Color and Variation

Asian Americans constitute roughly 4 percent of the US population and 20 percent of the class of 2011 . One might at first be inclined to frown at a seeming infestation of the gawky and bespectacled yellow masses into our most elite and whitewashed institutions—but before we indulge in the image, let’s try to imagine more precisely the demographic to which the numbers refer.

It is true that here on campus being Asian American lumps you in more than sets you apart. The usual guess is that any given Asian American has perfect SATs plus or minus a few questions, the best high school rank plus or minus a few spots, and (of course) closet talent as concert pianist/violinist/flutist. Usually your guess is spot-on. Yet, despite the ease with which we can imagine homogeneity in this crowd of black-haired, brown-eyed boys and girls, the categorization is deceptive in its simplicity.

We need to look no further than a few student groups on campus. It is interesting to observe which groups identify most with the term “Asian American”—although we have separate student groups for individual ethnicities, we find that “Asian American” on campus refers most readily to the Far East. For example, the executive board of the Asian American Association is made up of fourteen Chinese, two Korean, and one Vietnamese. An odd dynamic can be observed in that South Asians here do not readily identify with Asian America at large; instead, they tend to congregate in separate student groups.

From these prominent organizations we can sense that the data publicized by the admissions office is very opaque—while it gives a racial breakdown, it reveals nothing about ethnicity, self-identification, or dynamics between ethnicities. The question, of course, is whether a painstakingly detailed ethnic breakdown is relevant. After all, Caucasians come from all over Europe, and we usually don’t distinguish Irish from Scot from Belgian. The circumstance that makes Asian American diversity important, however, is that this group is particularly new to the country; Asians only first began arriving in the late nineteenth century, and much of the influx has occurred post-1965.

The 2000 US Census divides the Asian population into 11 major constituencies: Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, Pakistani, and Thai. Several groups dominate this pool: The Chinese alone comprise almost a quarter of the Asian demographic, and Filipinos make up just under a fifth. Asian Indians rank third at 16 percent, the Vietnamese and Koreans hold 11% each, and Japanese make up an additional 8 percent. In contrast, Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, Pakistani, and Thai Asians each comprise under 2 percent of the Asian population .

Each of these groups has experienced radically different immigration histories and trajectories. Chinese and Japanese have the longest history in America, with workers beginning to arrive around the turn of the twentieth century to work on America’s transcontinental railroads. Many Southeast Asians arrived post-1965 as refugees from Vietnam and other crisis countries; many Indians have arrived in recent years to work in information technology . Thus, we see a wide range across the spectrum of socioeconomic attainment and acculturation, the scope of which often becomes troublingly lost in categorizations of Asian America. In particular, success myths of what Asian America represents—a high-achieving, model minority with overabundant work ethic—are largely inaccurate when applied across the board.

One of the most visible suggestions of “model minority” status arises in the domain of educational attainment. It is true that some Asian Americans have attained high levels of scholarly achievement—for instance, 64 percent of Asian Indians hold at least a bachelor’s degree, and over 50 percent of Chinese and Pakistani do. The counter story, however, is one we must also keep in mind; among Cambodians, Hmong and Laotians, only 8 or 9 percent graduate college—in fact, only about half graduate high school .Thus the label of Asian-American, and particularly of the “model minority” Asian American, denies acknowledgement to the many subgroups that desperately need help. Given the inequality between groups, statistics like the 44 percent of the Asian population holding a bachelor’s degree (compared to 26 percent of the white population) is ultimately meaningless.

Of course, there is a limit to how finely you can split categorical hairs. Especially given increasing rates of intermarriage between races and ethnicities, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep group boundaries clear. The 2000 Census marked the first time that people could identify with different race groups—thus, the United States recognizes 63 races based on self-identification, arising from six individual categories and the 57 possible combinations thereof. We could apply this logic to different ethnicities—but somehow it seems preposterous to think that creating a different ethnicity for every single combination of eleven Asian groups (that’s 2,047 possible “ethnicities”) will mean a damn thing.

Ultimately, the level of categorization needed in practical situations will determine the degree to which we break down or lump together these many different peoples. The sensitivity we must acquire is merely a recognition of this tension—that it is a fine line to tread on the spectrum between accuracy and practicality, and that at any point in the continuum we risk both imprecision and overgeneralization.

N. Kathy Lin ’08 is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.