Asian Californians are residents of the state of California who are of Asian ancestry. California has the largest Asian American population in the U.S., and second highest proportion of Asian American residents, after Hawaii. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were over 6 million Asian-Americans in California; 15.5% of the state's population.[3] If including those with partial Asian ancestry, this figure is around 17%. This is a jump from 13.8% recorded in 2010.[4]
Including those with partial Asian ancestry, the following Asian ethnic groups in California are: Filipino (3.9%, 1,474,707), Chinese (except Taiwanese; 3.6%, 1,349,111), Vietnamese (858,589, 1.7%), Indian (666,445, 1.5%), Koreans (505,225, 1.3%), Japanese (428,014, 1.1%), Taiwanese (109,928, 0.2%), Cambodians (102,317, 0.2%), Hmong (91,224, 0.2%), Laotians (69,303, 0.2%), Thai (67,707, 0.1%), Pakistanis (53,474, 0.1%), Indonesians (39,506, 0.1%), Burmese (17,978, 0.05%), Sri Lankans (11,929, 0.03%), Bangladeshis (10,494, 0.03%), Nepalese (6,231, 0.01%), Malaysians (5,595, 0.01%), Mongolians (4,993, 0.1%), Singaporeans (1,513, 0.004%), Okinawans (1,377, 0.003%), and Bhutanese (750, 0.001%).[4]
Economical
Asians have the highest income per capita in the US, and may have a slightly above average rate in California. However, income average varies with Asian groups, from Cambodians and Hmong to Taiwanese and Indians.
Asians make up approximately 2-4% of homeless in California, which is low, but communities exist especially in San Francisco and San Jose.
While a large proportion of Asian Americans have higher educational attainments and median income averages, many Asian American groups, often those coming from low-income Southeast Asian families, face hardships such as poverty, depression, emotional and domestic abuse, racial bullying, and gang violence. Cambodian and Southeast Asian-dominant street gangs such as the Asian Boyz, which is an off-shoot of the African American and Los Angeles based Crips gang, formed in Los Angeles County the late 1970s to the 1980s during the Cambodian refuge migration to the U.S, especially in Long Beach, Fresno, Sacramento, Oakland, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Lowell, Massachusetts.
Often, these gangs would fight with Hispanic gangs but would eventually shift into fighting with fellow Cambodia and Asian gang members, mostly with rival Asian gangs or criminals/dealers. This violence over drugs, turf, and arguments would sometimes lead to violence and murders, and violence involving innocent children and families during home invasions have been reported in the San Bernardino area in the 1990s and elsewhere.
Education
Asian Americans and immigrants have a high student body percentage among many California colleges; UC Berkeley is about 40% Asian.
Ethnic groups
Cambodian
There are many Cambodians in Long Beach, Stockton, and Fresno. Long Beach is 4% Cambodian with over 20,000 people of Cambodian residents. There is a Cambodiatown in LB. There is a Cambodian population in Oakland, and there were, and to a lesser extent today, Cambodian communities in Tenderloin, San Francisco.
The Bay Area in general is 8-9% Chinese. Many live in Santa Clara County, with many prevalent in Cupertino, Sunnyvale, and Milpitas. In the East Bay, many in San Ramon, Dublin, Pleasanton, Oakland, Walnut Creek, and Piedmont. Berkeley has many Chinese in the area; UC Berkeley is about 20% Chinese. On the Peninsula, there are many Chinese Americans in Daly City, San Mateo, San Bruno, and Foster City.
Northern California and America at large’s Chinese population largely originated in the Taishan area, with at least half of Chinese Americans in the 1980s reporting some or all Taishanese ancestry. Nearby cities such as Zhongshan had larger emigration waves to the US and/or California. There were also some Shanghainese immigrants coming into the Bay Area to a lesser extent during the 70s-80s.
Sacramento is 3-5% Chinese. Davis has many Asian American residents and students at UC Davis. Elk Grove has a Chinese community.
San Diego has Chinese communities in Torrey Pines and Ranchos Penasquitos, and there are sizeable numbers in other County cities such as Carlsbad and Poway.
The majority of Filipinos in California reside in the Greater Los Angeles area. According to a 2013 study, there are 1.5 million Filipino Americans in California,[5] making them one of the largest Asian ethnic groups in the state. Since 2018 the population has grown to 1.6 million according to some sources.[6]
As of the 2010 census, a little over 91,000 Hmong live in California alone, out of the total 260,000 in the country.[7] They mainly live in Fresno, Merced, Sacramento, and Stockton areas.
California has the most Indian Americans in terms of sheer number, but percentage-wise, the U.S. state with the highest number of Indian Americans is New Jersey, and the U.S. city as well as metropolitan area with the highest absolute number of Indians is New York City. California is about 1.3% Indian, with many living in Orange County and Santa Clara County. Many live in Yuba City, about 15% Indian, which has a significant Sikh community.
Indonesian
Los Angeles, California is home to the largest population of Indonesians in America, with Riverside, California having the second largest population.[8]
California contains five of the top 10 metropolitan cities with the greatest Japanese population in the United States.[9] Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, and Sacramento have the largest Japanese populations in California, with Los Angeles having more than the other cities combined.
Koreans make up 16% of the Asian Pacific Islander (API) community in Los Angeles County, the highest percentage in the entire country. In the API community of California, Koreans comprise 9% of the population, but only 1% of the total population.[10]
California is the top state in the country with the largest Laotian population, which as of 2015 is 271,000 across the country.[11] Among the population of Laotians, Hmong people are counted as well. They are mostly in Northern and Central California, in Oakland, Richmond, Fresno, Sacramento and Stockton. There are some in Southeast San Diego.
Malaysian
Los Angeles is second to New York in terms of Malay population, however the combined population of Malay in Los Angeles and San Francisco is equal to New York.[12]
Los Angeles is home to the largest percentage of Taiwanese Americans in the country. There is a Little Taipei, and Hacienda Heights and Monterey Park both have large Taiwanese communities.
California possesses the largest Thai population outside of Asia, and is the only state in the country that has a designated "Thai Town," which is also the first of its kind globally.
Of the 5.6 million Asian people in California, approximately 68,000 are Thai, which is 28.5% of the entire Thai population in the United States.[13]
Orange County has a large Vietnamese population, with much of the population in Garden Grove and Westminster, which contains a Little Saigon. There are also smaller but significant Vietnamese communities in Anaheim and Santa Ana in Orange County.
Merced is a city in, and the county seat of, Merced County, California, United States, in the San Joaquin Valley. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 86,333, up from 78,958 in 2010. Incorporated on April 1, 1889, Merced is a charter city that operates under a council–manager government. It is named after the Merced River, which flows nearby.
The Hmong people are an indigenous group in East and Southeast Asia. In China, the Hmong people are classified as a sub-group of the Miao people. The modern Hmong reside mainly in Southwest China and countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. There is also a large diasporic community in the United States of more than 300,000. The Hmong diaspora has smaller communities in Australia and South America.
Monterey Park is a city in the western San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County, California, United States, approximately seven miles (11 km) east of the Downtown Los Angeles civic center. It is bordered by Alhambra, East Los Angeles, Montebello and Rosemead. The city's motto is "Pride in the past, Faith in the future".
The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco. Since its establishment in the early 1850s, it has been important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity.
Little Saigon is a name given to ethnic enclaves of expatriate Vietnamese mainly in English-speaking countries. Alternate names include Little Vietnam and Little Hanoi, depending on the enclave's political history. To avoid political undertones due to the renaming of Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City, it is occasionally called by the neutral name Vietnamtown. Saigon is the former name of the capital of the former South Vietnam, where a large number of first-generation Vietnamese immigrants emigrating to the United States originate from, whereas Hanoi is the current capital of Vietnam.
The San Joaquin Valley is the southern half of California's Central Valley, an area drained by the San Joaquin River. Famed as a major breadbasket, the San Joaquin Valley is an important source of food, producing a significant part of California's agricultural output.
Cambodian Americans, also Khmer Americans, are Americans of Cambodian or Khmer ancestry. In addition, Cambodian Americans are also Americans with ancestry of other ethnic groups of Cambodia, such as the Chams and Chinese Cambodians.
The Chinatown neighborhood in Oakland, California, is traditionally Chinese which reflects Oakland's diverse Chinese American, and more broadly Asian American community. It is frequently referred to as "Oakland Chinatown" in order to distinguish it from nearby San Francisco's Chinatown. It lies at an elevation of 39 feet.
Hmong Americans are Americans of Hmong ancestry. Many Hmong Americans immigrated to the United States as refugees in the late 1970s. Over half of the Hmong population from Laos left the country, or attempted to leave, in 1975, at the culmination of the Laotian Civil War.
Wah Ching is a Chinese American criminal organization and street gang that was founded in San Francisco, California in 1964. The Wah Ching has been involved in crimes including narcotic sales, racketeering, and gambling.
California is the most populated U.S. state, with an estimated population of 38.9 million as of 2023. It has people from a wide variety of ethnic, racial, national, and religious backgrounds.
Chinatowns are enclaves of Chinese people outside of China. The first Chinatown in the United States was San Francisco's Chinatown in 1848, and many other Chinatowns were established in the 19th century by the Chinese diaspora on the West Coast. By 1875, Chinatowns had emerged in eastern cities such as New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese immigration to the United States, but the Magnuson Act of 1943 repealed it, and the population of Chinatowns began to rise again.
The demographics of Filipino Americans describe a heterogeneous group of people in the United States who trace their ancestry to the Philippines. As of the 2020 Census, there were 4.4 million Filipino Americans, including Multiracial Americans who were part Filipino living in the US. Filipino Americans constitute the third-largest population of Asian Americans, and the largest population of Overseas Filipinos.
Menace of Destruction (MOD), formerly known as Masters of Destruction, is a Hmong street gang created in 1988. Today, it is active in California, Midwestern United States and many places with large Hmong communities. It is known for murders, fights, shootings, and weapon and drug trafficking.
As of 2012, 21.4% of the population in San Francisco was of Chinese descent, and there were at least 150,000 Chinese American residents. The Chinese are the largest Asian American subgroup in San Francisco. San Francisco has the highest percentage of residents of Chinese descent of any major U.S. city, and the second largest Chinese American population, after New York City. The San Francisco Area is 7.9% Chinese American, with many residents in Oakland and Santa Clara County. San Francisco's Chinese community has ancestry mainly from Guangdong province, China and Hong Kong, although there is a sizable population of ethnic Chinese with ancestry from other parts of mainland China and Taiwan as well.
The 1990 United States census and 2000 United States census found that non-Hispanic whites were becoming a minority in Los Angeles. Estimates for the 2010 United States census results find Latinos to be approximately half (47-49%) of the city's population, growing from 40% in 2000 and 30-35% in 1990 census.
The Hmong population in California is the largest in the United States. Most fled to the United States as refugees in the late 1970s due to their cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency operatives in northern Laos during the Vietnam War, or are a descendant.
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