"We're Trying To Construct This Sense Of New Community"

Summary:  Public opinion researchers spend a large part of their working lives speaking to Americans about their values and identity. In their quieter hours, they also have a chance to reflect on those questions for themselves. Last week, we shared a discussion of Asian American identity from a panel of More in Common’s current and past researchers and Dr. Jin Goh, a social psychologist who studies Asian American identity.  In our second and final part of this series, we’re sharing the panel’s reflections on misperceptions of Asian American communities and on using the term “Asian American” when conducting research.  

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This is the second part of a two-part series in recognition of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. You can read Part One here.

The Asian American demographic category encompasses more than twenty countries-of-origin, ranging from India in the south, China in the east, the Philippines in the southeast, and Iran in the west—with numerous languages, customs, and religions practiced within each country alone. This rich diversity of heritage was reflected in the stories and perspectives our panelists shared in Part One. 

Here, in Part Two, our conversation turns to exploring the tensions of employing the term “Asian American” to capture a population with rich diversity in ethnicities, cultures and lived experiences. Our panelists, whose ethnicities include Filipino, Indian, Chinese, Afghan, Vietnamese, and Malaysian, discuss perceptions—both accurate and inaccurate—about Asian Americans and the tradeoffs of using “Asian American” as a demographic category in research.  

Misperceptions about Asian American Communities    

Moderator, Calista Small, MIC Research Associate  

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What are some misperceptions that you think people have about you, Asian Americans in general, or your community?  

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Coco Xu, MIC Research Associate

Being perceived as not American without saying a word. Like I’d just walk on the street, and people would come up to me and just say “ni hao,” or “konichiwa”. There’s a strong feeling of being othered and observed, when I just want to be. This sense of hyper-visibility was particularly heightened during the pandemic and rise in anti-Asian violence – I still carry a pepper spray with me everywhere I go. 

Dr. Jin Goh, Professor at Colby College, Social Psychologist 

I still get asked, “Where are you from?” a lot.  

Fred Duong, MIC Research Fellow, Social Psychologist 

I was born and raised in Texas. I knew nothing else, but I also got “Where are you from?” a lot. I would say Texas. I would then get the follow up question, “No, where are you really from?” as if I couldn’t be “really” from Texas. 

Noelle Malvar, former MIC Senior Researcher, Social Psychologist 

I think for Filipinos—there are a lot of Filipinos working in other countries that have lower status jobs in the service industry. And I’ve gotten that assumption, you know, that I was a nanny.  

Coco Xu 

Even just the label itself —this “Asian American” image— is always very limited in the public imagination. It’s usually of a Chinese, or Japanese, or Korean American who grew up in California and now works in Silicon Valley, is seen as an “Asian robot,” and that’s it. 

Taran Raghuram, former MIC Researcher, Associate at Equal Opportunity Ventures

There’s a lot of inequality in the Asian community in the US. Like, you have people that are PhDs and MDs, and they’re very visible, and they get reinforced through popular media…but we also have this other end of the spectrum: people who didn’t speak English [growing up] come to be service workers, operate laundromats, that sort of thing. And so you have that tremendous wealth inequality between Asians. Then the second thing I’d add is Asians also are quite diverse ideologically. There’s this misperception that Asians, being a minority, would be much more on the left. But that’s not [always] the case. At least within the Asian communities I know, there’s a really strong strain of conservatism that runs through many of them. And then there’s racism in the Asian community among poor and rich.  

Dr. Jin Goh  

Asian Americans have the widest wealth gap and income gap in the US compared to every other racial group. We are the ones that have the richest and the poorest groups. But even within an ethnic group itself there is disparity: if you look at the Chinese population in New York, roughly 25% of Chinese Americans in New York live in poverty. And we don’t recognize that.  

Coco Xu 

Many cultural or political commentators seem to be so puzzled by the ideological diversity of Asian Americans, especially Asian Americans with conservative leanings. Some claim that the rightward shift among some Asian Americans reflects their aspiration to be adjacent to whiteness, which I think is quite reductive. Like Taran said, there has always been a strong strain of conservatism in Asian communities for a variety of reasons. Some are attracted to the appeal of the “strong man” political narrative. Some have socially conservative values, influenced perhaps by their culture or religion. Social economic status and immigration status also strongly orient what issues different Asian Americans prioritize. There’s also the proximity to or the historical memory of living under “communist” regimes, for example refugees from Vietnam, which makes some communities particularly allergic to certain language used by liberals. I personally think if researchers, commentators and political campaign teams actually go into these communities and talk to people about their histories, values and concerns, Asian Americans’ ideological diversity would not come as a surprise. 

Mohammed Naeem, former MIC Researcher, Deputy Director at the American Immigration Council 

I think there’s this wrong assumption that innovation happens in Western countries and then [the products] get manufactured in Asia. If you think about a nation like Taiwan, they’re not just a manufacturing base, they are also innovating, they’re creating, they’re designing, they’re leading the world. There is a sort of relationship like, “We invent, they build.” And that’s not exactly the case anymore. [Yet this idea is] pervasive across our politics. And I think it’s recycling some very harmful narratives.  

Noelle Malvar 

The one other thing I would add—one other stereotype that I’ve gotten is the “Asian women are timid and weak” stereotype. 

Coco Xu  

Yeah, when we go into the gender stuff, it gets so crazy. I always go on defense, like I get very aggressive, so I can subvert that trope. But, maybe it’s not the best way.  

Using the “Asian American” demographic category in research  

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How does aggregating data under the demographic category of “Asian American” aid or limit our understanding of the diverse experiences of people with Asian heritage living in the US? 

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Dr. Jin Goh  

I’ll talk about one very crucial story of data. During the COVID 19 pandemic, there was a lot of racial demographic data showing racial disparities in mortality due to COVID-19. A lot of the data was showing that Asian Americans were not dying from COVID-19 as much as other racial groups. And then researchers started disaggregating the data, and they saw there were wide ethnic disparities. For instance, Filipinos in California were dying at a much higher rate because a lot of Filipinos were working in the health care industry on the front line. When you use the monolithic “Asian American” category, this can erase the diverse experiences of the Asian American communities. In Minneapolis, Asian American deaths were also a small share of COVID-19 deaths. But once they disaggregated [the data], they saw that the Hmong population made up the majority of those Asian American deaths. There’s a huge concentration of the Hmong community in Minneapolis and Minnesota in general. When we say “Asian Americans aren’t dying from COVID 19,” you forget that there are very vulnerable populations that are dying. A lot of struggles are erased when we talk about “Asian Americans” very broadly.  

Mohammed Naeem 

From a purely methodological perspective, I think [having an Asian American demographic category] makes sense because you’re not going to be able to find a representative sample of every single Asian American community. I think my issue is with the lived experience of that construct. Asian Americans define themselves by country. I think it’s partly because there’s a uniqueness to the culture, and that speaks to us. I don’t necessarily think [using the Asian American demographic category] is problematic. But I do think that you have to peel the onion way back. Because if you don’t do that, you’re really losing the richness of where we come from, and what we come from.  

Taran Raghuram 

Yeah, I think we’re seeing a push to disaggregate because we’re missing a lot of stories by not disaggregating. [But] I keep thinking about the trade-off that comes with that because the more you fragment, the more you emphasize the differences among the Asian American community. I think the risk is, [when you focus on country-of-origin] then you lose the salience of the political class, right? Because if you reinforce this notion that We’re all Asian American, but really, you know, This person is Hmong, This person is Indian, This person is Taiwanese, I think we bring more of that “old world” thinking into this new space where we’re trying to construct this sense of new community among people that wouldn’t have necessarily identified with each other earlier. So, I think disaggregation is important from an analytical standpoint—to Jin’s point: you miss what’s happening to certain groups—but I think there’s also this risk of reinforcing differences in a community that’s found coherence.  

Fred Duong 

To underline this point, categories are basically labels we put on groups of people who can be different in many ways but have something in common. These labels are socially constructed —sometimes they come from history, sometimes they come from others, sometimes they come from within. But that’s also powerful. We can use them to highlight different shared experiences, depending on what we’re trying to do. 

Dr. Jin Goh 

I want to add to that to talk about political strategy. Let’s say the Hmong communities, they’re trying to advocate for change, but because they’re such a small community, the government may ignore them. But there’s power in numbers: when we come together [as Asian Americans] using one term, we have more power as a group to advocate for changes that would benefit everyone. Of course, this doesn’t work if the money only goes to, let’s say, East Asian communities, right? That’s why we need to be more purposeful. How do we fight for change together that will benefit everyone under the umbrella of “Asian American”?  

Sharing Asian American stories

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What stories about Asian Americans do you want our readers to know about? 

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Noelle Malvar 

Stories that go beyond the struggles of a diasporic past, and stories about and from Asian Americans that are not self-conscious about their nuanced experiences, some of which may not fit the expected template of a majority audience. Stories that don’t pander to the historically intended audience (e.g. White). Stories that show the diversity of thought among Asian American cultures, subcultures, families. Stories that are unapologetic and are written from a place where the Asian American identity defines but doesn’t limit characters’ lives. 

Dr. Jin Goh 

You can identify as your ethnic group and as well as Asian American. [You] can be both Asian American and Vietnamese American or Malaysian American. It doesn’t have to be a trade-off. That’s the beauty of identities. And what makes the Asian American [identity] is exactly the diversity of Asian American communities within it. 

Thank you!

Thank you for reading. We hope you enjoyed the conversation and gained a new perspective on different dimensions of American identity. For further exploration, we encourage you to check out: 

Recommended Reports: 

📄The 2023 STAATUS Index survey, the leading national study of American attitudes towards the AAPI community.

📄The latest report on Asian American identity from the Pew Research Center: Diverse Cultures and Shared Experiences Shape Asian American Identities.

Book Recommendations From Our Panelists: 

📚 “The Making of Asian America,” by Erica Lee 

📚“How to Read Now,” by Elaine Castillo 

📚“Trick Mirror,” by Jia Tolentino 

📚“The Sympathizer,” by Viet Thanh Nguyen 

📚“Free Food for Millionaires,” by Min Jin Lee 

📚“The Interpreter of Maladies,” by Jhumpa Lahiri 

📚“Things We Lost to the Water,” by Eric Nguyen 

📚“Minor Feelings,” by Cathy Park Hong 

🛍 To purchase these books, you can visit this link for a list of AAPI-owned bookstores.

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🔍 Research Recommendations

If you are conducting public opinion research in the US, here are some recommendations we synthesized based on our conversations: 

1. Use the Asian American demographic category when conducing research and recruit a robust, representative sample of Americans of Asian descent.
2. However, whenever possible, also disaggregate the data by region or country-of-origin.  
3. Be transparent in your methods of how you do this.  
4. Conversations on how to best research Asian American populations need to happen more often. These conversations can be opportunities for researchers to come together, learn from each other, and problem-solve. 

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Thank you to Asian American illustrator and designer, Sylvia Asuncion-Crabb, for her illustrations that helped bring this conversation to life.  You can view her portfolio here.

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