Image from Pew Research Center's report, "The Rise of Asian Americans."

Sometimes, a two-page press release can have greater impact on race

relations in the United States than an entire report. That certainly

seemed to be the case last week, when the Pew Research Center put out a

215-page report on the growing importance of Asian Americans.

The report had many commendable aspects, including presenting new data on

the six largest Asian American groups, adding to our knowledge from past demographic

studies and surveys. It presented a

trove of graphs, maps, and tables for the largest national-origin groups. Unfortunately,

it also prioritized questions asked of Asian Americans -- regarding their

parenting styles and their own stereotypes about Americans -- that seemed more

concerned with Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother than with the

priorities of Asian Americans themselves, either as revealed in past surveys or

as articulated by organizations serving those communities. And the demographic

analysis did not adequately cover national origin groups whose economic

outcomes are far less promising.

More concerning than the Pew report, however, was the sensationalist

headline on the press release

that introduced the study to news media: Asians Overtake Hispanics in New

Immigrant Arrivals; Surpass US Public in Valuing Marriage, Parenthood, Hard

Work. These few words carried sway in hundreds of newspaper articles in the

first two days of the report’s release, provoking outrage among broad swaths of

the Asian American community, including many researchers, elected officials,

and community organizations.

As one of 15 advisors to the project, I felt blindsided by the press release.

Words failed me as I read it for the first time, as we had not gotten a chance

to review it. The dominant narrative in the release reinforced the frame of

Asians as a model minority, stereotypes that the advisors had strongly objected

to in the only meeting of the group two months ago. What we contested in private

then, and what others are challenging in public now, is a monolithic frame that

often renders invisible the struggles of many who fall under the Asian American

label.

What made this press release particularly troubling, however, were the

invidious comparisons it seemed to invite, of a racial group that is overtaking

Hispanics and other Americans in a metaphorical race for national supremacy. As

many critics have rightly noted, this zero-sum frame has been invoked time and

again since its formal articulation

in 1966 -- when Japanese and Chinese Americans were valorized in relation to

other minority groups, and yet still viewed as perpetually foreign. And the

model minority myth has often had detrimental effects, from inviting resentment

and violence

against Asian Americans to masking problems

internal to the group.

This is unfortunately not the first time that Pew has presented research on

minority populations that has confused matters more than clarified. In October

2010, its executive summary and lead graphic signaled that Latinos were divided

on unauthorized immigration, even though much of the data in the report showed overwhelming

Latino unity on a host of issues, including support for legalization (86%) and

opposition to Arizona’s SB1070 (79%). Similarly, it framed the jobs recovery in

October 2011 in zero-sum

terms, as immigrants gaining and the native-born losing -- a claim that researchers at the

University of Southern California found to be unusually sensitive to how the

study was conducted.

In the case of Pew’s Asian American press release, the damaging effects may

have been more significant, mostly because there are so few think-tanks that

conduct research on Asian Americans, and Pew made scant mention of prior

studies to provide a sufficient basis for comparison. What could have been a

celebratory moment for all, showcasing the need for significant and sustained

attention to the Asian American population, instead became a contested debate

over a frame with a tangled history.

Still, I remain optimistic. At the press launch of Pew’s report, I noted

that the study is a conversation starter, and this is true in many ways. It can

start a helpful public conversation about the opportunities and challenges we

face as a country, and how Asian Americans fit into that mix. It can initiate a

dialogue among researchers, community leaders, and news media on how better to

report on minority communities. Hopefully, it will also start a conversation

internally at Pew, on the care Pew needs to exercise in publicizing its

research, particularly given its outsized role in shaping news coverage about

minority populations.

* * *

Karthick Ramakrishnan is associate professor of political science at the

University of California, Riverside and fellow at the Wilson Center in

Washington, DC.

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