Building AAPI Power: A Profile of AAPI Communities in Greater Boston

Many Americans are finally waking up to the long history, impact and disgraceful persistence of racial injustice in America. Many others, of course, experienced these injustices firsthand and needed no awakening. But the elevation of racial justice to the top of the mainstream civic agenda provides a window of opportunity to organize for structural change. Today’s efforts build on a long history of racial justice organizing in the United States, and we need to ensure that the needs of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) are included in this current phase of work. Too often AAPI communities get overlooked, driven by the model minority myth and data-driven work on racial disparities that often report broad averages that mask intra-group disparities. These data challenges are particularly relevant for Asian Americans, who have the largest intra-racial income inequality of any racial group. Unfortunately, these challenges are not new. Nearly 30 years after the Boston Foundation’s Persistent Poverty Project (the precursor to Boston Indicators) published the landmark report Recognizing Poverty in Boston’s Asian American Community, today’s parallel stories and lack of progress are striking. High-prof