9 in 10 Asian Americans experience discrimination in US: study

SACRAMENTO, the United States - A new study showed that nine out of 10 Asian Americans had personally experienced discrimination and that not enough attention is being paid to the problem in the United States.

The survey was conducted among 7,006 Asian adults from July 2022 to January 2023 and the findings were released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

Researchers identified 17 discrimination incidents, including mispronouncing names, receiving poorer service than other customers in restaurants or stores, or being called offensive names.

They found about nine in 10 Asian Americans had personally experienced at least one of the 17 discrimination incidents. About half of Asian adults said they had experienced four incidents or more.

Nearly six in 10 Asian adults said discrimination against Asians living in the United States is a major problem and 63 percent said too little attention is being paid to race and racial issues concerning Asians in the country, according to the survey.

Most of them believed it is very important to have a national leader addressing Asian Americans' concerns.

The researchers noted that as they could not list all possible discrimination experiences, there could be more that were not captured by the survey.

The report pointed out two stereotypes that Asian Americans are often associated with -- "forever foreigner" stereotype and "model minority" stereotype.

Of all the respondents, 78 percent said they had been treated as "foreigners" regardless of their birthplace, citizenship status or strength of their ties to the United States.

These experiences exist even among Asian adults whose families have lived in the United States for generations. Also, 37 percent of second-generation Asian adults said someone had told them to go back to their home countries, according to the survey.

Another experience many Asian Americans encounter is being stereotyped as "a model minority", no matter what their backgrounds are.

This stereotype generalizes Asian Americans as intelligent, well-off, and able to excel in fields such as mathematics and science, and positions Asian Americans in comparison with other non-White groups such as African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

Discrimination against Asian Americans is not new. Most Asian Americans had faced discrimination and exclusion while being treated as foreigners throughout their long history in the United States, the study's researchers said.

This latest report affirms the continuing widespread discrimination against Asian American people in the country, which shapes people's daily lives, they said.