This week's illustration is inspired by saffron (rip bon appetit youtube why didn’t u just pay your BIPOC staff fairly?)
Just wanted to say thank you all for reading this. We put this newsletter together every week because we just wanted to learn and talk more about AAPI topics and issues. Never thought it would gain this much traction, and we're so grateful for and welcoming to your responses! Also, shoutout to Zach Shen who responded to our bit on the USC professor last week (comments shown in the first section)!
Our prompt for today is related to our longer piece.
What does culturally inclusive healthcare mean to you? Have you had health-related experiences that left something to be desired? Or, have you seen good practices that made your experience better?
Love,
Jamie and Melinda
Please share if you find this interesting! Or, feel free to email us with any responses and thoughts you may have. Nothing formal needed - we are just curious.
News
📊 In a survey of 1,500+ registered voters who identify as Asian American, 54% said they support Biden, 30% said they support Trump, and 15% said they're undecided. This survey was conducted by AAPI Data (which we've featured before!), APIAVote, and AAJC; the results were published last week (check it out! it has a lot more info than just the Presidential race.)
Looking back to 2012 and 2016 elections, "Asian Americans chose the Democratic candidate by a 2-to-1 ratio." Since 2016, it seems that there have been some shift to the right, noticeably in the Vietnamese American and Indian American communities. Although there had been a "Chinese Americans for Trump" movement, the Chinese Americans surveyed had the smallest proportion identifying as Republican. For this upcoming 2020 election, 54% of Asian American voters said that they were more excited than they were for previous elections. Folks indicated that issues around healthcare, education, the environment, and racism were really important (slide 18).
Since this survey mainly covered 6 Asian American groups—Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and Filipino—we should remember we don't have all Asian American viewpoints represented. Plus, since this was a survey of registered voters, we're also missing those who are eligible but haven't registered. Outreach is definitely something the Asian American community (aka us) could work on, especially knowing that eligible Asian American voters increased by 130% in the past 2 decades (to 11 million+), compared to 7% for whiter voters. (We'll probably do a deeper dive into voting things soon since the election is like 40 days away!)
🤰🏽The Mayor of San Francisco announced a new pilot program, The Abundant Birth Project, which would "provide $1000 a month to pregnant Black and Pacific Islander women through the duration of their pregnancy and for six months after they give birth." Black infants, followed by Pacific Islander infants, have the highest premature birth rates in San Francisco. Prematurity is a leading cause of infant mortality in the U.S. (the rate of which is unfortunately and unusually high for a developed country - in 2018, the rate was 5.7 deaths per 1,000 live births.), compared to an average of ~3.9 deaths per 1,000 live births in OECD countries overall; Iceland is only 0.7!).
💚 WeChat - so, I was calling my grandparents in China Saturday evening, ready to brace for their slow adoption of emailing us or even better—downloading Microsoft Teams to call us (lol). I was also frantically saving all my info on WeChat from my semester abroad in China, in case anything happened to it. But, on Sunday, a federal judge blocks Trump's U.S. WeChat Ban. Judge Laurel Beeler claimed in a lawsuit that this ban curbed First Amendment rights. She acknowledged that there are valid security concerns, but Trump has provided little evidence that banning WeChat for all U.S. users would reduce those concerns.
🏠 UNC-Chapel Hill just virtually launched the new Asian American Center, which students since the 1990s (!!) have been advocating for. It'll physically open next year. (This reminded me... Penn's cultural centers are all squished into the basement of a building...)
📔 Dictionary.com added 650 terms related to racial/ethnic identity; among those terms included “Filipinx” and “Pinxy” - this has definitely led to some mixed reactions and important discussions (event on it at the end of the newsletter!)
⏪ RE USC Professor from last week’s newsletter from Zach:
I wanted to offer my response and opinion of the USC professor. I'm currently a JD/MBA student at USC and took that communications class with the professor last year. You've done a solid analysis of the difficulty of the situation, particularly from the perspective of a Chinese-American. He has been using this filler word example for years and when it came up in class last year, there was no reaction. I believe that it blew up this year because of the virtual nature of classes and everything that has been going on in the country in the past few months. However, this is a very risky example to use, regardless of social climate. He could have picked any other filler word (the point of the lesson was that all cultures and languages have filler words). Why did he insist on use 那个 (nèige)? Probably because it stands out so much and is memorable. For that reason, I'm ultimately unsympathetic to him. Intent doesn't matter much here, students were seriously offended and hurt by his actions.
AAPI Mental Health
TW: depression, suicide, traumas affecting mental health
This week, I've had several discussions on the topic of mental health, and it's come to my attention that I know very little about mental health in AAPI communities. Growing up, I never talked about any of this stuff with my parents, and even as I go through struggles of my own, it's rarely a topic of discussion that I have with them (or my Asian American-identifying friends either). "Stress" was the word we used to encompass the entirety of the mental health sphere.
Coming off a conversation about culturally inclusive healthcare today (shoutout to Julci if they ever read this), I wanted to know more about Asian American mental health - the statistics, barriers, challenges, failures, and successes. Below is an initial list of findings. We would love to hear your thoughts if you have any experience in this area!
Quick Stats on AAPI Mental Health
Asian Americans have a 17.3% overall lifetime rate of any psychiatric disorder (Source)
While 18% of all Americans sought mental health services in 2010, only 8.6% of Asian Americans did (Source)
Most Asian Americans prefer to rely on personal relationships rather than professional help for mental health concerns (Source)
From 2003-2011, 14% of AAPIs 18-25 needed substance use treatment (Source)
"77.5% of Southeast Asian American adolescents have witnessed physical aggression and/ or community violence and 43.7% have been victims during their lifetime" (Source)
Serious mental illnesses, major depressive episodes, and suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts have all increased over the past decade for AAPI youth (Source)
"In 2017, 13% of Asian Americans reported discrimination when visiting a doctor or health clinic" (Source)
Barriers to Seeking and Finding Mental Health Treatment
Stigma - either parental, familial, or cultural - against discussing mental health concerns in Asian cultures results in a tendency to "dismiss, deny, or neglect symptoms" (Source)
Pressure to adhere to model minority stereotype (Source)
Discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or culture
Lack of mental health specialists and providers who share common identities - think culture, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, etc.
Lack of awareness surrounding mental health issues, resource access, insurance coverage
Language barriers in services
No systematic and regular data collection on Asian American health issues (let alone mental health)
Lack of information on mental health practices and views among AAPI communities
SomeUnique Challenges within AAPI Communities
Trauma - "wars in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam", "Japanese Internment", first-gen immigrant anxiety, "colonization of Hawaiian islands" (colonization in general)
Reconciling positive stereotypes of the "model minority" with real struggles
Perpetual foreigner stereotype (Source)
Discrimination and racial profiling
Resources
We actually realized there are a ton of associations and resources out there to increase access and awareness of AAPI mental health concerns. Some include the Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA), Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, Asian American Health Initiative, and South Asian Therapists. More here.
This resource library with translations in English, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Hindi.
Factsheets on AAPI intimate partner violence, international student mental health concerns, and bullying and victimization.
For the health care people out there, honestly just read through this and check out the factsheets
For me, I think this stuff is particularly salient because of the impacts of COVID, political (and real) climate, and the decline of support systems (like WeChat - though I would never admit it out loud). My question is a broader one for the AAPI community - how do we begin conversations about mental health in spaces that don't historically consider them? What about language barriers? For a lot of people, how do you begin to process inter-generational trauma when it's hard to communicate across ages?
Small Feelings
I am reading a book on reforming end of life care in the US, and 30 pages in, it's a stark difference in the way we hold and treat the elderly here.
I had a therapist for 3 weeks, and she (of no fault of her own) reminded me of my mother. Safe to say, lmao. Re: oh gosh... thankfully the therapist I had last semester was not like my mom...
💡S P O T L I G H T💡
Nena Erb, ACE*
Film & TV Editor, Emmy Award Winner (*ACE stands for American Cinema Editors)
Source: "So Booking Cool!"
I love her website bio: "Raised in an Asian immigrant family, Nena's father wanted her to be a doctor and her mother wanted her to be a pianist with the LA Philharmonic. Nena wanted to be Andy Warhol."
In 2016, she became the first Asian American and first woman-of-color to win an Emmy for "Outstanding Picture Editing For An Unstructured Reality Program - 2016" for the HBO documentary series, Project Greenlight. Then this week, she became the first Asian American and woman-of-color (again) to win an Emmy for "Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing For A Comedy Series" for the show Insecure (which I want to watch). I realized I didn't know much about Asian American writers behind shows and films, so when I came across her name, I wanted to give her a shoutout 🙂
She immigrated to the U.S. with her family in the late 1970s from Taiwan. Then, she entered the world of entertainment with the help of a friend after getting a degree in art. She's worked on a lot of shows/films, including Little America, an anthology series on the immigrant experience. She also helped with Justin Bieber's movie, Believe (which Jon Chu directed?!). Check out this brief article/video on her win this week and this interview with her.
Chef's Specials
🎨 This beautiful online gallery of art, titled Gender Justice & the Arts, by South Asian artists; it’s organized by Sakhi for South Asian Women.
‼️ The Chinese Immigrant Family Wellness Initiative in Philly is looking for students aged 15-22 for their wellness leadership program (this is the thing Melinda helped work on) - apply by Sept. 15!
😮 Ok totally unrelated to anything, but I learned about the word “himbo” today and thought I would share.
Events
Sept 24 at 2pm: AAPI Women and the Fight for Gender Equity panel with some really cool people, organized by APAICS
Sept 24-25:2020 Oslo Freedom Forum by the Human Rights Foundation - seems like a free online conference that features a lot of Asian activists and leaders
Saturday, Sept 26 at 8pm EST: Couch Talk: Are We Filipinx?, by Cinema Sala (they seem rly cool) - relevant to an earlier news story.
Sunday, Sept 27 at 8pm EST: Register here for a free interactive workshop led by Carrie Zhang, the founder of the Asian Mental Health Project, organized by In Between (super relevant to today’s topic)