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 [1] and surveys [2]. 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 [1].

More concerning than the Pew report, however, was the sensationalist
headline on the press release [3]
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 [4]
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 [5]
against Asian Americans to masking problems [6]
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 [7]
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 [8], as immigrants gaining and the native-born losing -- a claim that researchers [9] 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 [10] is associate professor of political science at the
University of California, Riverside and fellow at the Wilson Center in
Washington, DC.

You've just read a post from Across the Desk: a collaboration of Asian American journalists and scholars. See here [11]
for more in the series. Scholars and journalists interested in
contributing, please email the series editor at
erin[at]hyphenmagazine[dot]com.