Asian Americans in the United States
Asian Americans in relation to Crime and Race
Asian Americans is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Although they have physical similarities and their ancestral origins are in continental Asia, individuals who identify themselves as Asian come from a broad range of cultures, ethnicities, and societies.
With the 2000 U.S. Census, the category of Asian American was expanded to include immigrants from various island nations: Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, and Hawaii. In most demographic reports, these latter locales have given rise to the identifiable reporting category of Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA). Each immigrant identifies with a particular group, and these groups share many unique and distinct social and sometimes physical characteristics. Over the course of immigration history, Asians have been depicted as a “model minority” who keep to themselves, are industrious, and rarely engage in antisocial behavior.
Discrimination
The story of white America’s mistreatment of Asians is a lengthy one, as in the case of hispanics and African americans. They have faced discrimination from the first day they arrived in this country. As with all immigrant groups, assimilation into the white-dominated population has been difficult. Assimilation is the process by which people of one culture merge into and become part of another culture.
Chinese laborers were the first Asians to come to the United States in large numbers. They were brought here in the 1850s to 1860s as contract laborers to work in the mines and to build railroads in the West. Many white Americans, native-born and immigrants, resented the competition of “coolie labor.” Their resentments were frequently expressed in violence toward Asians.
Congress brought Chinese immigration nearly to a halt with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Because of this and other government actions, only a very small number of Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians were permitted to enter the United States for more than 80 years.
Early in World War II, the Federal Government ordered the evacuation of all persons of Japanese descent from the Pacific Coast. Some 120,000 people, two thirds of them native-born American citizens, were forcibly removed to inland “war relocation camps.” Years later, the Government conceded that that action had been both unnecessary and unjust.
Congress made dramatic changes in American immigration policies in 1965. Since then, some eight million Asian immigrants have come to this country, mostly from the Philippines, China, Korea, Vietnam, and India. The term “Asian American” describes an ever more diverse population. Asian Americans represent a tremendous variety of languages, religions, and cultures, and many recent immigrants from Asia have little in common with one another.
Today, the Asian American population exceeds 16 million, and it is, with the hispanics, the United States’s fastest growing minority group. Asian Americans now live in every part of the United States. They are a majority of the population in Hawaii and more than 10 percent of that of California. New York City boasts the largest Chinese community outside of China itself.
Resources
Notes and References
- Entry about Asian Americans in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime