Why Asian Americans are Becoming Mainstream

Daedalus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 142 (3) ◽  
pp. 65-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nee ◽  
Hilary Holbrow
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Socioeconomic Attainment ◽  
Residential Communities ◽  
Asian Immigration ◽  
Asian American Immigrants

In contrast to earlier waves of immigration, the post–1965 Asian immigration to the United States has not spawned an exclusionist backlash among native whites. Rather, the new Asian immigrants and their children are rapidly gaining access to the American mainstream. Whether in integrated residential communities, in colleges and universities, or in mainstream workplaces, Asian Americans' presence is ever more the rule, not the exception. The success of so many Asian American immigrants suggests that race may not be as decisive a factor in shaping socioeconomic attainment as it was in the American past; civil rights reform has been incorporated in a more inclusive American mainstream. As a group in which those of legal status predominate, Asian Americans have enjoyed more open access to mainstream institutions, paving the way to their rapid assimilation.

Accurately Counting Asian Americans Is a Civil Rights Issue

2018 ◽  
Vol 677 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lee ◽  
Karthick Ramakrishnan ◽  
Janelle Wong
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Data Disaggregation ◽  
Rights Issue ◽  
The U.S

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing group in the United States, increasing from 0.7 percent in 1970 to nearly 6 percent in 2016. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2065, Asian Americans will constitute 14 percent of the U.S. population. Immigration is fueling this growth: China and India have passed Mexico as the top countries sending immigrants to the United States since 2013. Today, two of three Asian Americans are foreign born—a figure that increases to nearly four of five among Asian American adults. The rise in numbers is accompanied by a rise in diversity: Asian Americans are the most diverse U.S. racial group, comprising twenty-four detailed origins with vastly different migration histories and socioeconomic profiles. In this article, we explain how the unique characteristics of Asian Americans affect their patterns of ethnic and racial self-identification, which, in turn, present challenges for accurately counting this population. We conclude by discussing policy ramifications of our findings, and explain why data disaggregation is a civil rights issue.

Post-1965 Changes in Asian America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Hinnershitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
World War ◽  
Chinese Exclusion ◽  
The 1960S

After World War II and through the 1960s, Asian Americans began a transformative process, from being the “yellow peril” to becoming the model minority, and Asian Americans in the South experienced, to some degree, the same transformation. The war and its mottos of fighting for freedom and democracy at home and abroad affected the way Americans viewed their own hypocrisy toward minorities in the United States. African Americans were the largest minority group to use the aims of the war to demand attention to their plight with Jim Crow, prompting the growth of a nationwide civil rights movement, but Americans also came to view the century-old forms of legal discrimination against Asian immigrants and Asian Americans in a new light. Not only did Congress repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 (making it legal for some Chinese to naturalize and allowing a small number of Chinese immigrants to enter the United States), but Filipino Americans and Indian Americans received similar treatment during and after World War II. In 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act (or the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952), although designed to protect American security during the early Cold War by prohibiting and deporting subversive aliens, also made it possible for Asian immigrants of all ethnicities to become American citizens (while the number of Asians admitted to the United States did not drastically increase). Americans also viewed the ability of Japanese Americans to overcome the massive civil rights violations of wartime imprisonment and achieve economic and educational success as a model for all minorities to follow. Asian Americans came through the fires of World War II and proved that they were loyal Americans and deserving of equal treatment and respect, and while more subtle and sometimes not so subtle forms of racism and discrimination ...

Adapting Identities: Religious Conversion and Partisanship Among Asian American Immigrants

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 692-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre P. Audette ◽  
Mark Brockway ◽  
Christopher L. Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Incorporation ◽  
Asian American Immigrants ◽  
Religious Landscape

Asian Americans constitute the largest group of new immigrants and the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. While Asian American immigrants have experienced greater economic success than other minority groups, this has not necessarily led to greater political incorporation such as identification with a political party. Political parties have made little substantive outreach to Asian Americans, leaving a void in political socialization that other institutions, such as churches, have sought to fill. Yet the U.S. religious landscape is often quite different from that of Asian immigrants’ sending countries, providing opportunities for changes in religious identity through conversion. Leveraging data from the 2012 Pew Asian American Survey, we show that conversion from Buddhism to Christianity among Asian American immigrants facilitates the development of partisan political identities. We demonstrate that conversion functions as an adaptation in identity that helps facilitate subsequent changes in identity, such as the acquisition of partisanship.

scholarly journals New Land, New Rubrics: Presenting Diasporic Experience of Asian-American Immigrants in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Selected Short Stories

sjesr ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 278-285
Author(s):  
Hassan Bin Zubair ◽  
Akifa Imtiaz ◽  
Asma Kashif Shahzad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Her Family ◽  
American Society ◽  
Central Characters ◽  
Asian American Immigrants

This research explored the lives and worldviews of Asian immigrants in the United States presented in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's stories in The Unknown Errors of Our Lives (2001). Central characters in Divakaruni's narratives embody the sufferings of immigrants in the New Land. Precisely it was proposed to study the stories from the perspective of the diaspora. In this collection, the researcher has selected five stories, including "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter," "The Intelligence of Wild Things," "The Blooming Season for Cacti," "The Names of Stars in Bengali," and "The Unknown Errors of Our Lives." Since the characters like Mrs. Dutta, Mira, Radhika, and Kahuku's mother emigrate from India to different zones of America, they combat issues of cultural contradiction, identity crisis, disruption and family strives. Unlike them, Tarun, Mrs. Dutta's son, and her family are assimilated into the American society, whereas the characters such as Mrs. Dutta, Didi, and Mira recurrently remember their original house and early childhood days with friends. It is because they are fragmented and frustrated in America. The study concluded that the characters in her stories are ambitious and want to live a luxurious life but because of the lack of opportunities, they could not fulfill their desires and even some of them decided to return to their homeland to get a better life.

scholarly journals Talent Selection and the Reshaping of Asian North America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calvin N. Ho
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Talent Selection ◽  
Asian Immigration ◽  
Socioeconomic Diversity ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Skilled Immigrant ◽  
Immigrant Selection

Policies that admit immigrants based on their education have dramatically reshaped the demographics of the United States and Canada. In the mid-1960s, facing pressures to open their borders to non-Europeans, both countries replaced previous policies of racial and nationality discrimination with new systems of socioeconomic discrimination. These policies explain the growth of Asian immigration from the 1970s onward, as well as the high levels of education among Asian immigrants and their descendants. Refugees and family migrants, however, added socioeconomic diversity. Recent developments in skilled immigrant selection programs will continue to shape Asian American and Asian Canadian demographics in the future.

scholarly journals Talent Selection and the Reshaping of Asian North America

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 57-84
Author(s):  
Calvin N. Ho
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Talent Selection ◽  
Asian Immigration ◽  
Socioeconomic Diversity ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Skilled Immigrant ◽  
Immigrant Selection

Policies that admit immigrants based on their education have dramatically reshaped the demographics of the United States and Canada. In the mid-1960s, facing pressures to open their borders to non-Europeans, both countries replaced previous policies of racial and nationality discrimination with new systems of socioeconomic discrimination. These policies explain the growth of Asian immigration from the 1970s onward, as well as the high levels of education among Asian immigrants and their descendants. Refugees and family migrants, however, added socioeconomic diversity. Recent developments in skilled immigrant selection programs will continue to shape Asian American and Asian Canadian demographics in the future.

scholarly journals Asian American Older Adults and Social Isolation: A Systematic Literature Review

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 328-328
Author(s):  
Simona Kwon ◽  
Deborah Min ◽  
Stella Chong
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Social Isolation ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eligibility Criteria

Abstract Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial and ethnic minority group in the United States, whose population is aging considerably. Previous studies indicate that social isolation and loneliness disproportionately affects older adults and predicts greater physical, mental, and cognitive decline. A systematic literature review using PRISMA guidelines was conducted to address this emerging need to understand the scope of research focused on social isolation and loneliness among the disparity population of older Asian Americans. Four interdisciplinary databases were searched: PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and AgeLine; search terms included variations on social isolation, loneliness, Asian Americans, and older adults. Articles were reviewed based on six eligibility criteria: (1) research topic relevance, (2) study participants aged >60 years, (3) Asian immigrants as main participants, (4) conducted in the United States, (5) published between 1995-2019, and (6) printed in the English language. The search yielded 799 articles across the four databases and 61 duplicate articles were removed. Abstracts were screened for the 738 remaining studies, 107 of which underwent full-text review. A total of 56 articles met the eligibility criteria. Synthesis of our review indicates that existing research focuses heavily on Chinese and Korean American immigrant communities, despite the heterogeneity of the diverse Asian American population. Studies were largely observational and employed community-based sampling. Critical literature gaps exist surrounding social isolation and loneliness in Asian American older adults, including the lack of studies on South Asian populations. Future studies should prioritize health promotion intervention research and focus on diverse understudied Asian subgroups.

A Critical Transnational Perspective to Asian America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yen Le Espiritu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
Vietnamese Refugees ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Rights Discourse

Much of the early scholarship in Asian American studies sought to establish that Asian Americans have been crucial to the making of the US nation and thus deserve full inclusion into its polity. This emphasis on inclusion affirms the status of the United States as the ultimate protector and provider of human welfare, and narrates the Asian American subject by modern civil rights discourse. However, the comparative cases of Filipino immigrants and Vietnamese refugees show how Asian American racial formation has been determined not only by the social, economic, and political forces in the United States but also by US colonialism, imperialism, and wars in Asia.

Strength in Numbers: Perceptions of Political Commonality with African Americans among Asians and Asian Americans in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
Harvey L. Nicholson ◽  
J. Scott Carter ◽  
Arjee Restar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
The United States ◽  
Group Consciousness ◽  
Relational Dynamics ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
Political Alliances

Asians are now the fastest growing racial minority group in the United States. Nearly 18 million Asians and Asian Americans currently reside in the country. Approximately 44 million African Americans also live in the United States. To improve their limited social, economic, and political clout, Asians and Asian Americans in the United States (AAAUS) could benefit from the formation of mutually beneficial political alliances with African Americans, another historically marginalized racial group. However, complicated relational dynamics between African Americans and AAAUS may drastically reduce the chances of political unity. Using the 2008 National Asian American Survey, the authors examine the effects of three factors—group consciousness, linked fate, and experiences of discrimination—on perceptions of political commonality with African Americans among AAAUS. The findings show that group consciousness and linked fate positively and strongly increase the odds of perceptions of political commonality with African Americans; however, experiences of discrimination do not. The results suggest that the cultivation of mutually beneficial political alliances between African Americans and AAAUS would first require AAAUS to develop a heightened sense of group consciousness and linked fate. The potential impact of these factors on future political alliances between both groups are discussed, as are the limitations of this study.

2. Race and the American republic

2016 ◽  
pp. 25-51
Author(s):  
Madeline Y. Hsu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Property Ownership ◽  
Asian Immigration ◽  
The Right ◽  
Successful Integration

Asian immigration tested American ideals of equality, forcing the issue of whether all racial groups could be integrated into the United States. “Race and the American Republic” describes the various laws—including the 1790 Nationality Act, which limited the right of citizenship by naturalization to “free white persons”; the 1913 Alien Land Law; and the 1917 Barred Zone Act—that shaped attitudes and institutional practices regarding whether and how Asians could claim rights and belonging. Exclusion at the borders paralleled laws that enacted forms of segregation domestically. The cornerstones of successful integration into American lives—citizenship, property ownership, and mixed-race marriage—were made unavailable to later Asian immigrants.

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