I have seen "Asian and Pacific Islander" showing up a lot in the last few years, in weird contexts.
It's a demographic category made up to reduce the number of checkboxes on forms. And I remember a campaign T shirt that said "Asians and Pacific Islanders for Hillary 2016' on the front of it.
I know a lot of Asians, a lot of Pacific Islanders, and a lot of mixed Asian AND Pacific Islanders and not a single one ever referred to themselves as anything like "Asian and Pacific Islander" (or, to be honest "Pacific Islander" either).
It's kind of fucking weird to mash them together in demographic talk, and even weirder to talk about it like an actual identity. Like oh yeah, I'm a European and Middle Eastern.
You could refer to people as Pacific Islanders or Polynesians, Micronesians, or Melanesians, or just their actual country of origin / specific ethnicity. Those three groups are about as broad as you can get while still having easily recognizable cultural similarities, shared/related traditions and slightly mutually intelligible languages.
Yeah most people of mixed East Asian descent will say they're Asian or just be more specific, and then it really seems like a British thing to actually match the continent of Asia to who they call Asian.
"AAPI" might exist in the US because Hawaii has most of the pacific islanders and the majority are also Asian, and then the biggest other group is Filipinos and that country itself is a melting pot, and people generally look way more similar to East Asians than people out in the rest of the Pacific.
Also it's pretty strange to say "Asian American AND Pacific Islander" and that seems like a very common version. It's like the Asians are American but not the Pacific Islanders.
Yeah it's funny, I know a 100% Hawai'ian guy who visited Texas and got detained by CBP pigs for hours because they didn't believe he was Hawai'ian. To be fair to the squealing hogs, he also had Mexicans just up and speaking Spanish to him.
Nobody is screaming "woo han flu!!!" at that guy on the street.
Sidenote.
I have seen "Asian and Pacific Islander" showing up a lot in the last few years, in weird contexts.
It's a demographic category made up to reduce the number of checkboxes on forms. And I remember a campaign T shirt that said "Asians and Pacific Islanders for Hillary 2016' on the front of it.
I know a lot of Asians, a lot of Pacific Islanders, and a lot of mixed Asian AND Pacific Islanders and not a single one ever referred to themselves as anything like "Asian and Pacific Islander" (or, to be honest "Pacific Islander" either).
It's kind of fucking weird to mash them together in demographic talk, and even weirder to talk about it like an actual identity. Like oh yeah, I'm a European and Middle Eastern.
You could refer to people as Pacific Islanders or Polynesians, Micronesians, or Melanesians, or just their actual country of origin / specific ethnicity. Those three groups are about as broad as you can get while still having easily recognizable cultural similarities, shared/related traditions and slightly mutually intelligible languages.
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Yeah most people of mixed East Asian descent will say they're Asian or just be more specific, and then it really seems like a British thing to actually match the continent of Asia to who they call Asian.
"AAPI" might exist in the US because Hawaii has most of the pacific islanders and the majority are also Asian, and then the biggest other group is Filipinos and that country itself is a melting pot, and people generally look way more similar to East Asians than people out in the rest of the Pacific.
Also it's pretty strange to say "Asian American AND Pacific Islander" and that seems like a very common version. It's like the Asians are American but not the Pacific Islanders.
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yeah, agreed. i'm somewhat mocking it
Yeah it's funny, I know a 100% Hawai'ian guy who visited Texas and got detained by CBP pigs for hours because they didn't believe he was Hawai'ian. To be fair to the squealing hogs, he also had Mexicans just up and speaking Spanish to him.
Nobody is screaming "woo han flu!!!" at that guy on the street.