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Ong on Nuances of U.S. Census Count

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Associated Press about the U.S. Census Bureau’s report that the nation’s Asian population was overcounted by 2.6% in 2020. Overcounts occur when people are counted twice, such as college students being counted on campus and at their parents’ homes. Another explanation is that biracial and multiracial residents may have identified as Asian in larger numbers than in the past. Some multiracial people who previously indicated on the census form that they were white, Black or another race may have selected Asian in 2020 amid a rise in anti-Asian attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ong said. “When that happens, people who are multiracial go in two directions: They reject their minority identity or they embrace it,” he said. “With the rise of anti-Asian hostility, it forced some multiracial Asians to select a single identity.”

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Ong Highlights Disproportionate Suffering of Asian American Businesses

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, was featured in an NBC News article about challenges facing Asian American communities during the pandemic. One study co-authored by Ong found that Asian-owned businesses were hit the hardest during the pandemic due to halts in customer-facing operations as well as increased racism. To better support lower-income and underrepresented Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, the White House announced an initiative to disaggregate data under the “Asian” umbrella and expand language options for federal programs. Ong noted that some Asian American entrepreneurs are immigrants with a rudimentary command of English that is not sufficient to navigate federal program applications, especially when the information is provided only in English. He said some older business owners were not aware programs like the Paycheck Protection Program existed and could not quickly move their services online. “There seems to be a double whammy,” Ong said.

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Report Highlights ‘Atmosphere of Fear’ for Asian American Employees

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A KQED article featured new research from the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge on the rising incidence of anti-Asian hate crimes. The center collaborated with the California-based coalition Stop AAPI Hate to produce a report based on the findings of a national survey of Asian American and Pacific Islander employees. Those surveyed reported alarmingly high rates of hate incidents at their jobs, in addition to an overwhelming fear of being targeted at work. More than a quarter of the respondents said they experienced a hate incident at work in 2021, and more than 20% said they are reluctant to return to in-person work because they’re afraid they will be racially targeted. “It creates an atmosphere of fear when you go to work and you’re uncertain about what’s going to happen that day because you happen to be Asian American,” said Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge and a co-author of the report.

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Diaz Pushes for Fair Redistricting in Orange County

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UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative Director Sonja Diaz spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the potential impacts of redistricting in Orange County. Nearly a third of Orange County residents are Latino, but current district boundaries divide areas with large Latino populations in Santa Ana and Anaheim. Diaz explained that dividing adjacent cities with ethnic majorities, a process known as cracking, has been a major factor in Latino voter turnout and can dilute political power. The county Board of Supervisors is currently undergoing the decennial redistricting process with data from the 2020 Census and is expected to approve a majority Latino district for the first time. “Orange County has for far too long been dictated by the policy preferences of an aging, white electorate that leans conservative,” Diaz said. “And I say this as a jurisdiction that is increasingly multiethnic and multiracial, with large communities of Asian American and Latino electorates.”

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A Closer Look at Pandemic’s Impact on Asian American Businesses

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to NBC News about the findings of a recent survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Asian-owned businesses. The survey of 400 Asian-owned businesses in Southern California found that a disproportionate number were forced to close their doors and fire staff during the pandemic. Ong explained that Asian-owned businesses tend to be in sectors that were the most impacted — such as food service, hospitality and retail — and that many of them didn’t have the money to keep their businesses open when profits took a nosedive. “The racism throughout the pandemic also led people to avoid businesses in Asian neighborhoods altogether,” Ong added. Many small businesses were unable to benefit from federal assistance programs due to language barriers and lack of outreach in Asian communities about the existence of such programs and their application processes.

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Ong on COVID-19’s Impact on Asian Businesses

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UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Director Paul Ong spoke to KPCC and LAist about findings from a survey of members of the Asian Business Association of Los Angeles. More than 400 association members described how their businesses were faring, confirming Ong’s fears that Asian-owned businesses have disproportionately suffered during the pandemic, a trend that has been exacerbated by a surge in anti-Asian incidents. More than half of the survey respondents said they had to close at some point during the pandemic, and nearly a third said their operating capacity had dropped by more than 50%. “I actually believe this is a conservative estimate,” said Ong, pointing out that the negative impact might be even worse than the English-only survey was able to capture. “So many of the hardest-hit businesses are run by immigrants who don’t speak English as their first language,” he said. Ong recommended that policymakers prioritize targeted outreach offered in many languages to support Asian-owned businesses.

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Ong, Umemoto on Shortcomings of ‘Asian American’ Label

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Research Professor Paul Ong and Urban Planning Professor Karen Umemoto spoke to Vox about concerns that the broadness of the term “Asian American” erases and flattens many of the cultures it encompasses. Asian Americans comprise 50 ethnic groups with more than 100 languages, but using the label “Asian American” fuels the myth that the group is monolithic. Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, explained that “Pacific Islanders were too small of a group in the mind of key decision-makers to report separately,” which led to their initial grouping as Asian Americans. Umemoto, director of UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center, added, “There has long been a problem of lumping all of the groups together, which makes Asian Americans look well-off by some measures when averaged out as a sociopolitical group. But we’re a bifurcated community, with wide differences in well-being within and across ethnic groups.”

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Ong Highlights Economic Obstacles Facing Asian Americans

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, was cited in Los Angeles Times and USA Today articles about economic hardships among Asian Americans in the United States. Many hotels, restaurants, shopping centers and beauty salons were forced to close at the beginning of the pandemic, and a report by Ong found that Asian Americans accounted for one in four workers within those sectors. Now, long-term unemployment levels among Asian Americans have been exacerbated by a surge in anti-Asian sentiment. Among all racial and ethnic groups in the United States, Asians have the largest income gap between the top and bottom 10%, and this trend has been accelerated by the economic shutdown caused by the pandemic. Ong explained that Los Angeles’ Chinatown “was hit earlier, even before the lockdowns, and it lost much more business and has recovered much more slowly,” a trend also seen in New York and San Francisco.

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Ong on Discrimination Against Asians During Pandemic

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LAist highlighted recent research led by Paul Ong, director of UCLA Luskin’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK), on the economic impact of anti-Asian rhetoric during the pandemic. Ong said harassment of Asian-Americans, including an informal boycott of Asian restaurants, increased after President Trump called COVID-19 the “China virus” and “kung flu.” Research by CNK, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Ong & Associates found that Asians and whites started out on similar financial footing before the pandemic — but between February and April, Asian American joblessness jumped ahead by 5%. The article also cited a Pew survey that found that 31% of Asian adults say they have been subject to slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity since the outbreak began. Ong called on the federal government to step in to discourage discrimination but added that he is disappointed by political leadership so far. The research was also cited in the Asian Journal.

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Ong and Diaz on Supporting Latino and Asian Communities During COVID-19

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Paul Ong, research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, and Sonja Diaz, director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, co-authored an opinion piece for NBC News about the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on communities of color. Their research suggests that Latino and Asian neighborhoods will be most affected by the predicted loss of 1.6 million jobs in California by this summer. Furthermore, they argue that “Latino and Asian workers disproportionately rely on low-wage jobs where the most layoffs in the wake of COVID-19 are occurring.” They write that the CARES Act stimulus packages are not enough to protect these vulnerable households, especially undocumented immigrants and service workers who hold multiple part-time jobs. Ong and Diaz recommended that states create “recovery programs focused on those who are highest at risk of not receiving federal COVID-19 relief” so that no one is left out of the recovery.

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