The most recent polls addressing issues of race and race relations have no ample representation of Asian Americans. Take the New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted last April, which reports that perceptions of race relations have improved within President Obama’s 100 days in office. It makes sense that the number of African Americans surveyed has been augmented to afford a separate analysis of data from that community. However, not enough respondents were recruited among other ethnic minorities to merit similar analysis from their perspective.
Then there’s the Pew Research’s study on racial attitudes conducted early last year. Sociologist C. N. Le’s opinion on the omission of Asian Americans in this research is one of extreme disappointment. I share his thoughts that it is “inexcusable” for a well-regarded institution to exclude a 15 million-strong minority group from this important study. Even as Asian Americans constitute less than a double-digit percentage of total U.S. population, Mr. Le argues that Asian Americans increasingly make up large proportions of the population of many states and majorities in many cities.
While there exist other research initiatives that focus primarily on Asian Americans, the point is that this group’s systematic exclusion from these important studies has underlying implications. By their sheer minority status, behavioral and attitudinal data from this community are summarily irrelevant in shaping the course of the national debate on race. Other community leaders should be as vocal as Mr. Le is in prodding major polling institutions to reconsider barring Asian American viewpoint. How difficult is it to recruit at least two hundred—the magic number for meaningful analysis within the group of—Asian Americans to participate in such polls?
Actually, we have an issue there. There seems to be a lack of interest and willingness among Asian Americans to participate in such a debate—or, for that matter, in any national poll or research. U.S. Census officials from my locality attest to a lackluster response in their efforts to drive Asian Americans to be counted in the last census. In the business world, a recent inventory I conducted on the “availability” of Asian Americans in consumer research panels confirms this lack of disposition to be enlisted even when offered some form of reward or incentive. Perhaps, some find comfort with invisibility, but not to be counted and taken for all that one is worth, good and bad, right or wrong, is not a valid course. As there is no excuse for anyone to discount our voice, so also is there no excuse for us not to raise our voice and be counted in the national discussion about race.