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The Model Minority?

By Joyce Nishioka

If you have ever walked the streets of Chinatown and seen the tiny “single resident occupancy” units that more often than not house entire families, if you know Asian immigrant women who work in sewing factories making below minimum wage, if you have ever talked to immigrant youth who are struggling to graduate from this country’s urban high schools — you know that not all Asian Pacific Americans have achieved the American dream.

Many APA community groups were aware of these inequities long before the release of the 2000 Census. In fact, in an effort to confront discrimination, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (NHPI) activists lobbied to create a separate category for their population. By doing so, they believed statistics would reveal NHPIs as an underclass, a community that still faces barriers to participating fully in American society.

Indeed the 2000 Census indicated that and more. For the first time, the Census classified NHPIs into a distinct group, comprised of Native Hawaiians, Samoans, Tongans, Guamanians, Melanesians, and others. In almost all socioeconomic categories, African Americans and Latinos fared the worst, while non-Hispanic whites maintained their position as the privileged class. For example, the national poverty rate was 12.4 percent, but broken down, the proportion was 8.1 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 22.6 percent for Latinos and 24.9 percent for African Americans.

Other data indicates even further division within the APA population. While it may appear that APAs have achieved the American dream, a closer look at the statistics shows a highly diverse population, one in which a sizeable proportion continues to struggle. (Note: Census data is classified according to its time of release. The latest data released is known as SF3 socioeconomic data. The SF3 socioeconomic data does not provide information for the “Two Race or more” category, so we were forced to exclude hapas from this analysis.)

APAs were, by and large, an immigrant population. In 1990, 65.6 percent of APAs were born in foreign countries. In 2000, the proportion increased to 68.9 percent, while just 11.1 percent of the total U.S. population was foreign-born. Contrary to the stereotype of being foreigners clinging to their old country, APAs became naturalized citizens at high rates: 49.9 percent versus 40.3 percent of the total foreign-born population.

Given these statistics, it is no surprise that language remained one of the biggest barriers for APAs. In 2000, 2.6 percent of 105,539,122 U.S. households spoke an Asian language, the most common being Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog. Of those Asian-language households, 29.2 percent — or 801,253 households — were linguistically isolated, meaning that all the adults in the household (high school age and older) had some limitation in communicating in English.

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APAs received higher education at astounding rates: 44.1 percent of Asian Americans 25 years and over attained bachelor’s degrees or higher (master’s degrees, Ph.D.s or professional degrees), compared with 27 percent of non-Hispanic whites, 14 percent of African Americans, 13.8 percent of Pacific Islanders and 10.4 percent of Latinos.

At the other end of the spectrum, 19.6 percent of all Americans 25 years old and over had no high school diploma. Non-Hispanic whites had the smallest ratio of people in this category, 14.5 percent. APAs were next with 19.6 percent followed by NHPIs with 21.7 percent, African Americans with 27.7 percent, and Latinos with 47.6 percent.

Despite the impressive educational achievements of Asian Americans, it must also be pointed out that a smaller proportion of APA women attained at least a high school diploma than average. While nationwide the proportion was 80.7 percent, slightly lower percentages of NHPI women (78.4 percent) and Asian American women (77.8 percent) fell into this category.

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In 2000, Asian American families had the highest median family income, $59,324, compared to the national average of $50,046. Non-Hispanic white families trailed with $54,698. NHPI families had a median income of $45,915, followed by Latinos with $34,397, and African Americans with $33,255. Still, because APA families were larger than average, in terms of per capita income, they earned significantly less than non-Hispanic whites ($24,819). The per capita incomes for Asian Americans, NHPIs, blacks and Latinos were $21,823, $15,054, $14,437 and $12,111 respectively.

While Asian Americans appeared to be doing relatively well in terms of income, statistics that break down the numbers in terms of ethnicity — due in 2003 when the Census releases SF4 data from Census 2000 — are sure to tell a different story. Just as creating a new category for NHPIs indicated large disparities between the average Asian American and the average NPHI, data broken down by ethnicity should show other gaps.

Moreover, despite sporting higher median family and household incomes than non-Hispanic whites, Asian Americans had higher poverty rates, too. The ratio for women living in poverty was 9.1 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 12.7 percent for Asian Americans, 18.7 percent for NHPIs, 24.2 percent for Latinos, and 26.7 percent for African Americans. Among Asian Americans, seniors and children were more likely than average to be poor.

Joyce Nishioka is the former editor-in-chief of AsianWeek.