Asian American
Encyclopedia
Asian Americans are Americans
of Asian descent
. The U.S. Census Bureau
definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East
, Southeast Asia
, or the Indian subcontinent
, including, for example, Cambodia
, China
, India
, Indonesia
, Japan
, Korea
, Malaysia, Bangladesh
, Pakistan
, Philippines
, Taiwan
, Thailand
, and Vietnam
.
It includes people who indicated their race(s) as "Asian" or reported entries such as "Asian Indian," "Chinese," "Filipino," "Korean," "Japanese," "Vietnamese," and "Other Asian" or provided other detailed Asian responses". They comprise 4.8% of the U.S. population alone, while people who are Asian combined with at least one other race make up 5.6%.
The term Asian American was used informally by activists in the 1960s who sought an alternative to the term Oriental, arguing that the latter was derogatory and colonialist
. Formal usage was introduced by academics in the early 1970s, notably by historian Yuji Ichioka
, who is credited with popularizing the term. Today, Asian American is the accepted term for most formal purposes, such as government and academic research, although it is often shortened to Asian in common usage.
As with other racial and ethnicity
based terms
, formal and common usage have changed markedly through the short history of this term. The most significant change occurred when the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 eliminated highly restrictive "national origins" quotas, designed, among other things, to restrict immigration of those of Asian racial background. The new system, based on skills and family connections to U.S. residents, enabled significant immigration from every nation in Asia
, which led to dramatic and ongoing changes in the Asian American population. As a result of these population changes, the formal and common understandings of what defines Asian American have expanded to include more of the peoples with ancestry from various parts of Asia. Because of their more recent immigration, new Asian immigrants also have had different educational, economic and other characteristics than early 20th century immigrants. They also tend to have different employment and settlement patterns in the United States.
, Asian Americans had the highest educational attainment level and median household income of any racial demographic in the country, and they attained the highest median personal income overall.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary
, "Asian person" in the United States is sometimes thought of as a person of East Asian descent. In vernacular usage, "Asian" is often used to refer to those of East Asia
n descent or anyone else of Asian descent with epicanthic eyefolds. This differs from the U.S. Census definition and the Asian American Studies departments of many universities consider those of East, South
or Southeast Asia
n descent with or without epicanthic eyefolds to be "Asian". In the US Census, people who originate from the original peoples of the East Asia
, South Asia
, and Southeast Asia
are classified as part of the Asian race; while peoples from Siberia
, Central Asia
, and Western Asia are classified as "White".
Before 1980, Census forms listed particular Asian ancestries as separate groups, along with White and Black or Negro. Asian Americans had also been classified as "other". In 1977, the federal Office of Management and Budget issued a directive requiring government agencies to maintain statistics on racial groups, including on "Asian or Pacific Islander". The 1980 census marked the first classification of Asians as a large group, combining several individual ancestry groups into "Asian or Pacific Islander." By the 1990 census, Asian or Pacific Islander (API) was included as an explicit category, although respondents had to select one particular ancestry. In the 2000 census, people reporting Middle Eastern ancestry but not reporting race are presumed to be in the white
race category rather than Asian.
The definition of Asian American has variations that derive from the use of the word American
in different contexts. Immigration status, citizenship (by birthright and by naturalization), acculturation, and language ability are some variables that are used to define American for various purposes and may vary in formal and everyday usage. For example, restricting American to include only U.S. citizens conflicts with discussions of Asian American businesses, which generally refer both to citizen and non-citizen owners.
In a recent PBS interview, a panel of Asian American writers discussed how some groups include people from the Middle East in the Asian American category.
Asian American author Stewart Ikeda has noted, "The definition of "Asian American" also frequently depends on who's asking, who's defining, in what context, and why...
the possible definitions of "Asian-Pacific American" are many, complex, and shifting...
some scholars in Asian American Studies conferences suggest that Russians, Iranians, and Israelis all might fit the field’s subject of study."
. Because Asian Americans total less than 5% of the entire U.S. population, the diversity of the group is often disregarded in media and news discussions of "Asians" or of "Asian Americans." While there are some commonalities across ethnic sub-groups, there are significant differences among different Asian ethnicities that are related to each group's history.
established the small settlement of Saint Malo, Louisiana
, after fleeing mistreatment aboard Spanish ships.
Since there were no Filipino women with them, the Manilamen, as they were known, married Cajun
and Native American
women.
Chinese
sailor
s first came to Hawaii
in 1778, the same year that Captain James Cook came upon the island. Many settled and married Hawaiian
women. Some Island-born Chinese can claim to be 7th generation. Most Chinese, Korean and Japanese
immigrants in Hawaii arrived in the 19th century as laborers to work on sugar plantations. Later, Filipinos also came to work as laborers, attracted by the job opportunities, although they were limited.
Numerous Chinese and Japanese began immigrating to the U.S. in the mid-19th century for work, because of poor economic conditions in their home nations. Many of the immigrants worked as laborers on the transcontinental railroad
. Although the absolute numbers of Asian immigrants in the late 19th century were small compared to that of immigrants from other regions, much of it was concentrated in the West, and the increase caused some Americans to fear the change represented by the growing number of Asians. This fear was referred to as the "yellow peril
". The United States passed laws such as Asian Exclusion Act and Chinese Exclusion Act to sharply restrict Asian immigration.
There were thousands of Asians in Hawaii when it was annexed to the United States in 1898, and they all gained full US citizenship at that time. The United States Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark
(1898) interpreted the 14th amendment to mean that every person born in the United States, regardless of race or ancestry is a citizen of the United States.
Congress passed restrictive legislation to nearly all Chinese immigration in the 1880s, which was in effect until the 1940s. Japanese immigration was sharply curtailed by a gentleman's agreement brokered by President Theodore Roosevelt. The immigration restriction laws of the 1920s produced quotas for all countries, with Asian countries getting a zero quota.
After World War II legislation was passed, and judicial rulings gradually increased the ability of Asian Americans to immigrate and become naturalized
citizens. Immigration rapidly increased following the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 as well as naturalization of refugees from conflicts that occurred in the late 20th century in Southeast Asia
.
(the original "Siamese Twins") became naturalized citizens. Acting roles in television
, film
, and theater were relatively few, and many available roles were for narrow, stereotypical characters. More recently, young Asian American comedians and film-makers have found an outlet on Youtube
, allowing them to gain a strong and loyal fanbase among their fellow Asian Americans.
When Asian Americans were largely excluded from labor markets in the 19th century, they started their own businesses. They have started convenience and grocery stores, professional offices such as medical and law practices, laundries, restaurants, beauty-related ventures, hi-tech companies, and many other kinds of enterprises, becoming very successful and influential in American society. They have dramatically expanded their involvement across the American economy. Asian Americans have been disproportionately successful in the hi-tech sectors of California's Silicon Valley, as evidenced by the Goldsea
100 Compilation of America's Most Successful Asian Entrepreneurs.
Compared to their population base, Asian Americans today are well represented in the professional sector and tend to earn higher wages. The Goldsea
compilation of Notable Asian American Professionals show that many have come to occupy high positions at leading U.S. corporations, including a surprising number as Chief Marketing Officers.
Asian Americans have made major contributions to the American economy. Fashion designer and mogul Vera Wang
, who is famous for designing dresses for high-profile celebrities, started a clothing company, named after herself, which now offers a broad range of luxury fashion products. An Wang
founded Wang Laboratories
in June 1951. Amar Bose
founded the Bose Corporation in 1964. Charles Wang
founded Computer Associates, later became its CEO and chairman. Jen-Hsun Huang
co-founded the NVIDIA
corporation in 1993. Jerry Yang co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in 1994 and became its CEO later. Andrea Jung
serves as Chairman and CEO of Avon Products
. Vinod Khosla
was a founding CEO of Sun Microsystems
and is a general partner of the prominent venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Steve Chen
and Jawed Karim
were co-creators of YouTube
, and were beneficiaries of Google
's $1.65 billion acquisition of that company in 2006. In addition to contributing greatly to other fields, Asian Americans have made considerable contributions in science
and technology
in the United States, in such prominent innovative R&D regions as Silicon Valley
and The Triangle.
Daniel Inouye
. , George Ariyoshi
, governor of Hawaii from 1974-1986, Ben Cayetano
, governor of Hawaii from 1994-2002, Gary Locke
, governor of Washington State from 1996-2004, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal
, and Nikki Haley
, governor of South Carolina are the only Asian Americans to hold the office of state governor in the United States.
Connie Chung
was one of the first Asian-American national correspondents for a major TV news network, reporting for CBS in 1971. She later co-anchored the CBS Evening News from 1993 to 1995. At ABC, Ken Kashiwahara began reporting nationally in 1974. In 1990, Sheryl WuDunn
, a foreign correspondent in the Beijing Bureau of The New York Times
, became the first Asian-American to win a Pulitzer Prize. Ann Curry
joined NBC News as a reporter in 1990, later becoming prominently associated with The Today Show in 1997. Carol Lin
is perhaps best known for being the first to break the news of 9-11 on CNN. Dr. Sanjay Gupta
is currently CNN's chief health correspondent. Lisa Ling
, a former co-host on The View, now provides special reports for CNN and The Oprah Winfrey Show, as well as hosting National Geographic Channel's Explorer. Fareed Zakaria
, a naturalised Indian-born immigrant, is a prominent journalist
, and author
specialising in international affairs. He is the editor-at-large of Time magazine, and the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS
on CNN
. Juju Chang, James Hatori, John Yang
, Veronica De La Cruz
, Michelle Malkin
, Betty Nguyen
, and Julie Chen
have become familiar faces on television news. John Yang won a Peabody Award. Alex Tizon
, a Seattle Times staff writer, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997.
Asian Americans have served
and fought
on behalf of the United States. Serving in both segregated and non-segregated units until the desegregation of the US Military in 1948
, 31 have been awarded the nation's highest award for combat valor, the Medal of Honor
. Twenty-one of these were conferred upon members of the mostly Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team of World War II, the most highly decorated unit of its size in the history of the United States Armed Forces.
Asian Americans have made many prominent and notable contributions to Science and Technology. Chien-Shiung Wu
was known to many scientists as the "First Lady of Physics" and played a pivotal role in experimentally demonstrating the violation of the law of conservation of parity in the field of particle physics. Tsung-Dao Lee
and Chen Ning Yang received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics
for theoretical work demonstrating that the conservation of parity did not always hold and later became American citizens. Har Gobind Khorana shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
for his work in genetics and protein synthesis. Samuel Chao Chung Ting received the 1976 Nobel Prize in physics for discovery of the subatomic particle J/ψ. The Chinese American mathematician Shing-Tung Yau
won the Fields Medal
in 1982 and Terence Tao
won the Fields Medal
in 2006. The geometer Shiing-Shen Chern
received the Wolf Prize in Mathematics
in 1983. Andrew Yao
was awarded the Turing Award
in 2000. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics
and had the Chandra X-ray Observatory
named after him. In 1984, Dr. David D. Ho first reported the "healthy carrier state" of HIV
infection, which identified HIV-positive individuals who showed no physical signs of AIDS
. Charles J. Pedersen
shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his methods of synthesizing crown ethers. Steven Chu
shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research in cooling and trapping atoms using laser light. Daniel Tsui shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics in 1998 for helping discover the fractional Quantum Hall effect. In 2008, biochemist Roger Tsien won the Nobel in Chemistry for his work on engineering and improving the green fluorescent protein (GFP
) that has become a standard tool of modern molecular biology and biochemistry. Yoichiro Nambu
received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the consequences of spontaneously broken symmetries in field theories. In 2009, Charles K. Kao
was awarded Nobel Prize in Physics "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication" and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan won the prize in Chemistry "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome". Ching W. Tang
was the inventor of the Organic light-emitting diode
and Organic solar cell
and was awarded the 2011 Wolf Prize in Chemistry for this achievement. Min Chueh Chang
was the co-inventor of the combined oral contraceptive pill and contributed significantly to the development of in vitro fertilisation
at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology
. Michio Kaku
has popularized science and has appeared on multiple programs on television and radio.
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Ellison Onizuka
became the first Asian American (and third person of Asian descent) when he made his first space flight aboard STS-51-C
in 1985. Onizuka later died aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger
in 1986
. Taylor Gun-Jin Wang became the first person of Chinese ethnicity and first Chinese American, in space in 1985
; he has since been followed by Leroy Chiao
in 1994
, and Ed Lu
in 1997
. In 1986
, Franklin Chang-Diaz became the first Asian Latin American in space. Eugene H. Trinh
became the first Vietnamese American in space in 1992
. In 2001
, Mark L. Polansky
, a Jewish Korean American, made his first of three flights into space. In 2003
, Kalpana Chawla
became the first Indian American
in space, but died aboard the ill fated
Space Shuttle Columbia
. She has since been followed by CDR
Sunita Williams
in 2006
.
Wataru Misaka
broke the NBA
color barrier when he played for the New York Knicks
in the 1947–48 season. The next Asian-American NBA player was Raymond Townsend
, who played for the Golden State Warriors
and Indiana Pacers
from 1978 to 1982. Erik Spoelstra
is a Filipino-Dutch-Irish who became the youngest coach ever in NBA
history. He is currently the head coach of the Miami Heat
. Current Kansas Jayhawks
coach Kurtis Townsend
is Raymond Townsend's brother. After a distinguished collegiate basketball career at Harvard University
, point guard Jeremy Lin
signed with the NBA's Golden State Warriors
in 2010. In doing so, he became the first Asian-American to play in the NBA in over 50 years.
Asian Americans first made an impact in Olympic
sports in the late 1940s and in the 1950s. Sammy Lee
became the first Asian American to earn an Olympic Gold Medal, winning in platform diving in both 1948 and 1952. Victoria Manalo Draves won both gold in platform and springboard diving in the 1948. Harold Sakata
won a weightlifting silver medal in the 1948 Olympics, while Japanese Americans Tommy Kono
(weightlifting), Yoshinobu Oyakawa
(100-meter backstroke), and Ford Konno
(1500-meter freestyle) each won gold and set Olympic records in the 1952 Olympics. Konno won another gold and silver swimming medal at the same Olympics and added a silver medal in 1956, while Kono set another Olympic weightlifting record in 1956. Also at the 1952 Olympics, Evelyn Kawamoto won two bronze medals in swimming.
Amy Chow
was a member of the gold medal women's gymnastics team at the 1996 Olympics; she also won an individual silver medal on the uneven bars. Gymnast Mohini Bhardwaj
won a team silver medal in the 2004 Olympics. Hapa
Bryan Clay
won the decathlon gold medal in the 2008 Olympics
, the silver medal in the 2004 Olympics
, and was the sport's 2005 world champion.
Since Tiffany Chin
won the women's US Figure Skating Championship in 1985, Asian Americans have been prominent in that sport. Kristi Yamaguchi
won three national championships, two world titles, and the 1992 Olympic Gold medal. Michelle Kwan
has won nine national championships and five world titles, as well as two Olympic medals (silver in 1998, bronze in 2002).
In football, Asian Americans' contributions are also gaining notice. Wally Yonamine played professionally for the San Francisco 49ers
in 1947. Norm Chow
is currently the offensive coordinator for UCLA after a short stint with the Tennessee Titans of the NFL, after 23 years of coaching other college teams, including four successful years as offensive coordinator at USC
. Dat Nguyen
was an NFL middle linebacker who was an all-pro selection in 2003. In 1998, he was named an All-American and won the Bednarik Award as well as the Lombardi Award
, while playing for Texas A&M
. Hines Ward
is an NFL wide receiver who was the MVP of Super Bowl XL
.
Michael Chang
was a top-ranked tennis player for most of his career. He won the French Open in 1989. Tiger Woods
, who is of mostly Asian descent, is the most successful golfer of his generation and one of the most famous athletes in the world. Eric Koston
is one of the top street skateboarders and placed first in the 2003 X-Games street competition.
There are several top ranked Asian American mixed martial artists
. BJ Penn is a former UFC lightweight and welterweight champion. Cung Le
is a former Strikeforce
middleweight champion. Ben Henderson
is the former WEC
lightweight champion.
Asian immigrants are also changing the American medical landscape through increasing number of Asian medical practitioners in this country. Beginning in the 1960s and 70s, the US government invited a number of foreign physicians particularly from India and the Philippines to address the acute shortage of physicians in rural and medically-underserved urban areas. The trend in importing foreign medical practitioners, however, became a long-term, chronic solution as US medical schools failed to produce enough physicians to match the increasing American population. Amid decreasing interest in medicine among American college students due to high rates job dissatisfaction, loss of morale, stress, and lawsuits, Asian American immigrants maintained a supply of healthcare practitioners for millions of Americans. It is well documented that Asian American international medical graduates including highly skilled guest workers using the J1 Visa program for medical workers, tend to serve in health professions shortage areas (HPSA) and specialties that are not filled by US medical graduates especially primary care and rural medicine. Thus, Asian American immigrants play a key role in averting a medical crisis in the US.
A lasting legacy of Asian American involvement in medicine is the forcing of US medical establishment to accept minority medical practitioners. One could speculate that the introduction of Asian physicians and dentists to the American society could have triggered an acceptance of other minority groups by breaking down stereotypes and encouraging trust.
Traditional Asian concepts and practices in health and medicine have attracted greater acceptance and are more widely adopted by American doctors. India’s Ayurveda
and traditional Chinese medicine (which also includes acupuncture
) are two alternative therapy systems that have been studied and adopted to a great extent. For instance, in the early 1970s the US medical establishment did not believe in the usefulness of acupuncture. Since then studies have proven the efficacy of acupuncture for different applications, especially for treatment of chronic pain. It is now covered by many health insurance plans.
Meditation
and mindfulness practices are taught in mainstream medical schools and hospitals. Increasingly they are seen as part of a holistic approach to health. Doctors and hospitals treating diseases such as heart disease and cancer have adopted meditation as a practice recommended for patients.
Herbalism
and massage
therapy (from Ayurveda) are sweeping the spas across America. Meditation and yoga
(from India) have also been widely adopted by health spas, and spiritual retreats of many religious bases. They are also part of the spiritual practice of the many Americans who are not affiliated with a mainline religious group.
Among America's major racial categories, Asian Americans have the highest educational qualifications. This varies, however, for individual ethnic groups. Dr. C.N. Le, Director of the Asian & Asian American Studies Certificate Program at the University of Massachusetts, writes that although 42% of all Asian American adults have at least a college degree, Vietnamese Americans have a degree attainment rate of only 16% while Laotians and Cambodians only have rates around 5%. According to the US Census Bureau, while the high school graduation rate for Asian Americans is on par with those of other ethnic groups, 48% of Asian Americans have attained at least a bachelor's degree as compared with the national average of 27%, and 29% for non-Hispanic Whites. Indian Americans have some of the highest education rates, with nearly 68% having attained at least a bachelor's degree.
, Hinduism
and Sikhism
have moved into American culture, and Christianity
has been adopted by more East Asians. Most Filipinos
are also already Christian (Catholic
or other denominations) when they immigrate. Many South Koreans, especially, are already Christian when they immigrate to the US, and hence most Korean Americans are born into Christian families. Besides Indian religions, there has also been strong influence of the American adoption of yoga
, meditation
, Ayurveda
and vegetarianism
from India.
Many Asians Americans are also Muslim
with ancestry from Pakistan
, Indonesia
, India
, Bangladesh
, Malaysia and China
among others. Eight percent of Asian Americans are Muslim and they represent 33% of the American Muslim population.
Beats on the West Coast were among those attracted to Buddhism in the 1950s. American Buddhist groups established then and in the 1970s have built temples, ordained numerous American Buddhist monks, and taught generations of new practitioners. Buddhist concepts and practices such as mindfulness have penetrated mainstream culture.
While much West Coast practice was first influenced by Japanese Zen Buddhism, which originated in China (known as Ch'an Buddhism), more recent generations throughout the country have been influenced also by Vietnamese and Tibetan Buddhist monks who have lived and taught in the West.
As a historic first, President Barack Obama appointed two Indian Americans, Eboo Patel
(a Muslim) and Anju Bhargava
(a Hindu), to the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The Advisory Council is part of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and is composed of religious and secular leaders and scholars from different backgrounds.
and India
ns accounted for the highest number of illegal immigrants for "Asian-Americans" with an estimated illegal population of 270,000 and 200,000 respectively. Indian Americans are also the fastest growing illegal immigrant group in the United States, an increase in illegal immigration of 125% since 2000. This is followed by Koreans (200,000) and Chinese
(120,000).
Asian Americans are sometimes characterized as a model minority
because the culture encourages a strong work ethic, a respect for elders, a high degree of professional and academic success, a high valuation of family, education and religion. Statistics such as high household income and low incarceration rate, low rates of many diseases and higher than average life expectancy are also discussed as positive aspects of Asian Americans.
The implicit advice is that the other minorities should stop protesting and emulate the Asian American work ethic and devotion to higher education. Some critics say the depiction replaces biological racism with cultural racism, and should be dropped.
This concept appears to elevate Asian Americans by portraying them as an elite group of successful, highly educated, highly intelligent, and wealthy individuals, but it can also be considered an overly narrow and overly one-dimensional portrayal of Asian Americans, leaving out other human qualities such as vocal leadership, negative emotions, risk taking, ability to learn from mistakes, and desire for creative expression. Furthermore, Asian Americans who do not fit into the model minority mold can face challenges when people's expectations based on the model minority myth do not match with reality. Traits outside of the model minority mold can be seen as negative character flaws for Asian Americans despite those very same traits being positive for the general American majority (e.g., risk taking, confidence, empowered). For this reason, some believe Asian Americans encounter a "bamboo ceiling," the Asian American equivalent of the glass ceiling
in the workplace.
The model minority concept can also affect Asians' public education. By comparison with other minorities, Asians often achieve higher test scores and grades compared to other Americans. Stereotyping Asian American as over-achievers can lead to harm if school officials or peers expect all to perform higher than average. The very high educational attainments of Asian Americans has often been noted; in 1980, for example, 74% of Chinese Americans, 62% of Japanese Americans, and 55% of Korean Americans aged 20–21 were in college, compared to a third of the whites. The disparity at postgraduate levels is even greater, and the differential is especially notable in fields making heavy use of mathematics. By 2000, a majority of undergraduates at elite California schools such as Berkeley and Stanford were Asian American. The pattern is rooted in the pre-World War II era. Native-born Chinese and Japanese Americans reached educational parity with majority whites in the early decades of the 20th century.
Those who consider Asian Americans a "model minority" fail to realize that Asian American is a broad category encompassing many different ethnic groups with different histories. When divided up by ethnicity, it can be seen that the economic and academic successes supposedly enjoyed by Asian Americans are concentrated into a few ethnic groups. Cambodians, Hmong, and Laotians (and to a lesser extent, Vietnamese), all of whose relatively low achievement rates are possibly due to their refugee status, and that they are non voluntary immigrants as other ethnicities are more likely to be.
Furthermore, the model minority concept can even be emotionally damaging to Asian Americans, particularly since they are expected to live up to their peers who are part of the model minority. However, studies have shown that Asian Americans suffer from higher rates of stress, depression, mental illnesses, and suicides in comparison to other races. The pressures to achieve and live up to the model minority image have taken a mental and psychological toll on Asian Americans.
, Watsonville
Riots, attacks upon Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor
., and Korean American businesses targeted during the 1992 Los Angeles riots
. Violence against Asian Americans continue to occur based on their race, with at least one source asserting that Asian Americans are the fastest growing targets of hate crimes and violence.
After the September 11 attacks, Sikh Americans were targeted, being the recipient of numerous hate crimes including murder. Other Asian Americans have also been the victim of race based violence in Brooklyn
, Indiana
, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Furthermore, it has been reported that young Asian Americans are more likely to be a target of violence than their peers.
in 1982 was a pivotal civil rights case, and it marked the emergence of Asian Americans as a distinct group in United States.
Study has indicated that most non-Asian Americans do not generally differentiate between Asian Americans of different ethnicities. Stereotype
s of both groups are nearly identical. A 2002 survey of Americans' attitudes toward Asian Americans and Chinese Americans indicated that 24% of the respondents disapprove of intermarriage
with an Asian American, second only to African Americans; 23% would be uncomfortable supporting an Asian-American presidential candidate, compared to 15% for an African American, 14% for a woman and 11% for a Jew; 17% would be upset if a substantial number of Asian Americans moved into their neighborhood; 25% had somewhat or very negative attitude toward Chinese Americans in general. The study did find several positive perceptions of Chinese Americans: strong family values (91%); honesty as business people (77%); high value on education (67%).
There is a widespread perception that Asian Americans are not "American" but are instead "perpetual foreigners". Asian Americans often report being asked the question, "Where are you really from?" by other Americans, regardless of how long they or their ancestors have lived in United States. Many Asian Americans are themselves not immigrants but rather born in the United States. Many are asked if they are Chinese or Japanese, an assumption based on major groups of past immigrants.
Journals
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
of Asian descent
Asian people
Asian people or Asiatic people is a term with multiple meanings that refers to people who descend from a portion of Asia's population.- Central Asia :...
. The U.S. Census Bureau
United States Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau is the government agency that is responsible for the United States Census. It also gathers other national demographic and economic data...
definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
, Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
, or the Indian subcontinent
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...
, including, for example, Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
, Malaysia, Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, and Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
.
It includes people who indicated their race(s) as "Asian" or reported entries such as "Asian Indian," "Chinese," "Filipino," "Korean," "Japanese," "Vietnamese," and "Other Asian" or provided other detailed Asian responses". They comprise 4.8% of the U.S. population alone, while people who are Asian combined with at least one other race make up 5.6%.
The term Asian American was used informally by activists in the 1960s who sought an alternative to the term Oriental, arguing that the latter was derogatory and colonialist
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
. Formal usage was introduced by academics in the early 1970s, notably by historian Yuji Ichioka
Yuji Ichioka
Yuji Ichioka, was an American historian best known for his work in ethnic studies, particularly Asian American Studies. Adjunct Professor Yuji Ichioka . He coined the term "Asian American" to help unify different Asian ethnic groups Yuji Ichioka, (June 23, 1936 – September 1, 2002) was an...
, who is credited with popularizing the term. Today, Asian American is the accepted term for most formal purposes, such as government and academic research, although it is often shortened to Asian in common usage.
As with other racial and ethnicity
Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...
based terms
Ethnonym
An ethnonym is the name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms or endonyms .As an example, the ethnonym for...
, formal and common usage have changed markedly through the short history of this term. The most significant change occurred when the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 eliminated highly restrictive "national origins" quotas, designed, among other things, to restrict immigration of those of Asian racial background. The new system, based on skills and family connections to U.S. residents, enabled significant immigration from every nation in Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
, which led to dramatic and ongoing changes in the Asian American population. As a result of these population changes, the formal and common understandings of what defines Asian American have expanded to include more of the peoples with ancestry from various parts of Asia. Because of their more recent immigration, new Asian immigrants also have had different educational, economic and other characteristics than early 20th century immigrants. They also tend to have different employment and settlement patterns in the United States.
, Asian Americans had the highest educational attainment level and median household income of any racial demographic in the country, and they attained the highest median personal income overall.
Terminology
The most commonly used definition of Asian American is the US Census Bureau definition of Asian, chiefly because the Census definitions determine many government classifications, notably for equal opportunity programs and measurements. People with origins in the Far East, Southeast Asia and the Indian Subcontinent are included in the Census definition of Asia. The use of a separate "Asian" category in the Census is a recent addition, beginning in 1990. Since then, the Census definitions have varied. The 2000 census divided the Asian/Pacific Islander group and created Pacific Islander ethnicities as a separate category.According to the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
, "Asian person" in the United States is sometimes thought of as a person of East Asian descent. In vernacular usage, "Asian" is often used to refer to those of East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
n descent or anyone else of Asian descent with epicanthic eyefolds. This differs from the U.S. Census definition and the Asian American Studies departments of many universities consider those of East, South
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
or Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
n descent with or without epicanthic eyefolds to be "Asian". In the US Census, people who originate from the original peoples of the East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
, South Asia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
, and Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
are classified as part of the Asian race; while peoples from Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
, and Western Asia are classified as "White".
Before 1980, Census forms listed particular Asian ancestries as separate groups, along with White and Black or Negro. Asian Americans had also been classified as "other". In 1977, the federal Office of Management and Budget issued a directive requiring government agencies to maintain statistics on racial groups, including on "Asian or Pacific Islander". The 1980 census marked the first classification of Asians as a large group, combining several individual ancestry groups into "Asian or Pacific Islander." By the 1990 census, Asian or Pacific Islander (API) was included as an explicit category, although respondents had to select one particular ancestry. In the 2000 census, people reporting Middle Eastern ancestry but not reporting race are presumed to be in the white
White American
White Americans are people of the United States who are considered or consider themselves White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa...
race category rather than Asian.
The definition of Asian American has variations that derive from the use of the word American
Use of the word American
The meaning of the word American in the English language varies, according to the historical, geographical, and political context in which it is used. It is derived from America, a term originally denoting all of the New World...
in different contexts. Immigration status, citizenship (by birthright and by naturalization), acculturation, and language ability are some variables that are used to define American for various purposes and may vary in formal and everyday usage. For example, restricting American to include only U.S. citizens conflicts with discussions of Asian American businesses, which generally refer both to citizen and non-citizen owners.
In a recent PBS interview, a panel of Asian American writers discussed how some groups include people from the Middle East in the Asian American category.
Asian American author Stewart Ikeda has noted, "The definition of "Asian American" also frequently depends on who's asking, who's defining, in what context, and why...
the possible definitions of "Asian-Pacific American" are many, complex, and shifting...
some scholars in Asian American Studies conferences suggest that Russians, Iranians, and Israelis all might fit the field’s subject of study."
Demographics
The demographics of Asian Americans describe a heterogeneous group of people in the United States who can trace their ancestry to one or more countries in AsiaAsia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
. Because Asian Americans total less than 5% of the entire U.S. population, the diversity of the group is often disregarded in media and news discussions of "Asians" or of "Asian Americans." While there are some commonalities across ethnic sub-groups, there are significant differences among different Asian ethnicities that are related to each group's history.
History
In 1763, FilipinosFilipinos
Filipinos is the brand name for a series of biscuit snacks made by Kraft Foods. In Spain and Portugal they are produced and sold under the Artiach brand name. Under license to United Biscuits, in the Netherlands they are sold and produced locally under the Verkade brand...
established the small settlement of Saint Malo, Louisiana
Saint Malo, Louisiana
Saint Malo was a small fishing village that existed in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana on the shore of Lake Borgne from the mid 18th century into the early 20th century, when it was destroyed by the New Orleans Hurricane of 1915. It was the first settlement of Filipinos in the United...
, after fleeing mistreatment aboard Spanish ships.
Since there were no Filipino women with them, the Manilamen, as they were known, married Cajun
Cajun
Cajuns are an ethnic group mainly living in the U.S. state of Louisiana, consisting of the descendants of Acadian exiles...
and Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
women.
Chinese
Chinese people
The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
sailor
Sailor
A sailor, mariner, or seaman is a person who navigates water-borne vessels or assists in their operation, maintenance, or service. The term can apply to professional mariners, military personnel, and recreational sailors as well as a plethora of other uses...
s first came to Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
in 1778, the same year that Captain James Cook came upon the island. Many settled and married Hawaiian
Hawaiian
Hawaiian may refer to:* People from Hawaii* Hawaiian language* Native Hawaiians* The Hawaiians, a football team in the World Football League from 1974 to 1975* Hawaiian Airlines, a commercial airline* Hawaiian music...
women. Some Island-born Chinese can claim to be 7th generation. Most Chinese, Korean and Japanese
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
immigrants in Hawaii arrived in the 19th century as laborers to work on sugar plantations. Later, Filipinos also came to work as laborers, attracted by the job opportunities, although they were limited.
Numerous Chinese and Japanese began immigrating to the U.S. in the mid-19th century for work, because of poor economic conditions in their home nations. Many of the immigrants worked as laborers on the transcontinental railroad
First Transcontinental Railroad
The First Transcontinental Railroad was a railroad line built in the United States of America between 1863 and 1869 by the Central Pacific Railroad of California and the Union Pacific Railroad that connected its statutory Eastern terminus at Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska The First...
. Although the absolute numbers of Asian immigrants in the late 19th century were small compared to that of immigrants from other regions, much of it was concentrated in the West, and the increase caused some Americans to fear the change represented by the growing number of Asians. This fear was referred to as the "yellow peril
Yellow Peril
Yellow Peril was a colour metaphor for race that originated in the late nineteenth century with immigration of Chinese laborers to various Western countries, notably the United States, and later associated with the Japanese during the mid 20th century, due to Japanese military expansion.The term...
". The United States passed laws such as Asian Exclusion Act and Chinese Exclusion Act to sharply restrict Asian immigration.
Immigration trends
Filipinos have been in the territories that would become the United States since the 16th century.There were thousands of Asians in Hawaii when it was annexed to the United States in 1898, and they all gained full US citizenship at that time. The United States Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark
United States v. Wong Kim Ark
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, , was a United States Supreme Court decision that set an important legal precedent about the role of jus soli as a factor in determining a person's claim to United States citizenship...
(1898) interpreted the 14th amendment to mean that every person born in the United States, regardless of race or ancestry is a citizen of the United States.
Congress passed restrictive legislation to nearly all Chinese immigration in the 1880s, which was in effect until the 1940s. Japanese immigration was sharply curtailed by a gentleman's agreement brokered by President Theodore Roosevelt. The immigration restriction laws of the 1920s produced quotas for all countries, with Asian countries getting a zero quota.
After World War II legislation was passed, and judicial rulings gradually increased the ability of Asian Americans to immigrate and become naturalized
United States nationality law
Article I, section 8, clause 4 of the United States Constitution expressly gives the United States Congress the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization. The Immigration and Naturalization Act sets forth the legal requirements for the acquisition of, and divestiture from, citizenship of...
citizens. Immigration rapidly increased following the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 as well as naturalization of refugees from conflicts that occurred in the late 20th century in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
.
Arts and entertainment
Asian Americans have been involved in the entertainment industry since the first half of the 19th century, when Chang and Eng BunkerChang and Eng Bunker
Chang and Eng Bunker were the conjoined twin brothers whose condition and birthplace became the basis for the term "Siamese twins".-Life:...
(the original "Siamese Twins") became naturalized citizens. Acting roles in television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, and theater were relatively few, and many available roles were for narrow, stereotypical characters. More recently, young Asian American comedians and film-makers have found an outlet on Youtube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, allowing them to gain a strong and loyal fanbase among their fellow Asian Americans.
Business
Goldsea
Goldsea.com is a large, fully featured magazine site. It is aimed at Asian Americans and publishes interviews and profiles of successful Asian Americans. The "Goldsea 100" celebrates high-achieving Asian American businesspeople and includes several billionaires, including one aged only 32...
100 Compilation of America's Most Successful Asian Entrepreneurs.
Compared to their population base, Asian Americans today are well represented in the professional sector and tend to earn higher wages. The Goldsea
Goldsea
Goldsea.com is a large, fully featured magazine site. It is aimed at Asian Americans and publishes interviews and profiles of successful Asian Americans. The "Goldsea 100" celebrates high-achieving Asian American businesspeople and includes several billionaires, including one aged only 32...
compilation of Notable Asian American Professionals show that many have come to occupy high positions at leading U.S. corporations, including a surprising number as Chief Marketing Officers.
Asian Americans have made major contributions to the American economy. Fashion designer and mogul Vera Wang
Vera Wang
Vera Ellen Wang is a Chinese American fashion designer based in New York City and former figure skater. She is known for her wide clientele of couture bridesmaid gowns and wedding gown collections.-Personal life:...
, who is famous for designing dresses for high-profile celebrities, started a clothing company, named after herself, which now offers a broad range of luxury fashion products. An Wang
An Wang
Dr. An Wang was a Chinese American computer engineer and inventor, and co-founder of computer company Wang Laboratories.-Early life and career:...
founded Wang Laboratories
Wang Laboratories
Wang Laboratories was a computer company founded in 1951 by Dr. An Wang and Dr. G. Y. Chu. The company was successively headquartered in Cambridge , Tewksbury , and finally in Lowell, Massachusetts . At its peak in the 1980s, Wang Laboratories had annual revenues of $3 billion and employed over...
in June 1951. Amar Bose
Amar Bose
Amar Gopal Bose is an Bengali American electrical engineer, sound engineer and billionaire entrepreneur. He is the founder and chairman of Bose Corporation...
founded the Bose Corporation in 1964. Charles Wang
Charles Wang
Charles B. Wang is the co-founder of Computer Associates International, Inc. and owner of the New York Islanders ice hockey team and their AHL affiliates, the Bridgeport Sound Tigers....
founded Computer Associates, later became its CEO and chairman. Jen-Hsun Huang
Jen-Hsun Huang
Jen-Hsun "Jensen" Huang is a Taiwanese American entrepreneur and businessman. A native of Taiwan, he grew up in Oregon, graduating from Oregon State University before moving to California where he graduated from Stanford University. He co-founded the graphics-processor company Nvidia and serves...
co-founded the NVIDIA
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
corporation in 1993. Jerry Yang co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in 1994 and became its CEO later. Andrea Jung
Andrea Jung
Andrea Jung is a Canadian-American business executive. In 2001, she was named one of the 30 most powerful women in America by Ladies Home Journal....
serves as Chairman and CEO of Avon Products
Avon Products
Avon Products, Inc. is a US cosmetics, perfume and toy seller with markets in over 140 countries across the world and sales of $9.9 billion worldwide as of 2007.-Business Model:...
. Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla is an Indian-born American venture capitalist and an influential personality in Silicon Valley....
was a founding CEO of Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
and is a general partner of the prominent venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Steve Chen
Steve Chen (YouTube)
Steven Shih "Steve" Chen is a Chinese Taiwanese American and a co-founder and previous Chief Technology Officer of the popular video sharing website YouTube.- Early years and education :...
and Jawed Karim
Jawed Karim
Jawed Karim is a Bangladeshi German American technologist and co-founder of the popular video sharing website YouTube...
were co-creators of YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, and were beneficiaries of Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
's $1.65 billion acquisition of that company in 2006. In addition to contributing greatly to other fields, Asian Americans have made considerable contributions in science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
in the United States, in such prominent innovative R&D regions as Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
and The Triangle.
Government and politics
Asian Americans have a high level of political incorporation in terms of their actual voting population. Since 1907, Asian Americans have been active at the national level and have had multiple officeholders at local, state and national levels. the highest ranking Asian American is Senator and President Pro TemporePresident pro tempore of the United States Senate
The President pro tempore is the second-highest-ranking official of the United States Senate. The United States Constitution states that the Vice President of the United States is the President of the Senate and the highest-ranking official of the Senate despite not being a member of the body...
Daniel Inouye
Daniel Inouye
Daniel Ken "Dan" Inouye is the senior United States Senator from Hawaii, a member of the Democratic Party, and the President pro tempore of the United States Senate making him the highest-ranking Asian American politician in American history. Inouye is the chairman of the United States Senate...
. , George Ariyoshi
George Ariyoshi
George Ryoichi Ariyoshi , served as the third Governor of Hawaii from 1974 to 1986. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He assumed the governorship when John A. Burns was declared incapacitated. When he was elected, Ariyoshi became the first American of Asian descent to be elected governor of...
, governor of Hawaii from 1974-1986, Ben Cayetano
Ben Cayetano
Benjamin Jerome "Ben" Cayetano served as the fifth Governor of the State of Hawaii from 1994 to 2002. He is the first Filipino American to serve as a state governor in the United States.- Early years :...
, governor of Hawaii from 1994-2002, Gary Locke
Gary Locke
Gary Locke may refer to:*Gary Locke , Chinese American politician; U.S. Secretary of Commerce and former Governor of Washington*Gary Locke *Gary Locke...
, governor of Washington State from 1996-2004, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal
Bobby Jindal
Piyush "Bobby" Jindal is the 55th and current Governor of Louisiana and formerly a member of the United States House of Representatives. He is a member of the Republican Party....
, and Nikki Haley
Nikki Haley
Nimrata Nikki Randhawa Haley is the 116th and current Governor of South Carolina. A member of the Republican Party, Haley represented Lexington County in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 2005 to 2010....
, governor of South Carolina are the only Asian Americans to hold the office of state governor in the United States.
Journalism
Connie Chung
Connie Chung, full name: Constance Yu-Hwa Chung Povich is an American journalist who has been an anchor and reporter for the U.S. television news networks NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC. Some of her more famous interview subjects include Claus von Bülow and U.S...
was one of the first Asian-American national correspondents for a major TV news network, reporting for CBS in 1971. She later co-anchored the CBS Evening News from 1993 to 1995. At ABC, Ken Kashiwahara began reporting nationally in 1974. In 1990, Sheryl WuDunn
Sheryl WuDunn
Sheryl WuDunn is a Chinese American business executive, author, lecturer, and the first Asian American to win a Pulitzer Prize.A senior banker focusing on growth companies in technology, new media and the emerging markets, WuDunn also works with double bottom line firms, alternative energy issues,...
, a foreign correspondent in the Beijing Bureau of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, became the first Asian-American to win a Pulitzer Prize. Ann Curry
Ann Curry
Ann Curry is an American television news journalist and co-anchor on NBC's morning television program Today. She is the former news anchor on Today, a role she began in March 1997, and was the host of Dateline NBC from 2005-2011.Curry is a Board Member at the IWMF .-Biography:Curry was born in...
joined NBC News as a reporter in 1990, later becoming prominently associated with The Today Show in 1997. Carol Lin
Carol Lin
Carol Lin is an American journalist who founded CarolLinReporting.com, a website which provides cancer patients, their families, and caregivers with answers they may not find on traditional networks...
is perhaps best known for being the first to break the news of 9-11 on CNN. Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Sanjay Gupta
Sanjay Gupta is an American neurosurgeon and an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine and associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia....
is currently CNN's chief health correspondent. Lisa Ling
Lisa Ling
Lisa J. Ling is a Chinese American journalist, best known for her role as a co-host of ABC's The View , host of National Geographic Explorer, reporter on Channel One News, and special correspondent for the Oprah Winfrey Show and CNN. She is the older sister of journalist Laura Ling.-Early...
, a former co-host on The View, now provides special reports for CNN and The Oprah Winfrey Show, as well as hosting National Geographic Channel's Explorer. Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Rafiq Zakaria is an Indian-American journalist and author. From 2000 to 2010, he was a columnist for Newsweek and editor of Newsweek International. In 2010 he became Editor-At-Large of Time magazine...
, a naturalised Indian-born immigrant, is a prominent journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
specialising in international affairs. He is the editor-at-large of Time magazine, and the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS
Fareed Zakaria GPS
Fareed Zakaria GPS is a weekly public affairs show hosted by journalist and author Fareed Zakaria. As of November 2011, the show airs Sundays at 10am Eastern Time and 1pm Eastern Time on CNN. The show also airs Sundays at 1200 and 1900 GMT on CNN International...
on CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
. Juju Chang, James Hatori, John Yang
John Yang (journalist)
John Yang is an American Peabody Award-winning television news correspondent, commentator, and journalist. He currently works for NBC as a correspondent and commentator, covering issues for all NBC News programming, including NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Today, and MSNBC...
, Veronica De La Cruz
Veronica De La Cruz
Veronica De La Cruz is a Filipino American television anchor formerly with CNN. In July 2010, she appeared as a late night anchor on MSNBC. At the current time, she appears on both NBC and MSNBC, primarily anchoring NBC's Early Today show and MSNBC's First Look...
, Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin is an American conservative blogger, political commentator, and author. Her weekly syndicated column appears in a number of newspapers and websites. She is a Fox News Channel contributor and has been a guest on MSNBC, C-SPAN, and national radio programs...
, Betty Nguyen
Betty Nguyen
Betty Nguyen is an American news anchor with CBS News. Nguyen joined CBS News on March 11, 2010. She anchors the The CBS Morning News and is a correspondent for The Early Show. -Life and career:...
, and Julie Chen
Julie Chen
Julie Suzanne Chen is an American television personality, news anchor, and producer for CBS. She has 16 years of newscasting experience. She is best known for co-anchoring CBS's The Early Show, alongside Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez. She has been the host of the U.S. version of Big Brother...
have become familiar faces on television news. John Yang won a Peabody Award. Alex Tizon
Alex Tizon
Tomas Alex Tizon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and long-time staff writer for The Seattle Times. He has contributed to Newsweek and 60 Minutes, and he has lectured at Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley and...
, a Seattle Times staff writer, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997.
Military
Since the War of 1812War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
Asian Americans have served
United States armed forces
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard.The United States has a strong tradition of civilian control of the military...
and fought
Military history of the United States
The military history of the United States spans a period of over two centuries. During the course of those years, the United States evolved from a new nation fighting the British Empire for independence without a professional military , through a monumental American Civil War to the world's sole...
on behalf of the United States. Serving in both segregated and non-segregated units until the desegregation of the US Military in 1948
Executive Order 9981
Executive Order 9981 is an executive order issued on July 26, 1948 by U.S. President Harry S. Truman. It expanded on Executive Order 8802 by establishing equality of treatment and opportunity in the Armed Services for people of all races, religions, or national origins."In 1947, Randolph, along...
, 31 have been awarded the nation's highest award for combat valor, the Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. It is bestowed by the President, in the name of Congress, upon members of the United States Armed Forces who distinguish themselves through "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her...
. Twenty-one of these were conferred upon members of the mostly Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team of World War II, the most highly decorated unit of its size in the history of the United States Armed Forces.
Science and technology
Chien-Shiung Wu
Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-American physicist with expertise in the techniques of experimental physics and radioactivity. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project...
was known to many scientists as the "First Lady of Physics" and played a pivotal role in experimentally demonstrating the violation of the law of conservation of parity in the field of particle physics. Tsung-Dao Lee
Tsung-Dao Lee
Tsung-Dao Lee is a Chinese born-American physicist, well known for his work on parity violation, the Lee Model, particle physics, relativistic heavy ion physics, nontopological solitons and soliton stars....
and Chen Ning Yang received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
for theoretical work demonstrating that the conservation of parity did not always hold and later became American citizens. Har Gobind Khorana shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
for his work in genetics and protein synthesis. Samuel Chao Chung Ting received the 1976 Nobel Prize in physics for discovery of the subatomic particle J/ψ. The Chinese American mathematician Shing-Tung Yau
Shing-Tung Yau
Shing-Tung Yau is a Chinese American mathematician working in differential geometry. He was born in Shantou, Guangdong Province, China into a family of scholars from Jiaoling, Guangdong Province....
won the Fields Medal
Fields Medal
The Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union , a meeting that takes place every four...
in 1982 and Terence Tao
Terence Tao
Terence Chi-Shen Tao FRS is an Australian mathematician working primarily on harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, combinatorics, analytic number theory and representation theory...
won the Fields Medal
Fields Medal
The Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union , a meeting that takes place every four...
in 2006. The geometer Shiing-Shen Chern
Shiing-Shen Chern
Shiing-Shen Chern was a Chinese American mathematician, one of the leaders in differential geometry of the twentieth century.-Early years in China:...
received the Wolf Prize in Mathematics
Wolf Prize in Mathematics
The Wolf Prize in Mathematics is awarded almost annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Medicine, Physics and Arts...
in 1983. Andrew Yao
Andrew Yao
Andrew Chi-Chih Yao is a prominent computer scientist and computational theorist. Yao used the minimax theorem to prove what is now known as Yao's Principle.Yao was born in Shanghai, China...
was awarded the Turing Award
Turing Award
The Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the...
in 2000. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, FRS ) was an Indian origin American astrophysicist who, with William A. Fowler, won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics for key discoveries that led to the currently accepted theory on the later evolutionary stages of massive stars...
shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
and had the Chandra X-ray Observatory
Chandra X-ray Observatory
The Chandra X-ray Observatory is a satellite launched on STS-93 by NASA on July 23, 1999. It was named in honor of Indian-American physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar who is known for determining the maximum mass for white dwarfs. "Chandra" also means "moon" or "luminous" in Sanskrit.Chandra...
named after him. In 1984, Dr. David D. Ho first reported the "healthy carrier state" of HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
infection, which identified HIV-positive individuals who showed no physical signs of AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
. Charles J. Pedersen
Charles J. Pedersen
Charles John Pedersen was an American organic chemist best known for describing methods of synthesizing crown ethers. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1987 with Donald J. Cram and Jean-Marie Lehn...
shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his methods of synthesizing crown ethers. Steven Chu
Steven Chu
Steven Chu is an American physicist and the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. Chu is known for his research at Bell Labs in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and...
shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research in cooling and trapping atoms using laser light. Daniel Tsui shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics in 1998 for helping discover the fractional Quantum Hall effect. In 2008, biochemist Roger Tsien won the Nobel in Chemistry for his work on engineering and improving the green fluorescent protein (GFP
Green fluorescent protein
The green fluorescent protein is a protein composed of 238 amino acid residues that exhibits bright green fluorescence when exposed to blue light. Although many other marine organisms have similar green fluorescent proteins, GFP traditionally refers to the protein first isolated from the...
) that has become a standard tool of modern molecular biology and biochemistry. Yoichiro Nambu
Yoichiro Nambu
is a Japanese-born American physicist, currently a professor at the University of Chicago. Known for his contributions to the field of theoretical physics, he was awarded a one-half share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in...
received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the consequences of spontaneously broken symmetries in field theories. In 2009, Charles K. Kao
Charles K. Kao
The Honorable Sir Charles Kuen Kao, GBM, KBE, FRS, FREng is a pioneer in the development and use of fiber optics in telecommunications...
was awarded Nobel Prize in Physics "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication" and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan won the prize in Chemistry "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome". Ching W. Tang
Ching W. Tang
Ching W. Tang, is a Hong Kong - American Physical Chemist. He was born in Yuen Long, Hong Kong in 1947. Tang currently is the Doris Johns Cherry Professor in the Chemical Engineering Department, University of Rochester . He also has joint appointments in the Department of Chemistry and the...
was the inventor of the Organic light-emitting diode
Organic light-emitting diode
An OLED is a light-emitting diode in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compounds which emit light in response to an electric current. This layer of organic semiconductor material is situated between two electrodes...
and Organic solar cell
Organic solar cell
An organic photovoltaic cell is a photovoltaic cell that uses organic electronics--a branch of electronics that deals with conductive organic polymers or small organic molecules for light absorption and charge transport....
and was awarded the 2011 Wolf Prize in Chemistry for this achievement. Min Chueh Chang
Min Chueh Chang
Dr. Min Chueh Chang , often credited as M.C. Chang, was a Chinese American reproductive biologist. His specific area of study was the fertilisation process in mammalian reproduction...
was the co-inventor of the combined oral contraceptive pill and contributed significantly to the development of in vitro fertilisation
In vitro fertilisation
In vitro fertilisation is a process by which egg cells are fertilised by sperm outside the body: in vitro. IVF is a major treatment in infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed...
at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology
Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology
The Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research was a non-profit biomedical research institute based in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.-History:...
. Michio Kaku
Michio Kaku
is an American theoretical physicist, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics in the City College of New York of City University of New York, the co-founder of string field theory, and a "communicator" and "popularizer" of science...
has popularized science and has appeared on multiple programs on television and radio.
Space
Lieutenant Colonel (United States)
In the United States Army, United States Air Force, and United States Marine Corps, a lieutenant colonel is a field grade military officer rank just above the rank of major and just below the rank of colonel. It is equivalent to the naval rank of commander in the other uniformed services.The pay...
Ellison Onizuka
Ellison Onizuka
was a Japanese American astronaut from Kealakekua, Kona, Hawaii, who successfully flew into space with the Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-51-C, before losing his life to the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger, where he was serving as Mission Specialist for mission STS-51-L...
became the first Asian American (and third person of Asian descent) when he made his first space flight aboard STS-51-C
STS-51-C
STS-51-C was the 15th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the third flight of Space Shuttle Discovery. It was also the first shuttle mission to deploy a dedicated United States Department of Defense payload, and as such many mission details remain classified...
in 1985. Onizuka later died aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger
Space Shuttle Challenger
Space Shuttle Challenger was NASA's second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, Columbia having been the first. The shuttle was built by Rockwell International's Space Transportation Systems Division in Downey, California...
in 1986
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida at 11:38 am EST...
. Taylor Gun-Jin Wang became the first person of Chinese ethnicity and first Chinese American, in space in 1985
STS-51-B
STS 51-B was the seventeenth flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the seventh flight of Space Shuttle Challenger. The launch of Challenger on 29 April 1985 was delayed by 2 minutes and 18 seconds, due to a launch processing failure. Challenger was initially rolled out to the pad to launch on...
; he has since been followed by Leroy Chiao
Leroy Chiao
Dr. Leroy Chiao , is an American engineer, former NASA astronaut, entrepreneur, motivational speaker and engineering consultant. Chiao flew on three shuttle flights, and was the commander of Expedition 10, where he lived on board the International Space Station from October 13, 2004 to April 24,...
in 1994
STS-65
STS-65 is a Space Shuttle program mission of Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, 8 July 1994. The flight was commanded by Robert D...
, and Ed Lu
Ed Lu
Edward Tsang "Ed" Lu , is an American physicist and a former NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions and an extended stay aboard the International Space Station.-Education:...
in 1997
STS-84
STS-84 was a manned spaceflight mission by Space Shuttle Atlantis to the Mir space station.-Crew:-Mission parameters:*Mass:**Orbiter landing with payload: **Spacehab-DM: ** Orbiter Docking System: **Cargo delivered to Mir:...
. In 1986
STS-61-C
-Mission parameters:*Mass:**Orbiter liftoff: **Orbiter landing: **Payload: *Perigee: *Apogee: *Inclination: 28.5°*Period: 91.2 min-Mission background:...
, Franklin Chang-Diaz became the first Asian Latin American in space. Eugene H. Trinh
Eugene H. Trinh
Eugene Huu-Chau "Gene" Trinh is a Vietnamese-American biochemist who flew aboard NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-50 as a Payload Specialist. He is the first Vietnamese-French-American to travel into outer space.-Biography:Born in Saigon, South Vietnam, Trinh moved with his parents to Paris,...
became the first Vietnamese American in space in 1992
STS-50
-Backup crew:-Mission parameters:*Mass:**Orbiter landing with payload: **Payload: *Perigee: *Apogee: *Inclination: 28.5°*Period: 90.6 min- Mission highlights:...
. In 2001
STS-98
STS-98 was a 2001 Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station flown by Space Shuttle Atlantis. STS-98 delivered to the station the Destiny Laboratory Module...
, Mark L. Polansky
Mark L. Polansky
Mark Lewis "Roman" Polansky is an American aerospace engineer and research pilot and a NASA astronaut. Polansky received the nickname "Roman" as a joke, because he shares a last name with director Roman Polanski. He has flown on three Space Shuttle missions: STS-98, STS-116, and...
, a Jewish Korean American, made his first of three flights into space. In 2003
STS-107
-Mission parameters:*Mass:**Orbiter Liftoff: **Orbiter Landing: **Payload: *Perigee: *Apogee: *Inclination: 39.0°*Period: 90.1 min- Insignia :...
, Kalpana Chawla
Kalpana Chawla
Kalpana Chawla was an Indian-American astronaut with NASA. She was one of seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.-Early life:...
became the first Indian American
Indian American
Indian Americans are Americans whose ancestral roots lie in India. The U.S. Census Bureau popularized the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Indigenous peoples of the Americas who are commonly referred to as American Indians.-The term: Indian:...
in space, but died aboard the ill fated
Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when shortly before it was scheduled to conclude its 28th mission, STS-107, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, resulting in the death of all seven crew members...
Space Shuttle Columbia
Space Shuttle Columbia
Space Shuttle Columbia was the first spaceworthy Space Shuttle in NASA's orbital fleet. First launched on the STS-1 mission, the first of the Space Shuttle program, it completed 27 missions before being destroyed during re-entry on February 1, 2003 near the end of its 28th, STS-107. All seven crew...
. She has since been followed by CDR
Commander (United States)
In the United States, commander is a military rank that is also sometimes used as a military title, depending on the branch of service. It is also used as a rank or title in some organizations outside of the military, particularly in police and law enforcement.-Naval rank:In the United States...
Sunita Williams
Sunita Williams
Sunita Williams is a United States Naval officer and a NASA astronaut. She was assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 14 and then joined Expedition 15...
in 2006
STS-116
-Crew notes:Originally this mission was to carry the Expedition 8 crew to the ISS. The original crew was to be:-Mission highlights:* The STS-116 mission delivered and attached the International Space Station's third port truss segment, the P5 truss....
.
Sports
Wataru Misaka
is a retired American basketball player. He was the first player of Asian descent and the first non-Caucasian person to play in the National Basketball Association .-Biography:...
broke the NBA
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...
color barrier when he played for the New York Knicks
New York Knicks
The New York Knickerbockers, prominently known as the Knicks, are a professional basketball team based in New York City. They are part of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference in the National Basketball Association...
in the 1947–48 season. The next Asian-American NBA player was Raymond Townsend
Raymond Townsend
Raymond Anthony Townsend is a Filipino-American retired professional basketball player.A 6'3", 175-lb point guard, Townsend attended Camden High School and Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, California before playing college basketball at UCLA...
, who played for the Golden State Warriors
Golden State Warriors
The Golden State Warriors are an American professional basketball team based in Oakland, California. They are part of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association...
and Indiana Pacers
Indiana Pacers
The Indiana Pacers are a professional basketball team based in Indianapolis, Indiana. They are members of the Central Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association...
from 1978 to 1982. Erik Spoelstra
Erik Spoelstra
Erik Spoelstra is an American professional basketball coach and the current head coach of the National Basketball Association's Miami Heat...
is a Filipino-Dutch-Irish who became the youngest coach ever in NBA
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...
history. He is currently the head coach of the Miami Heat
Miami Heat
The Miami Heat is a professional basketball team based in Miami, Florida, United States. The team is a member of the Southeast Division in the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association . They play their home games at American Airlines Arena in Downtown Miami...
. Current Kansas Jayhawks
Kansas Jayhawks
The sports teams at the University of Kansas are known as the Jayhawks. They are one of three schools in the state of Kansas that participate in NCAA Division I. The Jayhawks are also a member of the Big 12 Conference...
coach Kurtis Townsend
Kurtis Townsend
Kurtis Townsend is an American basketball coach. He is currently assistant men's basketball coach at the University of Kansas, under Bill Self. Townsend was an assistant on the Jayhawks 2007-2008 NCAA national championship team.-Playing career:...
is Raymond Townsend's brother. After a distinguished collegiate basketball career at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, point guard Jeremy Lin
Jeremy Lin
Jeremy Shu-How Lin is an American professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association...
signed with the NBA's Golden State Warriors
Golden State Warriors
The Golden State Warriors are an American professional basketball team based in Oakland, California. They are part of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association...
in 2010. In doing so, he became the first Asian-American to play in the NBA in over 50 years.
Asian Americans first made an impact in Olympic
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
sports in the late 1940s and in the 1950s. Sammy Lee
Sammy Lee (diver)
Dr. Samuel Lee is the first Asian American to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States and the first man to win back-to-back gold medals in Olympic platform diving...
became the first Asian American to earn an Olympic Gold Medal, winning in platform diving in both 1948 and 1952. Victoria Manalo Draves won both gold in platform and springboard diving in the 1948. Harold Sakata
Harold Sakata
Toshiyuki "Harold" Sakata was a Japanese American professional wrestler and film actor most famous for his role as the villain "Oddjob" in the James Bond film Goldfinger.-Career:...
won a weightlifting silver medal in the 1948 Olympics, while Japanese Americans Tommy Kono
Tommy Kono
Tamio "Tommy" Kono was a U.S. weightlifter in the 1950s and 1960s.Kono is the only lifter to have set world records in four different weightlifting classes: lightweight , middleweight , light-heavyweight , and middle-heavyweight .He won...
(weightlifting), Yoshinobu Oyakawa
Yoshinobu Oyakawa
Yoshinobu "Yoshi" Oyakawa was a backstroke swimmer from the United States, who won the 100m Backstroke at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. He is considered to be the last of the great "straight-arm-pull" backstrokers....
(100-meter backstroke), and Ford Konno
Ford Konno
Ford Hiroshi Konno is a former freestyle swimmer from the United States, who swam at McKinley High School and the Ohio State University....
(1500-meter freestyle) each won gold and set Olympic records in the 1952 Olympics. Konno won another gold and silver swimming medal at the same Olympics and added a silver medal in 1956, while Kono set another Olympic weightlifting record in 1956. Also at the 1952 Olympics, Evelyn Kawamoto won two bronze medals in swimming.
Amy Chow
Amy Chow
Amy Yuen Yee Chow is a retired American gymnast and a member of the famous Magnificent 7, the first American team to win Olympic gymnastics gold...
was a member of the gold medal women's gymnastics team at the 1996 Olympics; she also won an individual silver medal on the uneven bars. Gymnast Mohini Bhardwaj
Mohini Bhardwaj
Mohini Bhardwaj is a retired American gymnast who competed at the 1997 and 2001 World Championships and earned a team silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens...
won a team silver medal in the 2004 Olympics. Hapa
Hapa
Hapa is a Hawaiian language term used to describe a person of mixed Asian or Pacific Islander racial or ethnic heritage.-Etymology:In the Hawaiian language, hapa is defined as: portion, fragment, part, fraction, installment; to be partial, less. It is a loan from the English word half...
Bryan Clay
Bryan Clay
Bryan Ezra Tsumoru Clay is an American decathlete. He is the reigning Olympic champion for the decathlon and was also World champion in 2005.-Biography:...
won the decathlon gold medal in the 2008 Olympics
Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's decathlon
-Heat 1:21 August 2008 - 9:20Wind: -0.6 m/s-Heat 2:21 August 2008 - 9:27Wind: -0.2 m/s-Heat 3:21 August 2008 - 9:34Wind: 0.3 m/s-Heat 4:21 August 2008 - 9:41Wind: -0.4 m/s-Heat 5:21 August 2008 - 9:48Wind: -0.1 m/s-Group A:...
, the silver medal in the 2004 Olympics
Athletics at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's Decathlon
The Decathlon at the 2004 Summer Olympics as part of the athletics program was held at the Athens Olympic Stadium on August 23 and August 24....
, and was the sport's 2005 world champion.
Tiffany Chin
Tiffany Chin is an American figure skater who grew up in San Diego, California. She dominated the junior circuit in ice skating prior to her Olympic career, winning the US Junior National title as well as the World Junior title...
won the women's US Figure Skating Championship in 1985, Asian Americans have been prominent in that sport. Kristi Yamaguchi
Kristi Yamaguchi
Kristine Tsuya "Kristi" Yamaguchi-Hedican is an American figure skater. She is the 1992 Olympic Champion in ladies' singles. Yamaguchi also won two World Figure Skating Championships in 1991 and 1992 and a U.S. Figure Skating Championships in 1992. She won one junior world title in 1988 and two...
won three national championships, two world titles, and the 1992 Olympic Gold medal. Michelle Kwan
Michelle Kwan
Michelle Wingshan Kwan is an American figure skater. She is a two-time Olympic medalist, a five-time World champion and a nine-time U.S...
has won nine national championships and five world titles, as well as two Olympic medals (silver in 1998, bronze in 2002).
In football, Asian Americans' contributions are also gaining notice. Wally Yonamine played professionally for the San Francisco 49ers
San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers are a professional American football team based in San Francisco, California, playing in the West Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League . The team was founded in 1946 as a charter member of the All-America Football Conference and...
in 1947. Norm Chow
Norm Chow
Norman Chow is the offensive coordinator for the Utah Utes, a position he started on January 22, 2011. He previously held the same position with UCLA, the NFL's Tennessee Titans, USC, North Carolina State, and Brigham Young University....
is currently the offensive coordinator for UCLA after a short stint with the Tennessee Titans of the NFL, after 23 years of coaching other college teams, including four successful years as offensive coordinator at USC
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. Dat Nguyen
Dat Nguyen
Dat Tan Nguyen is a former American football linebacker in the National Football League . He was the first Vietnamese American to play in the NFL. He played for the Dallas Cowboys from 1999 to 2005. He played college football at Texas A&M. He was the Cowboys' assistant linebackers coach and...
was an NFL middle linebacker who was an all-pro selection in 2003. In 1998, he was named an All-American and won the Bednarik Award as well as the Lombardi Award
Lombardi Award
The Rotary Lombardi Award is awarded annually to the best college football lineman or linebacker. The Lombardi Award program was approved by the Rotary Club in Houston in 1970 shortly after the death of Vince Lombardi. The committee outlined the criteria for eligibility for the award, which...
, while playing for Texas A&M
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas . It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The sixth-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2011 was over 50,000 for the first time in school...
. Hines Ward
Hines Ward
Hines E. Ward, Jr. is an American football player who currently plays the wide receiver position for the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers, where he is the longest-tenured current player on the team. He was voted MVP of Super Bowl XL. He played college football at the University of Georgia...
is an NFL wide receiver who was the MVP of Super Bowl XL
Super Bowl XL
Super Bowl XL was an American football game pitting the American Football Conference champion Pittsburgh Steelers against the National Football Conference champion Seattle Seahawks to decide the National Football League champion for the 2005 season...
.
Michael Chang
Michael Chang
Michael Te-Pei Chang is a former American professional tennis player. He is best remembered for becoming the youngest-ever male player to win a Grand Slam singles title when he won the French Open in 1989 at the age of 17....
was a top-ranked tennis player for most of his career. He won the French Open in 1989. Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods
Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Formerly the World No...
, who is of mostly Asian descent, is the most successful golfer of his generation and one of the most famous athletes in the world. Eric Koston
Eric Koston
Eric Koston is a Thai American professional skater who grew up in San Bernardino, California.He began skating in 1986 and remains active. He was first sponsored in 1991 and turned pro in 1993. He has been featured in the "Tony Hawk" video game series and "EA" Skate 2 and Skate 3...
is one of the top street skateboarders and placed first in the 2003 X-Games street competition.
There are several top ranked Asian American mixed martial artists
Mixed martial arts
Mixed Martial Arts is a full contact combat sport that allows the use of both striking and grappling techniques, both standing and on the ground, including boxing, wrestling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, muay Thai, kickboxing, karate, judo and other styles. The roots of modern mixed martial arts can be...
. BJ Penn is a former UFC lightweight and welterweight champion. Cung Le
Cung Le
Cung Le is a Vietnamese-American Sanshou kickboxer, mixed martial artist, and actor from Saigon, Vietnam currently competing in the UFC. He is the former IKF Light Heavyweight San Shou World Champion and has a professional San Shou record of 16-0 before moving to mixed martial arts...
is a former Strikeforce
Strikeforce
Strikeforce is a U.S.-based mixed martial arts and kickboxing organization based in San Jose, California. It is headed by CEO Scott Coker and owned by Zuffa, LLC...
middleweight champion. Ben Henderson
Ben Henderson (fighter)
Benson Henderson is an American mixed martial artist. He currently fights as a lightweight for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Henderson, a former WEC Lightweight Champion, is known for his aggressive style and his ability to escape from deep submission attempts...
is the former WEC
World Extreme Cagefighting
World Extreme Cagefighting was an American mixed martial arts promotion. It was purchased by Zuffa, LLC, the parent company of Ultimate Fighting Championship , in 2006. In its final incarnation, it was made up of 3 weight classes: 135, 145 and 155 lbs. To accommodate the smaller...
lightweight champion.
Health and medicine
| Country of Origin | Percentage of Total IMGs in US |
|---|---|
| India India India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world... |
19.9% (47,581) |
| Philippines Philippines The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam... |
8.8% (20,861) |
| Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan... |
4.8% (11,330) |
| South Korea South Korea The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south... |
2.1% (4,982) |
| China China Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture... |
2.0% (4,834) |
| Country of Origin | Percentage of Total IDGs in US |
|---|---|
| India India India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world... |
25.8 |
| Philippines Philippines The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam... |
11.0 |
| China China Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture... |
3.2 |
| South Korea South Korea The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south... |
3.2 |
| Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan... |
2.9 |
| Country of Origin | Percentage of Total INGs in US |
|---|---|
| Philippines Philippines The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam... |
50.2 |
| India India India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world... |
1.3 |
| Hong Kong Hong Kong Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour... |
1.2 |
| Israel Israel The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea... |
1.0 |
| South Korea South Korea The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south... |
1.0 |
Asian immigrants are also changing the American medical landscape through increasing number of Asian medical practitioners in this country. Beginning in the 1960s and 70s, the US government invited a number of foreign physicians particularly from India and the Philippines to address the acute shortage of physicians in rural and medically-underserved urban areas. The trend in importing foreign medical practitioners, however, became a long-term, chronic solution as US medical schools failed to produce enough physicians to match the increasing American population. Amid decreasing interest in medicine among American college students due to high rates job dissatisfaction, loss of morale, stress, and lawsuits, Asian American immigrants maintained a supply of healthcare practitioners for millions of Americans. It is well documented that Asian American international medical graduates including highly skilled guest workers using the J1 Visa program for medical workers, tend to serve in health professions shortage areas (HPSA) and specialties that are not filled by US medical graduates especially primary care and rural medicine. Thus, Asian American immigrants play a key role in averting a medical crisis in the US.
A lasting legacy of Asian American involvement in medicine is the forcing of US medical establishment to accept minority medical practitioners. One could speculate that the introduction of Asian physicians and dentists to the American society could have triggered an acceptance of other minority groups by breaking down stereotypes and encouraging trust.
Traditional Asian concepts and practices in health and medicine have attracted greater acceptance and are more widely adopted by American doctors. India’s Ayurveda
Ayurveda
Ayurveda or ayurvedic medicine is a system of traditional medicine native to India and a form of alternative medicine. In Sanskrit, words , meaning "longevity", and , meaning "knowledge" or "science". The earliest literature on Indian medical practice appeared during the Vedic period in India,...
and traditional Chinese medicine (which also includes acupuncture
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is a type of alternative medicine that treats patients by insertion and manipulation of solid, generally thin needles in the body....
) are two alternative therapy systems that have been studied and adopted to a great extent. For instance, in the early 1970s the US medical establishment did not believe in the usefulness of acupuncture. Since then studies have proven the efficacy of acupuncture for different applications, especially for treatment of chronic pain. It is now covered by many health insurance plans.
Meditation
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
and mindfulness practices are taught in mainstream medical schools and hospitals. Increasingly they are seen as part of a holistic approach to health. Doctors and hospitals treating diseases such as heart disease and cancer have adopted meditation as a practice recommended for patients.
Herbalism
Herbalism
Herbalism is a traditional medicinal or folk medicine practice based on the use of plants and plant extracts. Herbalism is also known as botanical medicine, medical herbalism, herbal medicine, herbology, herblore, and phytotherapy...
and massage
Massage
Massage is the manipulation of superficial and deeper layers of muscle and connective tissue to enhance function, aid in the healing process, and promote relaxation and well-being. The word comes from the French massage "friction of kneading", or from Arabic massa meaning "to touch, feel or handle"...
therapy (from Ayurveda) are sweeping the spas across America. Meditation and yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
(from India) have also been widely adopted by health spas, and spiritual retreats of many religious bases. They are also part of the spiritual practice of the many Americans who are not affiliated with a mainline religious group.
Education
| Ethnicity | High School Graduation Rate |
Bachelor's Degree or More |
|---|---|---|
| Filipinos | 90.8% | 47.9% |
| Indians | 90.2% | 67.9% |
| Bangladeshis | 84.5% | 41.9% |
| Pakistanis | 87.4% | 60.9% |
| Chinese | 95.8% | 70.2% |
| Japanese | 93.4% | 43.7% |
| Koreans | 90.2% | 50.8% |
| Vietnamese | 92.2% | 55.2% |
| Total US Population | 83.9% | 27.0% |
Among America's major racial categories, Asian Americans have the highest educational qualifications. This varies, however, for individual ethnic groups. Dr. C.N. Le, Director of the Asian & Asian American Studies Certificate Program at the University of Massachusetts, writes that although 42% of all Asian American adults have at least a college degree, Vietnamese Americans have a degree attainment rate of only 16% while Laotians and Cambodians only have rates around 5%. According to the US Census Bureau, while the high school graduation rate for Asian Americans is on par with those of other ethnic groups, 48% of Asian Americans have attained at least a bachelor's degree as compared with the national average of 27%, and 29% for non-Hispanic Whites. Indian Americans have some of the highest education rates, with nearly 68% having attained at least a bachelor's degree.
Religious trends
Some scholars see a movement of religions, as BuddhismBuddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
and Sikhism
Sikhism
Sikhism is a monotheistic religion founded during the 15th century in the Punjab region, by Guru Nanak Dev and continued to progress with ten successive Sikh Gurus . It is the fifth-largest organized religion in the world and one of the fastest-growing...
have moved into American culture, and Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
has been adopted by more East Asians. Most Filipinos
Filipinos
Filipinos is the brand name for a series of biscuit snacks made by Kraft Foods. In Spain and Portugal they are produced and sold under the Artiach brand name. Under license to United Biscuits, in the Netherlands they are sold and produced locally under the Verkade brand...
are also already Christian (Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
or other denominations) when they immigrate. Many South Koreans, especially, are already Christian when they immigrate to the US, and hence most Korean Americans are born into Christian families. Besides Indian religions, there has also been strong influence of the American adoption of yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
, meditation
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
, Ayurveda
Ayurveda
Ayurveda or ayurvedic medicine is a system of traditional medicine native to India and a form of alternative medicine. In Sanskrit, words , meaning "longevity", and , meaning "knowledge" or "science". The earliest literature on Indian medical practice appeared during the Vedic period in India,...
and vegetarianism
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets , with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat...
from India.
Many Asians Americans are also Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
with ancestry from Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
, Malaysia and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
among others. Eight percent of Asian Americans are Muslim and they represent 33% of the American Muslim population.
Beats on the West Coast were among those attracted to Buddhism in the 1950s. American Buddhist groups established then and in the 1970s have built temples, ordained numerous American Buddhist monks, and taught generations of new practitioners. Buddhist concepts and practices such as mindfulness have penetrated mainstream culture.
While much West Coast practice was first influenced by Japanese Zen Buddhism, which originated in China (known as Ch'an Buddhism), more recent generations throughout the country have been influenced also by Vietnamese and Tibetan Buddhist monks who have lived and taught in the West.
As a historic first, President Barack Obama appointed two Indian Americans, Eboo Patel
Eboo Patel
Eboo Patel is a member of President Barack Obama's inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships. He is an American Muslim of Gujarati Indian heritage and founder and president of the ,...
(a Muslim) and Anju Bhargava
Anju Bhargava
Anju Bhargava is a member of President Barack Obama's Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood partnership. She is also Principal Director at Global Synergy Associates working at the intersection of Enterprise Risk Management, Business Transformation and Organization Management through a...
(a Hindu), to the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The Advisory Council is part of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and is composed of religious and secular leaders and scholars from different backgrounds.
Illegal immigration
, FilipinosFilipinos
Filipinos is the brand name for a series of biscuit snacks made by Kraft Foods. In Spain and Portugal they are produced and sold under the Artiach brand name. Under license to United Biscuits, in the Netherlands they are sold and produced locally under the Verkade brand...
and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
ns accounted for the highest number of illegal immigrants for "Asian-Americans" with an estimated illegal population of 270,000 and 200,000 respectively. Indian Americans are also the fastest growing illegal immigrant group in the United States, an increase in illegal immigration of 125% since 2000. This is followed by Koreans (200,000) and Chinese
Chinese people
The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
(120,000).
Model minority
Model minority
Model minority refers to a minority ethnic, racial, or religious group whose members achieve a higher degree of success than the population average. It is most commonly used to label one ethnic minority higher achieving than another ethnic minority...
because the culture encourages a strong work ethic, a respect for elders, a high degree of professional and academic success, a high valuation of family, education and religion. Statistics such as high household income and low incarceration rate, low rates of many diseases and higher than average life expectancy are also discussed as positive aspects of Asian Americans.
The implicit advice is that the other minorities should stop protesting and emulate the Asian American work ethic and devotion to higher education. Some critics say the depiction replaces biological racism with cultural racism, and should be dropped.
This concept appears to elevate Asian Americans by portraying them as an elite group of successful, highly educated, highly intelligent, and wealthy individuals, but it can also be considered an overly narrow and overly one-dimensional portrayal of Asian Americans, leaving out other human qualities such as vocal leadership, negative emotions, risk taking, ability to learn from mistakes, and desire for creative expression. Furthermore, Asian Americans who do not fit into the model minority mold can face challenges when people's expectations based on the model minority myth do not match with reality. Traits outside of the model minority mold can be seen as negative character flaws for Asian Americans despite those very same traits being positive for the general American majority (e.g., risk taking, confidence, empowered). For this reason, some believe Asian Americans encounter a "bamboo ceiling," the Asian American equivalent of the glass ceiling
Glass ceiling
In economics, the term glass ceiling refers to "the unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements." Initially, the metaphor applied to barriers in the careers of women but...
in the workplace.
The model minority concept can also affect Asians' public education. By comparison with other minorities, Asians often achieve higher test scores and grades compared to other Americans. Stereotyping Asian American as over-achievers can lead to harm if school officials or peers expect all to perform higher than average. The very high educational attainments of Asian Americans has often been noted; in 1980, for example, 74% of Chinese Americans, 62% of Japanese Americans, and 55% of Korean Americans aged 20–21 were in college, compared to a third of the whites. The disparity at postgraduate levels is even greater, and the differential is especially notable in fields making heavy use of mathematics. By 2000, a majority of undergraduates at elite California schools such as Berkeley and Stanford were Asian American. The pattern is rooted in the pre-World War II era. Native-born Chinese and Japanese Americans reached educational parity with majority whites in the early decades of the 20th century.
Those who consider Asian Americans a "model minority" fail to realize that Asian American is a broad category encompassing many different ethnic groups with different histories. When divided up by ethnicity, it can be seen that the economic and academic successes supposedly enjoyed by Asian Americans are concentrated into a few ethnic groups. Cambodians, Hmong, and Laotians (and to a lesser extent, Vietnamese), all of whose relatively low achievement rates are possibly due to their refugee status, and that they are non voluntary immigrants as other ethnicities are more likely to be.
Furthermore, the model minority concept can even be emotionally damaging to Asian Americans, particularly since they are expected to live up to their peers who are part of the model minority. However, studies have shown that Asian Americans suffer from higher rates of stress, depression, mental illnesses, and suicides in comparison to other races. The pressures to achieve and live up to the model minority image have taken a mental and psychological toll on Asian Americans.
Race based violence
Historically Asian Americans have been the target of violence based on their race and or ethnicity. This includes, but are not limited to, such events as the Rock Springs massacreRock Springs Massacre
The Rock Springs massacre, also known as the Rock Springs Riot, occurred on September 2, 1885, in the present-day United States city of Rock Springs, Wyoming, in Sweetwater County...
, Watsonville
Watsonville, California
Watsonville is a city in Santa Cruz County, California, United States. The population was 51,199 according to the 2010 census.Located on the central coast of California, the economy centers predominantly around the farming industry. It is known for growing strawberries, apples, lettuce and a host...
Riots, attacks upon Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
., and Korean American businesses targeted during the 1992 Los Angeles riots
1992 Los Angeles riots
The 1992 Los Angeles Riots or South Central Riots, also known as the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest were sparked on April 29, 1992, when a jury acquitted three white and one hispanic Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King following a...
. Violence against Asian Americans continue to occur based on their race, with at least one source asserting that Asian Americans are the fastest growing targets of hate crimes and violence.
After the September 11 attacks, Sikh Americans were targeted, being the recipient of numerous hate crimes including murder. Other Asian Americans have also been the victim of race based violence in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Furthermore, it has been reported that young Asian Americans are more likely to be a target of violence than their peers.
Stereotypes
Until the late 20th century, the term "Asian American" was adopted mostly by activists, while the average person of Asian ancestries identified with his specific ethnicity. The murder of Vincent ChinVincent Chin
Vincent Jen Chin was a Chinese American beaten to death in June 1982 in the United States, in the Detroit, Michigan enclave of Highland Park by Chrysler plant superintendent Ronald Ebens, with the help of his stepson, Michael Nitz...
in 1982 was a pivotal civil rights case, and it marked the emergence of Asian Americans as a distinct group in United States.
Study has indicated that most non-Asian Americans do not generally differentiate between Asian Americans of different ethnicities. Stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s of both groups are nearly identical. A 2002 survey of Americans' attitudes toward Asian Americans and Chinese Americans indicated that 24% of the respondents disapprove of intermarriage
Interracial marriage
Interracial marriage occurs when two people of differing racial groups marry. This is a form of exogamy and can be seen in the broader context of miscegenation .-Legality of interracial marriage:In the Western world certain jurisdictions have had regulations...
with an Asian American, second only to African Americans; 23% would be uncomfortable supporting an Asian-American presidential candidate, compared to 15% for an African American, 14% for a woman and 11% for a Jew; 17% would be upset if a substantial number of Asian Americans moved into their neighborhood; 25% had somewhat or very negative attitude toward Chinese Americans in general. The study did find several positive perceptions of Chinese Americans: strong family values (91%); honesty as business people (77%); high value on education (67%).
There is a widespread perception that Asian Americans are not "American" but are instead "perpetual foreigners". Asian Americans often report being asked the question, "Where are you really from?" by other Americans, regardless of how long they or their ancestors have lived in United States. Many Asian Americans are themselves not immigrants but rather born in the United States. Many are asked if they are Chinese or Japanese, an assumption based on major groups of past immigrants.
See also
Further reading
- Chan, Sucheng. "The changing contours of Asian-American historiography," Rethinking History, March 2007, Vol. 11 Issue 1, pp 125–147; surveys 100+ studies of defining events; Asian diasporas; social dynamics; cultural histories.
- Chan, Sucheng. Asian Americans: an interpretive history (Twayne, 1991). ISBN 978-0-8057-8437-4
- Chau Trinh-Shevrin, Nadia Shilpi Islam, Mariano Jose Rey. Asian American Communities and Health: Context, Research, Policy, and Action (Public Health/Vulnerable Populations), 2009. ISBN 978-0-7879-9829-5
- Chin, Gabriel J., Ed., U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: Reports on Asian Pacific Americans (2005) ISBN 978-0-8377-3105-6
- Chiu, Monica, ed. Asian Americans in New England: Culture and Community (Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2009. xviii, 252 pp.) isbn 978-1-58465-794-1
- Kwong, Peter and Dusanka Miscevic. Chinese America: The Untold Story of America's Oldest New Community (2005)
- Lowe, LisaLisa LoweLisa Lowe is a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego and a noted scholar in the fields of comparative literature, American studies, Asian American studies and the cultural politics of colonialism and migration. She was Visiting Professor of American Studies...
Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-8223-1864-4 - Okihiro, Gary Y. The Columbia Guide to Asian American History (Columbia UP, 2005) excerpt and text search
- Pyong Gap Min Asian Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Pine Science Press, 2005. ISBN 978-1-4129-0556-5
- Takaki, RonaldRonald TakakiRonald Toshiyuki Takaki was an academic, historian, ethnographer and author. Born in Oahu, Hawai'i, his work addresses stereotypes of Asian Americans, such as the model minority concept.-Early life:...
Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans New York: Little, Brown, 1998. ISBN 978-0-316-83130-7 - Tamura, Eileen H. "Using the Past to Inform the Future: An Historiography of Hawaii's Asian and Pacific Islander Americans," Amerasia Journal, 2000, Vol. 26 Issue 1, pp 55–85
- Wu, Frank H.Frank H. WuFrank H. Wu is a law professor, author, and public intellectual. He has been chancellor and dean of University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, California, a position he assumed in July 2010...
Yellow: Race in American Beyond Black and White New York: Basic Books, 2002. ISBN 978-0-465-00639-7 - Zia, HelenHelen ZiaHelen Zia is an American journalist and scholar who has covered Asian American communities and social and political movements for decades.-Life and career:...
Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2000. ISBN 978-0-374-52736-5. - Zhou, MinMin ZhouMin Zhou , is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and is the founding chair of the University's Department of Asian American Studies. Professor Zhou has worked with Carl L...
and Carl L. BankstonCarl L. BankstonCarl L. Bankston III is an American sociologist and author. He is best known for his work on immigration to the United States, particularly on the adaptation of Vietnamese American immigrants, and for his work on ethnicity, social capital, sociology of religion and the sociology of...
III Growing Up AmericanGrowing Up AmericanGrowing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States, by Min Zhou and Carl L. Bankston III is one of the most influential books on the Vietnamese American experience. Published in 1998 by the Russell Sage Foundation, it is widely used in college classes on international...
: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998. ISBN 978-0-871-54995-2.
Journals
- Journal of Asian American StudiesJournal of Asian American StudiesThe Journal of Asian American Studies is a triannual academic journal established in 1998 and is the official publication of the Association for Asian American Studies. The journal publishes scholarly articles exploring theoretical developments, research interests, policy and pedagogical issues...
- Kartika ReviewKartika ReviewThe Kartika Review is a quarterly literary magazine that publishes literary fiction, poetry, and essays that endeavor to expand and enhance the mainstream perception of Asian American creative writing. The journal also publishes book reviews, author interviews, and artwork relevant to the Asian...
External links
- Population: Estimates and Projections by Age, Sex, Race/Ethnicity, The 2010 Statistical Abstract, U.S. Census Bureau
- UCLA Asian American Studies Center
- Asian-Nation Asian American History, Culture, Statistics, & Issues
- Asians in America - National organizations directory, job posts and news
- Korean-Americans in America - National organizations, business directory, job posts and news
- U.S. Asian Population, Census 2000, infoplease.com..
- Video: Panel Discussion on 'Asian Americans Changing the Landscape' Asia Society, New York, May 19, 2010