09 Identity, Culture, and Community

Identity as personal and shared

Asian American identity is not one culture or experience. It includes people with roots across East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and, depending on context and self-identification, Central Asia. People may identify with a specific ethnicity or national heritage, a regional identity such as South Asian, the broader label Asian American, or several at once.

Asian American is distinct from Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, although institutional labels such as AAPI sometimes group the terms together. No single label fits everyone.

Shared labels and individual identities

The term Asian American became a pan-ethnic identity in the 1960s, when people from different Asian backgrounds organized around shared experiences and rejected older, imposed labels. It can express solidarity, but it does not erase differences in ancestry, language, religion, migration history, or community.

A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 52 percent of Asian adults most often described themselves using an ethnic identity, alone or with “American”; 28 percent used “Asian” or “Asian American.” Nine in ten said Asian Americans have many different cultures rather than one common culture. These findings illustrate why no single label fits everyone.

Identity can reflect more than ancestry. It may also be shaped by where someone was born and raised, citizenship, family stories, neighborhood, race, gender, sexuality, class, and personal relationships. Someone might describe themselves as Filipino American, queer, and Catholic, or choose different descriptions in different settings. Some people feel closely connected to a pan-Asian community; others prefer a more specific identity or do not find the broad label meaningful.

Generations and family connections

Generational labels can describe migration histories, but they do not predict how a person thinks or behaves. First generation generally refers to immigrants; second generation refers to U.S.-born children of immigrants; and third- or later-generation people have U.S.-born parents and earlier U.S.-born ancestors. People who immigrate as children may describe their experiences differently from people who arrive as adults.

Family can connect generations through stories, caregiving, food, celebrations, faith, and contact with relatives in other places. It can also be a setting where people negotiate different expectations or languages. A young person might learn a heritage language from a grandparent while using English at school, or relatives might hold different views about cultural traditions. These are possibilities, not universal patterns: Asian American families vary widely in structure, values, resources, and experience.

Changing culture and language

Culture is lived and changing, not a fixed collection of customs shared by everyone with Asian ancestry. It may be expressed through meals, music, art, holidays, clothing, humor, community organizations, and everyday habits. Families and communities adapt practices over time, and individuals may combine influences from several backgrounds.

Language can connect people across generations. Asian Americans speak many languages and dialects, and people differ in whether they speak, understand, read, or are learning a heritage language. English may be a person's strongest language; another person may use several languages at home or in community life.

In Pew's analysis of 2021–23 American Community Survey data, 68 percent of U.S.-born Asians ages five and older spoke English at home, and the chart also records a range of other languages. A language spoken at home does not, by itself, establish how someone identifies or how connected they feel to a heritage.

Religion and belief

Asian Americans include Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Jews, people connected to Daoist or other traditions, and people with no religious affiliation. Some people relate to a tradition through family or culture without identifying it as their religion; others practice more than one tradition or no religion.

A 2023 Pew survey found that 34 percent of Asian American adults identified as Christian, 32 percent as religiously unaffiliated, about one in ten as Buddhist, about one in ten as Hindu, and 6 percent as Muslim. Patterns differed substantially among origin groups, so these overall figures should not be used to assume an individual's beliefs.

Community and belonging

Community can form through family networks, religious congregations, cultural associations, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and shared interests. Some communities are organized around a particular language or ethnic heritage; others bring together people with different backgrounds. These spaces can preserve traditions, provide mutual support, and create new forms of belonging. Communities can also change as generations, migration patterns, and local circumstances change.

Two people whose families came from the same country may have different relationships to its language or religion because one immigrated as an adult and the other grew up in the United States. They may nevertheless share a neighborhood, community organization, or sense of Asian American identity. Neither person's experience stands for the whole community.

Understanding Asian American life means recognizing its diversity without treating any group—or any individual—as representative of everyone.