My Turn: Asian-Americans in Arizona are not the model minority you'd think

Arizona Republic columnist Robert Robb wrote how he thought it was “sad” that Arizona’s fastest-growing community, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), had organized an advocacy day at the state Capitol to raise our voices and demonstrate our growing political power.

Does it also sadden Robb to learn that from 2004 to 2012, the number of Asian-Americans who registered to vote in Arizona increased by 165 percent?

We are a community that has doubled in size over the past 10 years to comprise nearly 4 percent of the Arizona population, and continue to rise. We are making significant contributions to the economy through business ownership, job creation, and consumer spending.

Our 16,000 mostly small businesses provide jobs for more than 31,000 Arizonans with an annual payroll in excess of $800 million. Buying power in the community is expected to grow to $13 billion by 2019.

Despite the success stories, many in our community are facing desperate challenges such as increasing numbers of the unemployed and poor, high rates of the uninsured and language barriers. We are Arizona – but we are certainly not Mr. Robb’s model minority.

What saddens me is having to once again dispel these dangerous myths. Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders are a very diverse community, and not everyone is healthy, wealthy and wise.

At my agency, Asian Pacific Community in Action, we serve this diverse community that speaks over 30 different languages. Since 2007, the number of Asian-Americans living in poverty in Arizona has, in fact, grown by 75 percent, while support for multilingual, community-based services has not kept pace.

Too often, our community is bypassed and our needs ignored. Mr. Robb’s careless repeating of the model-minority myth erases real suffering in the AAPI community and dismisses our efforts to help new Arizonans thrive.

Mr. Robb is correct that the community is not considered a voting bloc and, I would add, is regrettably ignored.

The 2012 AAPI post-election survey of registered voters report that nearly half of Asian-Americans and more than a third of Pacific Islanders did not declare an identification with either political party, compared with 20 percent of African-Americans, 31 percent of Latinos and 36 percent of Whites.

This is a community that is politically up for grabs, yet that same survey reports 74 percent of Pacific Islanders and 69 percent of Asian-Americans received no contact about the election.

Our advocacy day was not a plea to be pandered to as Robb suggests. That is simply insulting.

Our advocacy day was to point out that in state legislative districts, such as District 17, Asian-Americans are 8 percent of the voting age population. In competitive districts, such as Arizona’s 9th Congressional District, the 6 percent Asian-American voting-age population could easily be the margin of victory. Our advocacy day was also a day to engage our community and remind them their voices and votes do indeed matter.

The Arizona AAPI community has real needs we expect to be addressed by policy makers. As our population grows, so will our diverse voices and our numbers at the polls. We will continue to hold advocacy days to both engage and educate our community, as well as hold our elected officials accountable. This makes me feel anything but sad.

Lloyd Y. Asato is the executive director of the Asian Pacific Community in Action, a non-profit organization that provides services, advocacy and education to improve the health and well-being of diverse communities. Emailhim at lloyd@apcaaz.org and follow him on Twitter @apcaaz.