People take a moment of silence to mourn the six Asian Americans killed in the March 2021 Atlanta mass shooting during a rally in Houston against hate incidents.
Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle 2021Usually, the conversation goes something like this:
“So, where are you from?” Well-Meaning person asks.
“I grew up in the Sacramento area,” is how I usually reply.
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Not satisfied with that answer, Well-Meaning, follows up with, “But where are you really from?”
If that sounds familiar, it’s because it happens so often to Asian Americans and others who don’t look like what many consider to be prototypical American.
I got some version of this question regularly while growing up in a small town outside of Sacramento with few Asian Americans. Living in a rural area, maybe that’s not unexpected. I used to brush it aside, but I was always left with a gnawing sense that I didn’t belong. I realize now that this is not the case, but that sense of being an outsider lingers.
It’s not surprising that this feeling is widespread among Asian Americans, and now there’s new data to quantify it. The idea that Asian Americans are “foreigners” — no matter if they’re native-born U.S. citizens or have lived in the country for decades — is the basis of much of the discrimination they face, according to a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.
In the report, 78% of respondents to a survey of Asian Americans said they had been treated as “foreigners” and some respondents recounted being told to “go back to their home countries.”
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Pew’s report is based on a survey of 7,006 people and is the largest nationally representative poll of Asian Americans, allowing researchers to capture the group’s diversity.
“There’s been a lot of national attention recently since COVID-19 with the rise of anti-Asian hate and discrimination. But discrimination against Asian Americans is not new,” said Neil Ruiz, Pew’s head of new research initiatives and the report’s co-author.
More from Harry Mok
Asians in America — like all racial minorities — have always faced discrimination, and what scholars call being “perpetual foreigners” permeates it.
It’s why early Chinese immigrants endured many discriminatory laws, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned most immigration from China for 60 years.
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It’s why hate incidents against South Asian Americans, who looked Muslim, and Muslim Americans rose after 9/11.
It’s why more than 11,000 reports of anti-Asian hate have been collected by the group Stop AAPI Hate since the beginning of the pandemic.
That’s why it’s also not surprising that 58% of Asian American adults surveyed by Pew said they experienced discrimination or being treated differently because of their race. Or, that 57% said discrimination is a major problem, and that 63% said too little attention is paid to racial issues concerning Asian Americans.
One of those racial issues is what’s known as the model minority stereotype. The survey found that 53% of respondents believed they experienced this stereotyping.
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Along with perpetual foreignness, being viewed as the model minority are “two types of stereotypes that shape their experience, that are driving the discrimination” directed at Asian Americans, Ruiz said.
At first glance, it doesn’t sound bad. It’s the perception that Asian Americans are smart — particularly with math — and have high educational and income levels.
Well, if you are like me and not good at math, you might become a journalist. My parents got over it (mostly) when I didn’t become a doctor, engineer or lawyer. But overcoming parental pressure and going beyond the stereotypical careers for Asian Americans can be a tortuous path. For some, these unattainable expectations cause mental health and other problems.
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Lumped together, Asian Americans do have high incomes and educational attainment. But a deeper dive into the numbers reveals glaring disparities.
For example, some Southeast Asian groups have some of the nation’s highest poverty rates and lowest levels of education. When it comes time to dole out scarce resources, some of these groups could get left out because their needs are glossed over by model minority stereotypes.
The model minority baggage also includes the perception that Asian Americans are book smart and good worker bees, but when applying for promotions, they hit the “bamboo ceiling” because they are perceived as not having the personality traits to be managers or CEOs.
Another negative: As the model minority, Asian Americans are used as a wedge and “upheld as a model for how other racial and ethnic minorities should behave — especially in comparison with Black Americans and Latinos,” the Pew report said.
This happened in the lawsuit over affirmative action in college admissions, which the Supreme Court effectively gutted. Some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were Asian Americans, recruited by conservative groups to end what they view as unfair preferential treatment for Black and Latino students.
Though the survey found that many Asian Americans are concerned about racial issues, most respondents also reported that race was never (38%) or rarely (30%) discussed in their families.
This mirrors the finding that Asian Americans 65 and older, who were typically immigrants, didn’t feel discrimination was as much of a problem as younger people.
I know my Chinese immigrant parents always soldiered on when there was a hardship, so I can see how something like racism might not be discussed by some Asian American families. Whatever this country throws at you, try to dodge it and survive.
But avoiding the issue won’t solve it.
While the problems described by Pew are not new, the findings are a reminder that racism and discrimination linger now that Black Lives Matter and anti-Asian hate are out of the daily news cycle. Finding solutions to these problems was beyond the scope of the survey. That’s what we’re supposed to do by learning about each other and our differences, setting those aside and seeing the similarities.
Reach Harry Mok: hmok@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @harrymok
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