Learning About Diversity @ Your Library

In the United States, 20.6 million people identify as Asian American, Native Hawaiian, or other Pacific Islander (AAPI). AAPI people are, according to the 2020 Census, 6.2% of the American population!

In the American context, AAPI people can be described as those whose ancestors fall into the following categories:

Pacific Islanders from Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga, Guam, among other places.

Southeast Asians from Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Phillippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Burma, among other places. 

South Asians from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka, among other places.

Central Asians from Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolila, among other places.

East Asians from China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Tibet, among other places.

But West Asians, people from what is more generally called the Middle East, are not considered to be part of the AAPI identity.

Americans of AAPI descent are incredibly diverse, speaking dozens of languages and practicing many different religions, heirs to different cultural traditions. Most do not identify with the label "Asian" or "Asian-American," preferring to identify more accurately with their specific cultural backgound. AAPI people have separate histories in their families' countries of origins, and different American experiences.

While people whose ancestors originate in various parts of Asia and the Pacific Islands may not have much in common culturally or linguistically, they have very often been lumped together in the United States, and singled out for discrimination and violence. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, for example, forbade Chinese workers from immigrating to the United States. They and their American-born families were barred from American citizenship until 1943. During World War II, Japanese Americans were stripped of their property and imprisoned under harsh conditions  for the duration of the war. The groups who organized to fight these injustices did so as separate ethnic groups, not as pan-Asians.
In the late 1960s, as African-Americans, Native Americans, and other groups of Americans organized to fight discrimination, student activists Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka recognized the need for a multiethnic coalition to unite under a single identity in order to address common problems suffered by immigrants and descendants of immigrants from Asian countries.  Recognizing that bigotry did not differentiate between different ethnicities, they coined the term "Asian American" and founded the Asian American Political Alliance to effect political and social change, to ally with Black, Chicano, and Native American organizations, and to oppose the war in Vietnam.

In 1982, a Chinese-American man named Vincent Chin was murdred by unemployed white auto workers who believed Chin was Japanese and scapegoated him for the loss of their jobs, due to competition from Japanese auto manufacturers. The plea deal that allowed the killers to avoid jail time and pay only a $3,000 fine sparked outrage in all Asian American communities and became the catalyst for a new chapter in the civil rights movement.  After the September 11th attacks, many South Asians perceived as Muslims suffered from discrimination and hate crimes, and called for solidarity with other Asians and people of color.  A surge in anti-Asian sentiment and violence during the COVID-19 pandemic led to the founding of Stop AAPI Hate, whose advocacy resulted in a new law to protect Asian Americans from hate crimes and discrimination. 

Organizing to fight discrimination, however, has led to new opportunities for cultural exchange and community building. Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, first observed in 1990, celebrates the contributions, accomplishments, and cultures of Americans whose ancestors came from Asia and the Pacific Islands.  The Smithsonian Museum's Asian American Pacific Center. founded in 1997, aims to tell the stories and celebrate the lives of the millions of Asians and Pacific Islanders who have been part of the American story for 200 years. The Association for Asian American Studies promotes the interdisciplinary field available in colleges and universities across the country that "critically examines the history, issues, sociology, religion, experiences, culture, and policies relevant to Asian Americans."