Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.

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Hawaii’s Asian-American population is bigger than every state’s but California’s, according to a new study by the private, non-profit Population Reference Bureau.

Hawaii may also serve as a model in the next two decades, especially for states like California, New York (and) Texas where Asian-Americans tend to settle. Since the 1960s, Asian-Americans have constituted the fastest-growing U.S. minority. Their numbers are expected to nearly triple during the last two decades of the century.

In Hawaii, “intermarriage among the various Asian, Pacific Island and white groups has been occurring for generations,” the study states. “The result is a population with a significant share of people not ‘purely’ of any one ethnic or racial group and analysts are hard put to describe the state’s ethnic composition.”

Asian-Americans across the nation numbered an estimated 5.1 million at the end of last month, according to the Population Reference Bureau study. This is an increase of almost 50 percent over the 3.5 million counted in the April 1, 1980 census.

The new study concludes that Asian-Americans are increasing much faster than either black or Hispanic minorities. Barring a fundamental shift in U.S. immigration policy, residents of Asian extraction will number almost 10 million by the turn of the century.

Today’s Asian immigrants are far different from the Chinese and Japanese laborers imported to Hawaii and California to harvest sugar and build railroads in the 19th century, the study notes.
Today’s Asian-Americans generally outperform the white majority in the classroom and workplace, the study shows.

One of the most telling statistics has to do with college education. Among all six Asian groups, 35 percent of the adults have graduated from college compared to 17 percent of white adults, the study found.

The three authors of the Population Reference Bureau study are all with the Population Institute at the East-West Center in Honolulu. …