WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (CA-32), Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), commended California Governor Jerry Brown for signing Assembly Bill 1088 into the law. The new legislation requires specific state agencies to revise existing demographic categories to include additional separate categories for various Asian and Pacific Islander subgroups.

“I want to thank Governor Jerry Brown, Assemblymember Mike Eng, and all of the community organizations who played an integral role in passing AB 1088 into law,” said Congresswoman Chu. “For far too long, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been falsely perceived as one monolithic group. This tendency masked the glaring disparities within various AAPI subgroups and made it nearly impossible for policymakers to effectively address the unique challenges facing our diverse communities. Now with AB 1088, we have the disaggregated data to gain a much clearer sense of the state of AAPIs in California, as well as a statewide model that we can replicate in the future at the national level.”

Prior to the passage of AB 1088, the collection and distribution of information on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders was divided into a handful of ethnic categories such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and Samoan. AB 1088 updates the ethnic data collection categories to match those used by the U.S. Census Bureau and adds new ones including Bangladeshi, Hmong, Indonesian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and Taiwanese. The law also requires agencies to annually update this data and make it publicly available online.

Disaggregated data collection is one of the top policy priorities for the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and was one of the key issues that CAPAC Members raised in their recent meeting with President Obama. CAPAC Members also sent a letter of support to Governor Brown in September urging him to sign AB 1088 into law.

Source: posted on Oct 13, 2011 by CAPAC