Tired of Marking Other

Asian American youths are often perceived as academic superstars with an innate love for scholastic activities, held up as examples of what can be accomplished in America. Portrayed as hard working, musically talented and mathematically brilliant, Asian Americans have been labeled the “model minority,” a myth introduced in the 1960s that has placed a cultural and societal standard on Asian Americans, creating expectations that are often difficult to live up to while pushing struggling members of the Asian American community into the dark. But as the Asian Pacific Islander population becomes a growing force in California, it is necessary to shed some light.

The reality is there is a segment of the Asian American population who are low-income students struggling to become the first in their family to earn a college degree. Most UC campuses have student bodies with an over 40 percent Asian population, but the success of some threatens to mask the experiences of Asians who are not doing as well. Responding to the differences, the Asian Pacific Coalition at UCLA, a coalition of 21 different Asian American and Pacific Islander student organizations, is leading the “Count Me In!” campaign to disaggregate data on Asian American Pacific Islanders. The UC must break down the “Other Asian” category on its application in order to reveal and comprehensively address the diverse needs of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

Currently, the UC system collects data on only a few Asian American communities and condenses underrepresented groups into the “Other Asian” category. The UC needs to enhance its admissions system to include data collection on students of Bangladeshi, Cambodian, Hmong, Indonesian, Laotian, Malaysian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Taiwanese and Thai backgrounds. The lack of statistical information has allowed disadvantaged Asian American groups to remain invisible and the model minority myth to persist, disguising the lack of influence, representation and access that Asian Americans have to many institutions in society. Blinded by the model minority perception, the suffering of certain Asian American groups has gone unmentioned. Students in need of attention have been lumped with more successful Asian Americans, creating a falsely homogenous group and making it difficult for them to receive the help they need.

Disaggregated data is needed to more specifically identify the severe educational inequalities within the community that are not addressed by university administrators. Claims to diversity may seem supported by the information made public by the UC when the reality is more likely the opposite. According to a report by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, there are only 50 Pacific Islander students at UCLA; that’s only 0.125 percent of the UCLA student population. Thus, a second objective of the campaign, to disaggregate Pacific Islanders from the Asian category altogether, would allow proper attention to their needs as a community that does not identify, ethnically, as Asian American. The center’s report also revealed that for the incoming class of 2006, the Hmong community was represented by only one undergraduate, one transfer and one graduate student, which raised the Hmong population to 18 out of approximately 40,000 students at UCLA.

Asian American communities that are condensed under the “Other Asian” category need more specific statistical information to justify the need for outreach projects that provide tutoring and mentoring services and combat the issue of accessibility to higher education. In Los Angeles County, 56 percent of the Khmer (Cambodian) community does not graduate from high school, as indicated in a demographic profile by the Asian Pacific Legal Center based on 2000 Census data; the average for whites is 11 percent. Without the appropriate data, it is difficult to track the admission and retention rates for Pacific Islander students. As a student advocacy group, the Asian Pacific Coalition is working to secure funding for outreach programs that serve Asian Pacific Islander communities facing disadvantages in access to higher education, an effort that can only be successful with improved data collection.

A large number of Asian American high school students attend low-income or low-performing schools, but are often compared with Asian American students who attend stronger academic schools and have more affluent, college-educated parents. Asian American youth face barriers to higher education, such as ethnic tension, lack of appropriate resources or gang-related violence in high schools, creating a need for outreach efforts that are dedicated to addressing these disadvantaged circumstances. Gaining more data by disaggregating the “Other Asian” category will facilitate the development of policies that will help Pacific Islander communities and prove useful for recruitment for Asian American and Pacific Islander student organizations.

The need for comprehensive and ethnic-specific data collection has become a statewide concern. Leading the statewide effort, State Assembly Member Ted Lieu introduced the bill AB 295 to ensure state data reported by the U.S. Census is disaggregated into all 20 Asian American and Pacific Islander ethnic groups. The bill ensures that state agencies dealing with health care, welfare, employment and discrimination collect data for additional Asian Pacific Islander ethnic groups. With similar objectives to the “Count Me In!” campaign on a statewide rather than UC wide level, AB 295 seeks to fully understand the needs of diverse Asian Pacific Islander communities.

Those who ignore the need to address Asian educational inequality argue that the large number of Asian American applicants to UC campuses is to blame for the lower numbers of other minority groups, namely African Americans and Latinos. In reality, the university’s admissions system is to blame. The problem is not Asian American admits, but rather the lack of action taken by the university to improve admissions of students of color, including Pacific Islander students. The need for disaggregated data is more pressing now than ever. As the Asian Pacific Coalition continues to shed light on the reality of the Asian American experience, the UC can no longer rely on the “model minority” myth and ignore the concerns of a fast growing population.

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