{"id":3799,"date":"2006-09-20T02:58:04","date_gmt":"2006-09-20T07:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=3799"},"modified":"2006-09-20T01:11:10","modified_gmt":"2006-09-20T06:11:10","slug":"affecting_the_d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/20\/affecting_the_d\/","title":{"rendered":"Affecting the Desi Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here at Sepia Mutiny, we often get into long debates in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/003731.html\">comment thread<\/a> of Indian-American versus the South Asian American. With elections right around the corner and all the focus on &#8216;issue based politicizing,&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/003760.html\">the conversations often revolve around<\/a> people who identify as Indian-American tend to care more about South Asian foreign policy and less about their lives here in America as an &#8216;American&#8217; first, and vice versa for people that identify as South Asian American. <\/p>\n\n<p>So the real question I see is as &#8216;Americans&#8217;, whether South Asian or Indian\/Bangladeshi\/Pakistani\/Sri Lankan &#8211; American, are our issues domestically really that different? Should we be asking <strong>&#8216;what issues are desis interested in&#8217;<\/strong> when we really should be asking <strong>&#8216;what issues affect the the desi community?&#8217;<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n<p>Let me present you the information, and you make the educated judgement for yourself&#8230;The following numbers are based on the national demographics profile recently released by key APIA research organizations. <br \/><\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Education:<\/strong> We know the model minority sterotypes &#8212; desis are &#8216;supposed&#8217; to be the most educated. The truth is <font style=\"background-color: #ffd2bd\">23% of Bangladeshis have less than a high school degree<\/font><font style=\"background-color: #ffd2bd\">, higher than national average of 20%<\/font>. Pakistani (19%), Asian Indian (15%), and Sri Lankan (14%). On the other hand, as far as college education is concerned, 61% of Asian Indians have a bachelors or advanced degree, 42% of Pakistanis and 45% of Bangladeshis. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n<p> <\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Poverty:<\/strong> One doesn&#8217;t think that poverty affects the desi community &#8212; looking simply at the median household income we see that it is higher than the national and higher than non-Hispanic whites at $45,576 for Pakistanis, $52,392 for Sri Lankans, and $61,322 for Asian Indians. Bangladeshis we see fall the lowest at $37,074. When delving further we see that 15% of Bangladeshis and Asian Indians have 3 or more workers per family. Pakistani at 14%, Sri Lankan at 12% &#8212; the national number is 12%. But when comparing these numbers to the <font style=\"background-color: #ffd2bd\">percentage of people below poverty level we see that all South Asians have a higher percentage than whites (8%): Bangladeshi 23%, Pakistani 18%, Sri Lankan 10%, and Asian Indian 10%.<\/font> Seeing such &#8216;high&#8217; numbers of poverty in our community, it&#8217;s sad to see that <font style=\"background-color: #ffd2bd\">public assistance for this community is far less: 4% of Bangladeshi, 2% Pakistani, 2% Asian Indian and 1% Sri Lankan. <\/font><\/li><\/ul>\n\n<p> <\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Housing:<\/strong> Though nationally, <font style=\"background-color: #ffd2bd\">66% of Americans own homes<\/font>, and 72% of whites own homes, the numbers for South Asian Americans is less than this. <font style=\"background-color: #ffd2bd\">25<\/font><font style=\"background-color: #ffd2bd\">% of Bangladeshis, 40% of Pakistanis, 47% of Asian Indians, and 50% of Sri Lankans<\/font>. Unfortunately, the overcrowded housing issue is far worse &#8212; 6% nationally live in over crowded housing, 2% of Whites, where as 43% of Bangladeshis, 31% of Pakistani, 21% of Sri Lankans, and 18% of Asian Indians. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n<!--more-->\n\n<p> <\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Assimilation:<\/strong> Though the immigration laws that gave South Asians our immigration boom happened in 1965, we still see a high rate of foreign &#8211; borns in our community: <font style=\"background-color: #ffd2bd\">83% of Bangladeshis, 79% of Sri Lankans, 74% of Pakistanis and 73% of Asian Indians<\/font>. Comparatively, the <font style=\"background-color: #ffd2bd\">national foreign born rate is 11%, for whites 4%, and for Latino 40%.<\/font> The naturalization rate of foreign-born is 31% for Bangladeshis, 38% of Sri Lankans, 40% of Asian Indians, and 40% of Pakistanis. Nationally the rate is 40% and 55% for Whites. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n<p>Of course, the issues mentioned above are based on data we have access to from the the national Census. What about the types of information where data doesn&#8217;t exist and thus inferences for our community has to be poorly estimated based on the data we do have? Such as healthcare &#8212; with such an economically divided community, <font style=\"background-color: #ffd2bd\">how many in our community are unable to afford healthcare?<\/font> <font style=\"background-color: #ffd2bd\">What are the health disparities within our community,<\/font> such as higher rates of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/003730.html\">ovarian cancer<\/a>, diabetes, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/003262.html\">low birth weight babies<\/a>? What is the divorce rate for our community, life span in our community? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/003242.html\">Rate of domestic violence and sexual assault<\/a>? <\/p>\n\n<p>Domestically, I feel that our issues,<strong> as South Asian Americans<\/strong>, are not just narrowed to racial profiling and hate crimes, but rather, <strong>we have a breadth of issues that affect our community.<\/strong> I largely believe in two things with regards to South Asian American issues &#8212; the first is that <strong>not enough research is being done<\/strong> for and by our community to really investigate what issues are affecting us and the second is <strong>the community is not being educated<\/strong> <strong>enough about themselves.<\/strong> I challenge you to ask your family if they had realized that the numbers were so drastic as in the issues I listed above in education, housing and poverty. I highly doubt anyone (in our family) knows that these types of disparities exist. <a href=\"http:\/\/southasianforum.org\/\">Though some are making differences,<\/a> even more needs to be done. <\/p>\n\n<p>Sure, we can ask South Asian Americans what issues are important to them, but the chances are they will answer in the typical with &#8216;economy, education and foreign policy.&#8217; But I do believe that if we <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/003760.html#comment85300\">educate the community on the issues<\/a> that are affecting them, as well as encouraging dialogue within the community, that the answers will be different. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/003760.html#comment85304\">Are there issues that will potentially unite desis?<\/a> I don&#8217;t know, and frankly, I don&#8217;t think we are there yet. Should we identify as Indian American or South Asian American? <strong>Domestically and politically, especially looking at these above issues, I think we have too much at stake to<em> not<\/em> identify as a South Asian American political community.<\/strong> But I&#8217;m not here to tell you how to think, just present for you the research and facts. I&#8217;ll let you make the educated decision yourself. <\/p>\n\n<p><em><span style=\"font-size: xx-small\"><\/p>\n\n<p><em>All data pulled from <strong>A Community of Contrasts: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States<\/strong>, a demographic profile created by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apalc.org\/\">Asian Pacific American Legal Center<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.advancingequality.org\/\">Asian American Justice Center<\/a>. The report is not online, but can be ordered through the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.advancingequality.org\/\">AAJC<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here at Sepia Mutiny, we often get into long debates in the comment thread of Indian-American versus the South Asian American. With elections right around the corner and all the focus on &#8216;issue based politicizing,&#8217; the conversations often revolve around &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/20\/affecting_the_d\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3799"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}