Ep 148 | Taiwanese Census Campaign Challenges The Pew Research Report: Our Interview with Christina Hu and Chieh-Ting Yeh

Sep 15, 2021

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A note from Talking Taiwan host Felicia Lin:

In April of this year, reports published by the Pew Research Center analyzing Asian American communities included footnotes stating that data for “ ‘Chinese’ includes those identifying as ‘Taiwanese.’ ” Soon after, in May, the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign published an open letter and petition on TaiwaneseAmerican.org asking Pew Research to issue an apology to the Taiwanese American community, and to re-publish its findings with Taiwanese as a separate category.

Upon hearing this, I reached out to Christina Hu, Director of the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign asking to interview her about this. She was working on getting an apology and correction from Pew, so I agreed to wait until she got an official response from Pew to do the interview.

For months, the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign team worked on getting a response from Pew Research and by July Christina told me that she was hoping to get an official response.

On Wednesday, September 8, 2021 Pew Research reissued their report on Asian American communities which had previously misrepresented the Taiwanese. To be clear it was a correction, not an apology. Data for 2000, 2010 and 2019 included the categories of “Chinese, with Taiwanese,” “Taiwanese,” “Chinese, except Taiwanese” and “Okinawan.”

I spoke with Christina Hu, the Director of the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign and Chieh-ting Yeh, the Media Director of the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign about what transpired after the Taiwanese American community’s response to Pew Research’s initial report on Asian communities, and what led to Pew to re-issue their report.

We also spoke about the 2020 Write in Taiwanese Campaign and the decades long advocacy work of the Taiwanese American Citizens League (TACL), that started in 1990 to educate the Taiwanese American community to complete the US Census by not only checking the “Other Asian” box, but also writing in “Taiwanese.”

The Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign Team:

Christina Hu

Director, Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign

Director of Civic Engagement, Taiwanese American Citizens League

Chieh-Ting Yeh

Media Director, Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign

Editor-in-Chief, Ketagalan Media

Leona Chen

Creative Director, Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign

Editor-in-Chief, TaiwaneseAmerican.org

Here’s a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:

How Christina got involved in the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign
How Ting (Chieh-ting) got involved in the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign
The background and history of the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign
The evolution of the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign since it started in1990
Why it’s important to be counted on the U.S. census
It wasn’t until 1960 that people could select their own race on the U.S. census
Why it is important for Taiwanese Americans to be counted on the U.S. census
How the Pew Research Reports which used U.S. census data misrepresented the Taiwanese
The Pew Research Report on Asian American communities that included a footnote stating that data for “ ‘Chinese’ includes those identifying as ‘Taiwanese.’ ”
The communications that the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign and Christina had with Pew Research and Neil Ruiz, the Associate Director of Race and Ethnicity
The open letter and online petition (posted on TaiwaneseAmerican.org) asking Pew Research to issue an apology to the Taiwanese American community, and to re-publish its findings with Taiwanese as a separate category
The various groups that signed the online petition and supported the Taiwanese American community’s campaign to ask Pew Research for an apology and correction of their reports that did not include Taiwanese as a separate category
How Christina discovered that the Pew Research report had disappeared Okinawans as a separate category
What happened in the four months that the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign tried to get an official response from Pew Research
The conversations that Christina had with Neil Ruiz about why it was important for her personally, to identify as Taiwanese, and why Pew could say they were confused by self-reported data from the Taiwanese American community that unequivocally indicated that people wanted to be identified as Taiwanese
The slogan of the Write in Taiwanese Census Campaign