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Report highlights Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders

“Arizona doesn’t even see us. And when they do see us, I think it’s a stereotype of, ‘All Asians are intelligent and succeed,’ and therefore they don’t need any type of encouragement or counseling or tutoring and the like.”

Not all Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Arizona feel invisible, but according to a new report, released Nov. 13 by the Asian Pacific Arizona Initiative, many of them do.

The report, “The State of Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders in Arizona,” is the result of a year’s collaboration by ASU’s Asian Pacific American Studies program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the ASU for Arizona in the Office of Public Affairs.

It follows on the heels of a similar report, “The State of Black Arizona,” which was published last year, says Kathryn Nakagawa, interim director of the Asian Pacific American Studies program, who worked with former director Karen Leong on the project. Nakagawa, a professor in the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, assumed leadership of the project this past summer.

“This report arose from recognition that policymakers lack adequate information on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Arizona,” she says.

As student interns and community members began gathering data for the report, it became evident that “there was a lack of data,” Nakagawa says. Adult members of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were surveyed, and the ASU student interns staff conducted focus groups.

“From the initial collaborations, certain areas were identified as being important to the community,” Nakagawa says.

The communities – including immigrants and their descendants from China, Japan, Cambodia, India, the Philippines, Korea, Laos, Pakistan, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga and other countries – still suffer from the “Model Minority Myth,” Nakagawa says.

“That myth says that of all minorities, Asian Americans do the best,” she says. “They are successful. But just as with any group, some pockets do well and some don’t. They are not all going into engineering. There are health and language issues, and high rates of poverty among some groups.”

The report looks at several major areas: The history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Arizona; and issues dealing with health, economics and finances; language; the increasing complexity of biracial and multicultural issues; public safety; law; and politics.

The concluding chapter is on cultural festivals.

Highlights from the 80-page report include these facts:

• The growth in the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders community has been rapid. From 1980 to 2006, the rate of growth for Asian Americans was 599 percent, with the Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander rate at 738.6 percent. Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans and Asian Indian Americans comprise more than 50 percent of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders population in Arizona.
• Asian Americans visit doctors in lower numbers than the rest of the population. They are infected with the hepatitis B virus and tuberculosis at disproportionately high rates.
• Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have the lowest rates of using mental health services among all other racial groups, perhaps because of stigma or shame over using such services, lack of financial resources or language barriers.
• The Selig Center for Economic Growth estimates that the buying power of Asian Americans in Arizona will increase by 434 percent between 1990 and 2011.
• Asian Americans are leaving their traditional gateways to the West – California and Washington – because they are weary of jammed freeways, high home prices and persistent crime, and they are moving to other areas, such as Phoenix and Las Vegas.

Salt River Project donated the printing of 2,000 copies of the report, which will be given to the various Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders communities, state legislators, educators and others.

Copies of the report are available from the ASU Asian Pacific American Studies program at 480-965-9711.