The
research objective of this study is to document the growth and spatial
distribution of the Asian American population from its initial inception in
1860 through the contemporary period. Because prior research on the Asian
American population has been rather limited, we assemble data and statistics
from various U.S. Censuses to document the long-term growth of the Asian
American population. We also use descriptive statistics to analyze the
distribution of the Asian American population across the four major U.S. Census
regions as well as across the 50 U.S. states. The results show that this racial
category has increased substantially both in absolute number as well as a
percentage of the total American population. Most of this population growth
occurred, however, after 1965. Accompanying this population growth is
substantial spatial assimilation. The regional index of dissimilarity declined
from 0.98 in 1860 to 0.24 in 2018. No longer located primarily in particular
locales in the Pacific, our analysis reveals that the Asian American population
now has significant presence in all of the
U.S. states. Asian Americans have changed from being an isolated and
tiny portion of the American population to a highly visible and widely
recognized minority group. Ignoring Asian Americans in contemporary discussions
of “race in America” is a lingering but outdated practice.
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