A researcher named Rachel Sklar is working at the San Quentin State Prison in California, collecting data on COVID-19 transmission in the state's prison population. Sklar, who is of Filipino descent, says she has been denied an academic opportunity because some institutions don't consider her to be from a racial group that is underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Rachel Sklar is a person.
Kao Lee Yang was thrilled when she received a nomination from her university for the Gilliam fellowship, which is for underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering and math. She's been working on her doctorate for years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The United States has a small minority of 327,000 people, of which Asian American is the most common.
The US population as a whole is growing, but the Hmong population in the U.S. is growing at a slower rate.
26% of all Asians in the U.S. have obtained an additional degree after college, and just 13% of all Americans have, according to the analysis of Census Bureau data. Only a small percentage of Americans go into science, technology, engineering and math fields.
That's why she wasblindsided when HHMI told her she wasn't eligible for the fellowship because she wasn't underrepresented.
Kao Lee Yang was told by HHMI that she wasn't eligible for a fellowship because Asians aren't underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. She tells NPR she's never met anyone else who shares her heritage.
Mercedes Brandt/ Kao Lee Yang.
According to the standards set by the National Institute of Health, people who identify as Asian or white are not seen as underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Latino, Black, and Indigenous people are not always included in the grant funding for educational opportunities that are meant for Asian American applicants. The opportunities are designed to make sure groups who are historically marginalized are included in the workforce.
It makes no sense to her that she wasn't considered underrepresented, since she has never met another scientist in her field.
"I was shocked," he said. I wonder how HHMI came to that determination when I have had a hard time finding other scientists and scientific spaces.
The contradictions that come with falling under the broad category of "Asian" in government data collection are experienced by other people. Asian Americans have been speaking out about the issue for a long time.
When it comes to things like education levels, the experiences of the U.S. can vary greatly from other Asian groups. Lower levels of educational attainment are faced by some South Asian groups.
Because of the way HHMI looked at Asian Americans, she was not considered to be underrepresented, effectively shutting her out from an opportunity that claims to be for someone exactly like her.
More nuanced data is important to advocates.
Is every Asian American groupunderrepresented in higher education? "That's not the case, obviously that's not the case," said Wong, a professor of Asian American studies at the University of Maryland.
Indian and Chinese students are the largest group applying to these programs. They are not facing systemic exclusion to access to higher education because they face implicit bias on campuses.
Wong has advocated for disaggregation in the Asian American community.
Disaggregation would involve collecting more specific data on Asian sub- groups so that a person's country of origin is apparent, rather than just grouping people together from the entire continent. The data would show if someone was a Cambodian American or a Vietnamese American.
That kind of detail would allow policymakers, health care professionals, educators and even institutions such as theNIH to better examine the nuances of different Asian populations, because different groups have different needs, experiences and beliefs. The same argument has been made for other groups.
Wong said the issue is not just about collecting better data, but also about justice and civil rights.
She said that the issue was both a data quality and a data justice issue.
She said that lumping all Asian Americans together in one racial category reduces the experience of millions of people, and also for anyone trying to understand their political beliefs, education level, income inequality and health outcomes. A vast majority of Asian Americans are Democrats. If the data is further broken down, it shows that Vietnamese Americans tend to have more conservative views and are more likely to identify as Republican.
The University of California San Francisco's Rachel Sklar is Filipino and says she has been denied an academic opportunity in the past because she is Asian.
Downward intergenerational mobility is what Filipinos in the U.S. experience. U.S.-born Filipinos are less likely to get a bachelor's degree than their foreign-born parents. Efforts to boost groups struggling to obtain higher education should apply to Filipinos, but instead they're hidden in the broader data on Asian Americans and educational achievement.
The experiences of Filipinos are gone. They are deemed invisible.
More nuanced data could be helpful to doctors treating Asian American patients, and policy makers making decisions about targeting health resources to different communities.
Filipino women have high rates of hypertension and other risk factors that can affect their births.
She said that Asians are rarely considered for the types of resources that they need for safe birthing and pregnancy.
There are questions of identity and guilt.
Being considered a minority by some institutions, but not by others, is emotionally confusing.
Brittany Boribong, who was nominated to the same fellowship as Yang, had the same experience.
Boribong is the daughter of refugees. She is the first in her family to go to college, and she is also the first to go beyond a bachelor's degree. She was nominated for the fellowship while she was at Virginia Tech.
Boribong was told she wasn't eligible by the fellowship. She felt a wave of guilt, like she was taking up an opportunity from someone else.
Brittany Boribong is pictured at a breakfast in 2015 with others from the National Institutes of Health training fellowship. The fellowship was for people who are not white.
Brittany Boribong is related to Brittany Boribong.
"I'm Asian American, but I'm not sure if I belong here," she said. Am I taking someone else's spot? I felt like I snuck my way in.
Boribong said that it was the first time she had been told so bluntly that she wasn't underrepresented.
I looked around the room and it was obvious that there were other Lao scientists there. Where are we if I'm not considered a minority?
She and her advisor had to make a case for Boribong. She was pushed away from applying to other fellowships at HHMI because of her nomination.
Changing the way we collect data is being called for.
For years, scholars and activists have been calling for more specific data about Asian Americans.
Lawmakers in New York pushed for disaggregation of data on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Cuomo refused to sign the bill into law because of logistical and financial issues, which is the most common opposition to data disaggregation, despite being presented with the same bill before he resigned. Privacy concerns, particularly related to immigrant communities, and the idea that it could divide different Asian groups are some of the reasons why others oppose disaggregate data.
The law's advocates are now asking the governor to sign it into law.
Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in New York speak many languages. The bill was co-sponsored by State Sen. Julia Salazar.
The push for change has been gradual. Sklar and Boribong didn't know how many other people had gone through the same experience.
levating the conversation could lead to change. After NPR questioned HHMI about their process of determining who is underrepresented, they updated their standards.
The fellowship now acknowledges that there are other ethnic populations who might be underrepresented but who are not currently designated as such by the federal government.
They've extended the opportunity for Yang and a few others to complete their application, but she won't be moving forward with the process.
The James Shannon building is the administrative center for the National Institute of Health. The OMB encourages more detailed reporting when it comes to diversity reporting, but the organization says they follow recommendations.
The person is Pablo Martinez Monsivais.
The larger problem that Sklar points out is that many other fellowships in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics still take guidance from the National Institute of Health. The White House's Office of Management and Budget standards for race and ethnicity are what the National Institute of Health is required to follow.
The racial and ethnic groups outlined in the OMB standards are a minimum base for gathering data, so agencies can go into further detail if they choose to. The Department of Health and Human Services said that agencies can go into further detail. There was a report to the director of the National Institute of Health in 2012 about the lack of disaggregated data for minorities.
She doesn't expect much to change if theNIH doesn't change their process. She chooses to disaggregate the data she uses in her own scientific research.
She believes that showing the differences in the Asian American population in her own research is proof that the same should happen on a larger scale.
"The research needs to come first, and show that we've been making invisible experiences by assuming a very heterogeneous group is actually heterogeneous," Sklar said.
