CLIPS

AsianAvenue.com, Aug. 28, 2003:

It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are? According to statistics from the National Runaway Switchboard (NRS), one in seven families remember a time when they didn't.

But what the NRS doesn't know, is that the number among Asian Pacific American (APA) families may be far more disturbing.

A survey completed by about 1,000 AsianAvenue.com members found that an alarming 23% or about one in four of Asian American teens have run away from home.

In fact, this number may not even surprise Asian Avenue readers because a higher 27% reportedly had APA friends that ran away even though they personally chose not to.

This means half of the Generation Y (ages 13-23) APA community has seen problems with juvenile delinquency--and when 50% of a given population has a problem, that problem should be investigated.

What's the big deal?

APAs are often at a disadvantage in national statistics for the simple reason that dozens of ethnicities with different needs and cultures are lumped together to create a pan-Asian category that is virtually useless.

As a group, their sum thus far in history has given the false impression that APAs are less needy than other races.

Juvenile delinquency, or more specifically runaway youth, is a perfect example of the cause and effect relationship between statistics and the failure to address glaring problems within the APA community.

The NRS, which serves as a help line and referral service for runaway youth throughout the country, provides and annual report which cites that one in seven children run away from home.

According to a 1999 report, only 3% of those runaways fall under the category "Hispanic/Other."

This percentage leads us to believe that Hispanic teens, Asian teens, Pacific Islander teens, Native American teens and everyone aside from White and Black people do not have a statistically significant problem with their youth.

Our survey says otherwise.

The Breakdown

An electronic survey was sent to 25,000 young APA men and women, and 965 responded.

The survey was simple, as to encourage a higher feedback rate, and polled respondents to see whether or not they had run away from home, why they chose to do it, where they went to for help, and whether or not their family reported the incident. Most of the teens that said they ran away did so between the ages of 13 and 18. Given that teens in this stage of development often struggle with issues of freedom and also have to deal with physical maturity on top of their responsibilities at school and in their social life, this could have easily been expected from any teen, regardless of race.

Consequently, survey respondents who said they ran away also said that they did so for many of the same reasons any teen would run away. Familial dispute, abuse, drug use and gang activity were among them.

The Generation Gap

One reason that could be specific to the APA community was what some respondents called a "generation gap" or cultural clash with their immigrant parents.

Whether this gap is purely based on the misperceptions of these teens, or if the gap actually exists is not so much of a problem as the fact that so many of these teens see it as a common and tangible issue.

One teen said, "Being second generation, my parents disciplined me the best way that they knew how, but I didn't understand why my rules were different than my white friends and [I] disagreed."

Vadsana, who also ran away, said, "I think many Asian American teens choose to run away because of the way their parents brought them up. Most Asian American parents raise their children the same way their parents raised them. The way parents raised their children back then is totally different from the way parents raise their children today."

"The reason why I chose to run away was because my parents were raising me as if we live back in our country," she said.

While it is understandable that national data is difficult to obtain, sometimes it only takes simple survey of our youth to see how they think in order to uncover a problem that is so glaring.

Cultural Obstacles

National data is usually collected from the Department of Justice, but those numbers will only include the 28% of cases that were reported to police.

APA families may refrain from reporting the disappearance of their children for any number of reasons, including a language barrier, the expectation that their child will return, mistrust of the government or simply to save face.

In fact, most respondents who ran away said that their family either reported their disappearance to someone they knew (possibly family, family friends or community leaders) or didn't report their disappearance at all. Shelly, 18, of California whose two cousins had left home, said that reputation was a big factor in the reason why her family never reported the incident.

"My aunt and uncle never told anybody and eventually the girls came home. Of course they were worried, but they never called the police. I think with Asian people there's a thing with reputation-you always want to look better than everyone else, even though your family is just as messed up as theirs," she said.

Kimi, 18, from Hawaii, said, "Parents are less inclined to want to tell about the whole ordeal because it would bring a different face to their family, showing that their family has a problem, almost like if their child ran away, it would disgrace the family that this child is such a 'problem' child."

One respondent said that her friend ran away from home, but his parents did not report it to the police. Instead, they called her parents (their friends) to seek help.

"Asian parents wouldn't report it to the cops," she said. "It's about image. They don't want to be embarrassed."