Significant diversity exists within San Diego’s Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities, leading to disparities in outcomes.
That was the conclusion of a report released this week by the San Diego Foundation regarding AANHPI communities within the county.
AANHPI communities are often treated as though they are one monolithic population, which fails to take into consideration linguistic, cultural, and even individual differences, such as age. However, San Diego County is home to more than half a million AANHPI residents, with tremendous diversity between them.
That half-million includes 151,000 people of Filipino descent, 59,000 Chinese people, almost 55,000 Vietnamese residents, 47,000 Asian Indian people, 86,000 people across smaller ethnic groups, and 141,000 San Diegans within the AANHPI community who identify as multiracial.
“Treating this diverse community together in a single, homogeneous category overlooks the distinct experiences, needs and challenges faced by different subpopulations,” said the San Diego Foundation in a release.
The reality on the ground in San Diego is that there is a differs across a variety of education, economic, health, social, and cultural measures.
For example, according to the report, 67 distinct dialects are spoken within the overall community. Further, there are strong income disparities between subgroups: the median income for Asian Indians in the region ($117,587) is nearly triple that of Cambodians ($42,945).
Even the sex stratification was lopsided in some cases, with far more self-identified women than men in some groups and vice versa for others, which was quite different from the county’s overall 50-50 ratio.
That means no one-size-fits-all approach can be recommended for the AANHPI community, the report said. Instead, policymakers should take a nuanced look at research and community engagement differences in order to effectively address specific issues.
“We hope that calling attention to these gaps and offering data about the geographic distribution of these communities will help governments, philanthropies and community based organizations effectively target their investments to improve the outcomes of those in most need,” the report said.
