Water Cooler: Who are Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders?

May marks Asian Pacific American Heritage Month as a way to celebrate the presence and contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. However, the terms Asian American and Pacific Islander are so broad that it can be hard to know exactly which peoples fall into those groups. Learning a bit more about which countries and territories represent these pan-ethnic groups can help you get a better context for celebrating and understanding this commemorative month.

The term Asian American encompasses all Americans who have heritage linked to any region of the Far East, Southeast Asia and South Asia geographical regions. You might already know that this includes people with Chinese, Japanese and Korean heritage, but the continent of Asia has many more ethnic groups than that. The Far East also includes people from Hong Kong, Macau, Mongolia and Taiwan.

Southeast Asia is made up of the regions south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent and north of Australia. This includes the countries Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

South Asia is typically defined topographically by the region around the Indian Plate (one of Earth’s tectonic plates) and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south, and several mountain ranges to the north, including the Himalayas. This includes the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The Pacific Islands is a group of all the islands in the Pacific Ocean. It is broken into three major groups: Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. These islands are all found east of Australia and of Southeast Asia. They are southwest of the United States and Mexico’s Pacific coast lines. The islands included in Melanesia include Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Papua, which is a separate province from Papua New Guinea.

Micronesia includes the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, the Northern Mariana Islands and Palau. Polynesia includes American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Easter Island, French Polynesia, Hawaii, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, the Pitcairn Islands, Rotuma, Samoa (an independent nation separate from American Samoa), Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Wallis and Futuna.

This shows the huge amount of diverse cultures and territories that all fall under the Asian American and Pacific Islander categories. Before the 1960s, it was more common to refer to the country someone was from, such as using the term Chinese American or Fillipino American. The pan-racial identity of Asian American was created in the 1960s, primarily by the efforts of Asian American students at the San Francisco Bay Area and was in part inspired by the united efforts of the Black civil rights movement. Pan-racial, or pan-ethnic, refers to the grouping of different ethnic groups based on their related origins, such as geographic, linguistic or cultural ties.

The pan-racial social movement was strengthened by the shared struggles of Asian Americans. Much of the pan-racial Asian American experience is tied to struggles of immigration and shared discrimination, such as Japanese American interment during World War II and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was not repealed until 1943.

Although Pacific Islanders tend to also be grouped alongside Asian Americans, many of their uniting issues stem for fighting for decolonization and national sovereignty as the Pacific Islands have a long history of colonization that still affects the lives of Pacific Islanders today. The Pacific Islands were desired by colonizing countries primarily for establishing trade routes and military bases.

As varied as all these heritages are, today’s Asian American and Pacific Islanders all share in contributing to the rich diversity of culture and experiences found across the United States.