Asian American

Indian American voters are excited about the possibility that Vice President Kamala Harris, being of Indian and Jamaican descent, could become the Democratic nominee for president. Indian Americans also make up the largest portion of North Carolina's rapidly growing Asian American and Pacific Islander population.

A team of two artists and an oral history scholar created a mural next to Union Station in Raleigh. It’s dedicated to recognizing joy and belonging for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders who live in North Carolina.

While Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders comprise just 4% of North Carolina's population, their numbers and political power are growing rapidly. Across the state, AAPI advocates are empowering their communities to speak up and participate during this election year.

Many Hmong refugees settled in western North Carolina in the decades following the Vietnam War. Now that they’re getting older and are dealing with more health issues, they’ve become more reliant on their adult children to serve as interpreters in healthcare settings, which can be challenging given major differences between the English and Hmong languages.

Schools in south suburban Charlotte reflect a boom in Asian students. Jigna Patel is the principal of Ballantyne Elementary, where many students and parents share her Indian roots.

UNC-Chapel Hill student Shristi Sharma grew up in a small town in Iowa, believing she was American — until a conversation with her father during middle school changed everything she knew about her life.

Due to a massive backlog in employment-based green card applications, Indian nationals who’ve applied for green cards are often waiting many years to receive permanent residency status in the U.S. The long wait has impacted many Indian tech workers in North Carolina’s Triangle and also a growing number of college students whose parents brought them to the U.S. when they were young children.

As the Asian American population grows in the South – along with national awareness of anti-Asian violence – the works of Asian American artists have become more visible in art galleries and public spaces in North Carolina. What they have in common is how they express pride in the artists’ identity and experiences as Asian Americans.

As Pride reached its sixth year in Durham, Tori Grace Nichols, one of the few Asian American drag performers in the Triangle, shares how they connect drag to their Pilipinx identity.

When a Chinese American professor was killed on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus on Aug. 28, it triggered deep-seated anxiety and fear among Asian Americans in the Triangle.