The month of May has been set aside to acknowledge the achievements of Asian Americans since 1997. On the one hand, there is a lot to celebrate this AAPI Heritage Month; the entertainment industry has become a more welcoming place for Asian stories, themes, and talent.
“With global success stories such as Crazy Rich Asians (ahem, the books and the film), K-pop, Squid Game, Beef, and Everything Everywhere All at Once, it might seem like Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are everything and everywhere all at once,” Jennifer Sangalang, social media strategist at USA Today points out in this comprehensive AAPI Month explainer. “But we’ve been here. For years. We just weren’t necessarily seen or heard.”
Yet Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders still go unseen and unheard in the workforce—and I mean that literally.
Typically lumped into one broad category for diversity purposes, “AAPI” as a demographic designation utterly fails to consider the stark differences in the realities faced by the people under that umbrella. Income inequality is greater among Asian Americans than any other racial or ethnic group in the U.S.; for every Chinese or Indian tech CEO or mogul, young executives face ongoing stereotypes about their potential. The gap gets worse from there.
Let’s take the wage gap for AAPI women as one example. Taiwanese women are among the highest-paid women in the workforce, earning $1.08 compared to their white male counterparts. Nepalese women earn just 48 cents on the dollar, the lowest on a spectrum that finds Southeast Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander women disproportionately trapped in caregiving, retail, health care, and service jobs. Poor data collection for this cohort hurts them at home, too. A lack of good census data ensures that many AAPI communities don’t get the necessary social, health, and safety services.
The bottom line is a lack of access to disaggregated data undermines everyone’s progress, including anyone committed to inclusion in the workplace.
But employers can make AAPI Heritage Month count this year by pushing for disaggregated data collection in the workplace and supporting public policies that give Asian American voters a meaningful voice—in whatever language they speak. Also, get to know your Asian American colleagues. Understanding their experience and history will help everyone bring their true selves to work.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
This edition of raceAhead was edited by Ruth Umoh.
On Point
Largest-ever survey of Chinese Americans is here
Chinese Americans are one of the fastest-growing demographics in the U.S., a diverse group that remains optimistic about their prospects, even as they remain underrepresented in vital ways. “The State of Chinese Americans," a yearslong effort, surveyed nearly 6,500 U.S. participants who answered in-depth questions about their politics, cultural identity, health, economic security, and social engagement.
Let me share some highlights:
- 83% of Chinese American citizens are registered voters, and 91% of that share voted in the 2020 presidential election. Respondents identify racism, crime, gun control, and the economy as the top four most important issues facing the U.S.
- 24% of respondents are at moderate or severe risk of mental illness and reported feeling worthless, depressed, hopeless, restless, nervous, or that everything is an effort.
- While most respondents see themselves as an accepted part of American society, 74% report experiencing racial discrimination in the past 12 months.
The State of Chinese Americans
On Background
The First Transcontinental Railroad, built between 1863 and 1869, is one of U.S. history's most ambitious engineering projects. Its completion paved the way for an unfettered westward colonial effort and reduced the time it took to travel the continent from months to mere days. It created an immediate commerce and wealth boom; within ten years, some $50 million worth of freight went across the country yearly. PBS called it “America’s first technology corridor.”
On May 10, 1869, future millionaire industrialist Leland Stanford—you may recognize his last name—drove the last spike completing the rail line at Promontory Point, Utah. But what is often overlooked in the subsequent telling of the story is the contribution of an estimated 20,000 Chinese migrant workers who helped complete the Western portion of the rail.
The workers toiled in terrible, often deadly conditions and were paid less than white workers. Many of these details were forgotten, under-documented, or erased until a decade ago. Then Stanford University, which owes its very existence to the massive fortune Leland Stanford amassed, stepped in to make amends.
“Without the Chinese migrants, the Transcontinental Railroad would not have been possible,” says Gordon Chang, professor of American history at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. Chang is part of a team of Stanford scholars who launched the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project in 2012 to recover and recontextualize their stories.
“If it weren’t for their work,” he said of the migrant workers, “Leland Stanford could have been, at best, a footnote in history, and Stanford University may not even exist.”
Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project
Parting Words
"In the book, I write about being in Hawaii, where people think of it as a paradise, but I was hustling to try to put together $1 a day so that my brother and I could eat the next day. And I think all of those things helped to make me more resilient later on in life. But, at the time, I was just living my life, trying to survive."
—Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) on growing up in Asia and Hawaii as the daughter of a Thai mother and American soldier father
