Today is the last day of Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month. To honor and uphold our community I want to remind you not to mess with my AANHPI relations, we’ll fight for visibility and to be included.

Asian Americans are the fastest growing race group in the US; growing 81% between 2000-2018. Native Hawaiians (70%) and Pacific Islanders (61%) (NHPI) are the third fastest growing group. As our numbers grow, we need systems and people to understand the needs and diversity of our race groups. We are not a monolith – the diversity and complexities within the AANHPI group deserved to be understood.

“When do we count?”

About a year ago several colleagues and I were talking to a national funder did not name Asians and Pacific Islanders as a target group for a major grant opportunity. It was disappointing, and we requested a meeting to hear out the funder on why AANHPIs were excluded and to make a point that our relations still need resources to overcome racism.

The funder explained their organization wanted to target funding and resources to those in need and the data they looked at showed that Asians are doing well. We listened politely then asked the question: Are you looking at disaggregated data? They said they did, we pressed more – are you looked at disaggregated data that looks at ethnic groups? Nope.

Asian leaders, especially our elders, in Washington have fought over decades for data visibility. They made great progress. Washington’s education system is a leader in collecting disaggregated racial data. Every public K-12 student in Washington can choose their race and ethnicity. When used properly and when people stop to analyze and use the data, we can see which Asian students are doing well and which ethnic groups are still struggling. The fight isn’t over, while the data is collected we need people, agencies, and systems to USE the disaggregated data and demand that disaggregated data down to ethnic groups is used.

My colleague who is a national expert on race and student data, said something to the effect of “When do we count?” She rattled off statistics showing the disparities in the Asian race group. Burmese high school graduation rates are 23% and Hmong 39%. Fifteen percent of Bhutanese and 19% of Pacific Islanders have a college degree, a far cry from the 55% for Asians overall. Black Americans with a BA is at 26%, way too low for both groups – we need to work to fix both problems simultaneously. My colleague’s mic drop moment was asking “When do we count?” These statistics are not good, when do Asians count for needing support and resources? We’ll own our Asian privilege, and not all Asians and Pacific Islanders are achieving at the same rate. (These weren’t the exact statistics my colleague shared, but in a similar vein.)

Don’t Oversimplify

Tonight, I had a similar conversation about AANHPI’s being left out of a government funding formula. As we talked, I told my colleague as East Asians with a lot of privilege I will own my East Asian privilege, but don’t exclude our SE Asians and our Pacific Islander communities – we’ve fought too hard for visibility – you’ll hear from us. We’ve fought hard for data visibility so people can see we are not a monolithic group. We also need to make sure we’re driving resources to Asians and Pacific Islanders who need it.

We can do this work in solidarity and inclusively with our POC relations. Oversimplification and doing lazy data and community work doesn’t lead to justice. Do the harder work of seeing Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders for who we are and be inclusive of our communities.

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