Demographics

I chose to look at the Chinese American population in the Bay Area, particularly in Cupertino. I know, having grown up in Cupertino, that the Asian American population has grown tremendously even over the past ten years. A lot of the data classified just simply Asian American, without taking into account the many people groups that encompasses. I hope to be able to narrow in on information about Chinese Americans, but I hope to start by developing an understanding of the presence of all Asian group represented in the United States, California, and the Bay Area.

Based on the Census taken in 2000, 11,898,828 people reported their race as Asian. This is about 4.2% of the U.S. population, which was reported at 281,421,906

This census also provided specifics about the Asian population in the nation. The greatest Asian ethnic group population is the Chinese population (which excludes Taiwanese), with Filipino, Asian Indian, Vietnamese and Korean rounding out the top five.

The census also reported that California reported the largest Asian population, which at that time was about 3,610,809. The cities with the largest Asian alone population are New York (787,047), Los Angeles (369,254), San Jose (240,375), San Francisco (239,565), and Honolulu (207,588). Interestingly enough, three of these top five cities are in California, two of them in the Bay Area.

California is the top state with Asian Alone and Asian Alone or in Combination population. The San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose area is the third top metropolitan area with Asian Alone and Asian Alone or in Combination population. Of the top twenty-five with Asian Alone and Asian Alone or in Combination population seventeen are in California.

This census broke down the information about the various Asian groups in California. The top five populations are as follows: Asian Indian 314,819 0.93%, Bangladeshi 3,044 0.01%, Cambodian 70,232 0.21%, Chinese, except Taiwanese 918,325 2.71%, and Filipino 918,678 2.71%.

*previous information from: http://www.advancingequality.org/files/census_handbook.pdf

Bringing it closer to home, the Santa Clara County Office of Education website showed the student enrollment by ethnic group. This chart showed the Asian enrollment at 25.9%, Hispanic/Latino enrollment at 36.8% and White enrollment at 24.2%. The rest of the groups represented a smaller percentage of enrollment in the county.

*http://www.sccoe.k12.ca.us/newsandfacts/sccpublicschools/

Taking it one step further, looking at the Cupertino Union School District website, we see a difference in the student population. 70% of the CUSD students were identified as Asian, 23% as White, 5% Hispanic, 1% Black, and 1% Filipino.

*http://cupertino.ca.campusgrid.net/home/About+our+District

Looking at this information from the broad perspective of the United States as a whole, and narrowing the field of study bit by bit helps to gain a view of the information in perspective. If we were to only look at the Cupertino Union School district for information about the population of California, we would be led to believe that California is somewhere around 70% Asian. However, looking at the Los Angeles Unified School District, one is presented with data that shows the district to be about 50% Hispanic and only 13% Asian. That said, the Cupertino Union School District represents an area with a higher concentration of Asian Americans. I hope to use this information to continue to build an understanding of Asian Americans, especially Chinese Americans, and the issues they face regarding education, employment, religion and tradition, and better understand how that will effect my future students.