By Johnathan Silverman, 2025 CLA Intern
Accurate data collection on racial and ethnic identities is of vital, yet contentious, importance, as articulated by Farrah during her presentation on the 2021 congressional redistricting maps in San Gabriel Valley.
From a broader AAPI perspective, data collection on racial and ethnic identities is a manifestation and corollary of the Western fixation on disjunct categorization and labeling complex individuals into discrete categories. According to this ideology, everyone needs to have an assigned racial category, an assigned sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status… and the list goes on. This Western view of stringent classification designations of personhood serves the misguided goal of collecting shallow, digestible narratives.
In contrast, Eastern societies are far more pluralistic. For instance, in Korea, religious data portrays the population as approximately 16% Buddhist. However, in reality, far more Koreans are culturally Buddhist and shamanist as well. It is a very common practice for Koreans to visit fortune tellers and shamans before important events, such as weddings and births.
In the U.S., divisive racial and ethnic categorization reflects the Judeo-Christian values upon which this nation was founded, in that they emanate from the concept that there are objective moral values and truths. Famously, in the New Testament, Jesus said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6). Yet, what if the situation is morally ambiguous? What if the individual is more complicated? What if one’s truth differs from another’s—but neither is wrong? Consider the Chinese proverb: "There are three truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth."
All that said, from a pragmatic standpoint, it is critically important to collect accurate data to provide essential resources to and political representation for the AAPI community. During her panel discussion, Sydney described the challenge in the Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian communities where COVID vaccination data reflected that over 100% of Pacific Islanders were vaccinated. Nancy later explained to me that this was due to many Filipinos—who are highly represented in the medical field and therefore demonstrated high rates of vaccination—identifying as Pacific Islanders on official data collection forms, despite not being considered Pacific Islanders according to the U.S. government.
Yet, is this so wrong? Are the Philippines not a collection of islands in the Pacific? Despite the valdity of these claims, ultimately, this misclassification on official reports has tangible negative effects. When the Pacific Islander community needed more COVID response resources and education, this inaccurate identification created unjust barriers and harm to those who are officially considered Pacific Islanders by the U.S. government.
In conclusion, the issue of racial and ethnic classification and data collection is deeply intricate, especially as it relates to the AAPI community, and cannot be fully developed in a short blog. That said, I align with CAUSE’s mission and efforts in advocating for accurate data collection and necessary disaggregation. At the end of the day, we live in a society. We operate in the frameworks and institutions we inhabit, whether or not we agree with them conceptually, towards the goal of achieving the best tangible outcomes for our community.
As a side note, I was delighted to see Prof. Christian Grose cited in Farrah’s presentation on redistricting in the San Gabriel Valley. For my year-long research project on racial representation in Congress, I read Grose’s book, Congress in Black and White, and cited his work extensively. In my paper, I summarized Grose’s findings: “Black members of Congress are more effective in substantively representing Black citizens than White members, albeit not in every measure. He presents a ‘unified theory of African American representation in Congress’ that identifies four major factors that impact substantive Black representation: (1) legislator’s party affiliation; (2) racial composition of the district (the percent Black); (3) race of the legislator (the presence of a Black legislator); and (4) ‘racial trust’ between the district Black population and the legislator.”
The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not reflect the views or positions of CAUSE or the CAUSE network.
The CAUSE Leadership Academy (CLA) for students is a nine-week, paid, internship program that prepares college undergraduates to lead and advocate for the Asian Pacific Islander community on their campuses and beyond.