Students Launch Campaign to Dismantle ‘Asian American’ at UCs

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Students Launch Campaign to Dismantle ‘Asian American’ at UCs


The title of Asian Pacific American can give and take. It can empower and at the same time engender the feeling of being a minority within a minority group.

APAs make up 34.6 percent of the University of California’s new freshman admits in 2005 - the second largest group next to Caucasian, according to university data. The same report defines APAs as: Chinese, East Indian/Pakistani, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Other Asians.

For Nefara Riesch, who is of Samoan descent, being “other” or just “Asian” doesn’t encapsulate a Pacific Islander’s struggle for access to higher education. The 19-year-old history major is one of about 40 Pacific Islanders on the University of California, Los Angeles campus of over 24,000 undergraduates. For Riesch, the numbers just don’t add up.