AAPI and the problems of categorizing race

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

When confronted with racial categories, which box do you tick? For Asian Americans, the grouping called AAPI – that's Asian American and Pacific Islander – is a strangely broad and ambiguous category.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:11.7	When we want to understand what is going on with people in the economy, we often rely
0:15.9	on statistics that tell us about people's incomes, employment, wealth or education, and
0:22.3	often this data can be further broken down by race and ethnicity.
0:26.4	You know, categories like white, black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian American or
0:31.3	Pacific Islander.
0:32.3	Ah, AAPI, yes, it just rolls off the tongue.
0:36.0	Well, and I don't know about you, but when I hear this term, increasingly I just get
0:40.8	confused.
0:42.2	Because when I think about it, it lumps in so many different people with such different
0:45.7	backgrounds.
0:46.7	Yeah, according to the US census, Asian-specific Islanders hail from more than 20 different
0:51.6	countries and places, and they speak at least that many languages.
0:55.5	I'm not to mention all the diversity in religion, culture, and history.
1:00.0	So when we see statistics that report to tell us something about this ginormous group
1:05.2	we call AAPI, what the heck are these numbers actually saying?
1:11.1	This is the Indicated for Planet Money.
1:12.1	I'm Adrian Ma.
1:13.6	And I'm Whalen Wong.
1:14.6	Today on the show, how we ended up with this weirdly broad and somewhat argued nonsensical
1:20.2	racial category.
1:21.2	We'll talk about why it matters and whether there's a better way to understand the fastest
	...

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