Asian Americans

The Asian population in the United States is the nation's fastest-growing major race group, increasing by 46 percent between 2000 and 2010, and reaching an estimated number of 17.3 million, or 5.6 percent of the total population. Asian Americans are categorized by ancestral roots in an area that covers more than one-third of the Earth, a region that includes the Far East, southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and a list of nations such as Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, among others. While a majority of Asian Americans are Christian, in total, the community practices a diverse range of faiths—Sikh, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism—and languages. Chinese (23 percent), Asian Indians (19 percent), and Filipinos (15 percent) comprise the largest Asian populations in America.

U.S. residents of Asian descent form the majority in some towns, cities, and states, with the highest concentration of Asian populations residing in California (5.6 million), New York (1.6 million), Texas (1.1 million), New Jersey (0.8 million), Hawai'i (0.8 million), Illinois (0.7 million), Washington (0.6 million), Florida (0.6 million), Virginia (0.5 million), and Pennsylvania (0.4 million). Overall, the Asian population grew in every state across the country between 2000 and 2010. Of the total number of U.S. residents of Asian descent, 14.6 million reported belonging to one Asian population alone and 2.6 million claimed Asian heritages in combination with some other group, with both totals increasing dramatically over the last decade. The median age of the total Asian population is 37.2 years, with 22 percent of the Asian population under the age of 18 and less than 10 percent over the age of 65.

In spite of a history of U.S. laws that prevented the naturalization, immigration, and enfranchisement of Asian Americans or targeted the community for prosecution and internment, Asian Americans have been active contributors to our national patrimony and are a vital and dynamic set of our citizenry, highlighted by a record number of Asian Americans serving in the U.S. Congress in 2013 and achievements and innovations in almost every sector of America. However, misconceptions about Asian Americans and their long history in the United States—for example, that Asian Americans are a “model minority” or “forever foreigners”—continue to obscure the understanding of the Asian American experience and the recognition of the central roles that Asian Americans have played, as heroes or foils, in the national story.

Furthermore, the diverse ancestral origins and varying waves of immigration and cultural histories means that Asian Americans are far from a monolithic community or linked by a continuous and monolithic narrative; the Asian American population is the summation of a growing and diverse set of classes, cultures, ethnicities, histories, languages, and religions that are intertwined with other populations, Asian and non-Asian alike, mixed race and via adoption. Indeed, the mixed-race Asian population and the adopted Asians, a practice beginning with Korea and continuing with Vietnam and China, are growing segments of the American population.

The Asian American experience is central to the understanding of a multicultural America, but the story is a set of discontinuous threads. The challenge is to provide, in a coherent and balanced manner, a comprehensive and workable Asian American narrative, even while the term Asian American continues to hold symbolic and political power. To paraphrase a work by Lisa Lowe, a scholar of Asian American studies, Asian Americans are marked by their heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity. These concepts describe the Asian American experience and demonstrate the [Page 293]need to recognize Asian Americans as a complex, changing, and growing set of communities in need of deeper study and greater attentiveness to the nuances of their experiences.

...