |
The 2000 census recorded 10.2 million people who reported themselves as only Asian and 11.9 million people who reported themselves as Asian and at least one other race, 3.6% to 4.2% of the U.S. population. The largest ethnic subgroups were Chinese (2.4 million), Filipinos (1.9M), Asian Indians (1.6M), Vietnamese (1.1M), Koreans (1.1M), and Japanese (0.8M). Other sizable groups are Cambodians (172,000), Hmong (169,000), Laotians (169,000), Pakistanis (153,000), and Thais (112,000). The Asian American population is heavily urbanized, with nearly three-quarters of Asian Americans living in metropolitan areas with population greater than 2.5 million. Asian Americans are concentrated in the largest U.S. cities, with 40% of all Asian Americans living in the metropolitan areas around Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. Half of all Asian Americans (5.4M) live in Hawaii or the West Coast, mostly in California (4.2M). However, recently, strong populations of Asians have emerged elsewhere, with high Asian populations in the New York City, Washington, D.C./Baltimore, and Houston metropolitan areas.
Asian American history
Early history
A large amount of Chinese and Japanese began immigrating to the U.S. in the mid 19th century. Many of these immigrants worked as laborers on the transcontinental railroad. A surge in Asian immigration in the late 19th century gave rise to a fear from some, referred to as the "yellow peril." History is discussed in more detail in the following categories:
- Descriptions for other Asian groups may be missing. You can help Wikipedia by checking if the articles on other groups contain appropriate history sections. If they do, please add them to the above list and/or categories or to the category Asian American-related topics.
Immigration Trends
Immigration trends of recent decades have dramatically altered the statistical composition and popular understanding of who is an Asian American. The dramatic transformation of Asian America, and of America itself, is largely credited to the removal of over 75 years of discriminatory immigration laws that banned Chinese, then subsequent Asian ethnic groups, from becoming immigrants or citizens of the United States.
Asian Americans have largely been perceived as members of the East Asian ethnic groups, specifically Chinese and Japanese, the two largest ethnic groups before 1965, as well as Filipinos who became colonial subjects of the US in 1898 due to the Spanish-American War. The Asian communities in the United States now include many Koreans, Filipinos of different classes and educational achievements, and Southeast Asians. Asian America includes people from South Asia — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The term includes Thai, Burmese, Lao, Cambodians, Hmong, Tibetans, Nepalese, and other Southeast Asian immigrants to the US, and sometimes also Pacific Islanders such as Samoans, Tongans, Fijians, Guamanians (Chamorros). Ethnically native Hawaiians are also sometimes included.
This rapid change in Asian American demographics occurred after enactment of the 1965 immigration reforms. This act replaced exclusionary immigration rules of the Chinese Exclusion Act and its successors, such as the Reed-Johnson Act or 1924 immigration act, which effectively excluded "undesirable" immigrants, including Asians. The 1965 rules set across-the-board immigration quotas for each country, opening the borders to immigration from Asia for the first time in nearly half a century.
Two other influences, however, have been equally worthy of attention. First, in the wake of World War II, immigration preferences favored family reunification. This may have helped attract highly skilled workers to meet American workforce deficiencies. Secondly, the end of the Korean War and Vietnam War or so-called "Secret Wars" in Southeast Asia brought a new wave of Asian American immigration as people from Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia arrived. Some of the new immigrants, as in the case of the Korean War, were war brides, who were soon joined by their families. Others, like the Southeast Asians, were either highly skilled and educated or part of subsequent waves of refugees seeking asylum.
Japanese Americans and South Asians are emblematic of the recent trends. Japanese Americans are widely recognized as an Asian American sub-group. In 1970, there were nearly 600,000 Japanese Americans, making it the largest sub-group. Today, Japanese Americans are the sixth-largest group, with relatively low rates of births and immigration. In 2000, there were between 800,000 and 1.2 million Japanese Americans (depending on whether multi-ethnic responses are included). In 1990 there were slightly fewer South Asian in the US than Japanese Americans. By 2000, Indian Americans nearly doubled in population to become the third largest group. Some factors contributing to the growth of South Asians are higher family sizes, higher use of family-reunification visas, and higher numbers of technically skilled workers entering on H-1 and H-1b visas. High rates of immigration from across Asia will make Asian America increasingly representative of the continent itself.
As of the later half of the twentieth century, Asian Americans have generally been educationally and financially successful. According to 2000 U.S. Census data, the average Asian American household earns a higher income than other U.S. ethnic groups and achieves higher levels of educational attainment. The proportion of Asian Americans at many selective educational institutions far exceeds the 3% national population rate. For example, several University of California campuses and New York City's Stuyvesant High School count over 50% of their student population as Asian American.
However, exceptions to this success story are often found, usually among first-generation immigrants, who sometimes lack documentation or cannot speak English. These people are sometimes forced to work jobs at below the minimum wage, often menial sweatshop or restaurant labor, because they fear mainstream employers will not hire them or will report them to the government.
See also
- Specific groups - Chinese American, Filipino American, Japanese American, Korean American, Laotian American, Indian American, Pakistani American, Pacific Islander, Taiwanese American, Vietnamese American
- Lists of Asian Americans - List of Chinese Americans, List of Filipino Americans, List of Indian Americans, List of Japanese Americans, List of Korean Americans, List of Vietnamese Americans
- Category: Asian American-related topics, Category: U.S. ethnic groups
- Asian Canadian, Asian-Argentines
- Demographics of the United States
- Model Minority - Highly successful minority groups
- Amerasian — a person fathered abroad by U.S. servicemen to women of Asian nationalities
- Goldsea, website about Asian American
External links
- [1] (http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/censr-17.pdf) - Income Disparity amongst ethnic asian populations in the United States
- Asian-Nation (http://www.asian-nation.org/) - Asian American History, Demographics, & Issues
- The Asians in America Project (http://www.asiansinamerica.org/) - A national clearinghouse for news and information on Asian America
- Model Minority (http://modelminority.com/) - A Guide to Asian American Empowerment
- 23 Big Milestones in Asian American History (http://goldsea.com/AAD/Milestones/milestones.html) (Goldsea)
Further reading
- Frank H. Wu Yellow: Race in American Beyond Black and White New York: Basic Books, 2002. ISBN 0-465-00639-6
- Ronald Takaki Strangers From A Different Shore Boston: Black Bay Books, 1989. ISBN 0-316-83109-3