Say No to AAPI Data Disaggregation at NCSL 2017 Legislative Summit

From AAGC

Say No to AAPI Data Disaggregation at NCSL 2017 Legislative Summit

Senator Connelly,

When you visit Boston for the NCSL 2017 Summit, most likely you will be approached to support an initiative called “Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Data Disaggregation”.  

The “AAPI Data Disaggregation” initiative (the Initiative) is rooted in Obama’s Executive Order (EO) 13515.  It openly calls 24 federal agencies to initiate “strategic plan” using “innovative approaches and methodologies to further disaggregate race and ethnicity data”.  At the minimum, it seeks to identify the AAPI by country of origin of “Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, among others”.  

When implemented in California through AB1726, the granularity of data collection goes so far as to mandate self-identifying the region of one’s country of origin, the dialect of one’s native language spoken at home.  And all this is being done to the Asian Americans who were born and raised in the United States.

Lobbyists of the Initiative claim “some disadvantaged Asian Americans” will benefit from special resource allocation in healthcare and education, which, however, by itself comes at a socioeconomic cost of discrimination against fellow citizens under the guise of “seeking equality”.  In a not-so-remotely-impossible scenario, this dangerous practice could be expanded to other areas, such as employment, higher education, or even basic needs, to form a de facto, race-based “quota” system.

Why do the majority of Asian Americans campaign vigilantly against the Initiative?  Because it contradicts our American ideology in all fronts:

1. The Initiative violates the 14^th Amendment, “equal protection of the laws”, by singling out a particular ethnic group through policy-making;
2. It violates American citizen’s privacy by mandating identification of one’s race and ethnic background.  The 19^th Amendment declares that the fact that a right is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution does not mean that the government can infringe on that right;
3. It undermines the American value of equal opportunity and meritocracy that is gender neutral, race neutral – a true intent of Affirmative Action;
4. It further advances an unsustainable, progressive public policy of “divide and conquer”. There is clearly a lineage between this progressive agenda and the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” to overthrow capitalism, create chaos, in order to create a social state;
5. Moreover, there is precedent political risk – a risk that demographic data could be abused for political motives if likened to Hitler’s Jews Registry – data were lethally weaponized to retaliate opponents and murder Jews.

The Initiative imposes high administrative costs, unmeasurable political risk, and little to no practical returns (if not negative).  As such we, the majority of Asian Americans, ask you to REJECT the AAPI Data Disaggregation initiative.  Meanwhile we will closely monitor legislative actions across the country and welcome your inquiries.  Please feel free to send your inquiry to info@asiangop.org.