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May 2, 2022
Chess helps Afghan refugee students adjust to life in N.C.
By T. Keung Hui
The News & Observer
ALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Some
children who escaped the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan are now
learning to play chess to help them adjust
to life in Raleigh.
Stough Elementary School in Raleigh
has been the educational home for some of
the 1,200 people being relocated from
Afghanistan to North Carolina.
On April 1, the school day at Stough for
those refugee students included a virtual
chess lesson in Farsi from international
grandmaster Elshan Moradiabadi and a
chance to play the game.
“It’s just been really amazing to watch
and see their growth and development
since they’ve been here the last few weeks
and months,” Stough principal Chris Cox
said in an interview. “Obviously in a new
place at a new time where things are
probably feeling very foreign to them, this
is something that really gives them a little
bit of familiarity with something that they
love as simple as a game of chess.”
Thousands of Afghans who worked for
the U.S. government and military have
fled the country since the Taliban retook
the nation last summer.
Afghan refugees relocate to N.C.
Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham are
among six cities in North Carolina that are
accepting 1,200 refugees from Afghani-
stan, The News & Observer previously
R
reported.
At any given time, as many as 25 Afghan
refugees have attended Stough this school
year, according to Cox. He said the school
and community have come together to help
the new students.
Cindy Linton, Stough’s ESL teacher,
mentioned her work with the refugees to
her neighbor, Carol Meyer, executive
director of the U.S. Chess Federation.
What emerged is an effort to help teach the
students chess as part of their efforts to
learn English.
Meyer reached out to Moradiabadi, a
chess grandmaster who now lives in
Durham after having emigrated from Iran.
In addition to the chess lesson, Meyer
provided each student with their own
chess set to keep.
“Being an immigrant, I’m one of the
fortunate ones,” Moradiabadi said in an
interview. “This is the best way to return to
immigrants. For me to do something with
kids, is not a question.”
Will the Taliban ban chess again?
Before the Taliban fell in 2001 to U.S.
military forces, it had banned chess. Meyer
and Moradiabadi say there is fear that the
new Taliban government will reinstitute a
ban on chess.
UNIVERSAL GAME. Afghan refugee students at
Stough Elementary School learn how to play chess on
April 1, 2022 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Pictured
clockwise are U.S Chess Federation executive director
Carol Meyer, Stough ESL teacher Cindy Linton, and
students Ahmad, Sadiqullah, and Qudratullah. Stough
Elementary in Raleigh has been the educational home
for some of the 1,200 people being relocated from Af-
ghanistan to North Carolina. (Keung Hui/The News &
Observer via AP)
“The Taliban wanted people to be
devout,” Meyer said in an interview.
“Their worldview was shaped by being
devout Muslims, and something like chess
takes away from being a student of your
religion. So they banned chess, music,
many, many things.”
The chess knowledge varied among the
students, who played against one another,
Cox, Linton, and Meyer.
“The beautiful thing about chess is that
it’s a universal game,” Meyer said.
“Despite language barriers in this room,
the kids were able to learn how to move the
pieces and sit down and play a basic game
even though they may not have spoken the
same language as the person they were
playing against. We think it’s a great
unifier.”
What Cox said he’ll fondly remember
about that day is the “twinkle in their
eyes” as the students played chess.
“It was definitely great to see the kids
excited and that’s anything that any of us
as public educators would want to see is
kids engaged and excited to be here
learning each and every day,” Cox said.
Experts say Asian population overcount masks community nuances
By Terry Tang and Mike Schneider
The Associated Press
P
HOENIX — Jennifer Chau was astonished when
the U.S. Census Bureau’s report card on how
accurately it counted the U.S. population in 2020
showed that Asian people were overcounted by the
highest rate of any race or ethnic group.
The director of an Asian-American advocacy group
thought thousands of people would be missed — outreach
activities had been scratched by the coronavirus
pandemic, and she and her staff feared widespread
language barriers and wariness of sharing information
with the government could hinder participation. They
also thought recent attacks against Asian Americans
could stir up fears within the Asian population, the
fastest-growing race or ethnic group in the U.S.
“I’m honestly shocked,” said Chau, director of the
Arizona Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific
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Islander For Equity Coalition.
But Chau and other advocates and academics also
believe the overcounting of the Asian population by 2.6%
in the once-a-decade U.S. head count may not be all that it
seems on the surface. They say it likely masks great
variation in who was counted among different Asian
communities in the U.S. They also believe it could signal
that biracial and multiracial residents identified as Asian
in larger numbers than in the past.
The specifics are difficult to determine because all
Asian communities are grouped together under the same
race category in the census. This conceals the wide variety
of income, education, and health backgrounds between
subgroups and tends to blur characteristics unique to
certain communities, some advocates said. It may also
perpetuate the “model minority” myth of Asians being
affluent and well-educated.
“Asian Americans have the largest income inequality
than any other racial groups in the U.S. and the overall
overcount likely masks the experiences of Asian ethnic
groups who were more vulnerable to being undercounted,”
said Aggie Yellow Horse, an assistant professor of Asian
Pacific American Studies at Arizona State University.
Almost four dozen U.S. House members have asked the
Census Bureau to break down the accuracy of the count of
Asian residents by subgroups. Asians in the U.S. trace
their roots to more than 20 countries, with China and
India having the largest representation. But the bureau
has no plans to do so, at least not in the immediate future.
“To really see how the Asian-American community
fared, you need lower level geography to understand if
there was an undercount or if certain communities fared
better than others,” said Terry Ao Minnis, senior director
of census and voting programs at Asian Americans
Advancing Justice.
Asians were overcounted by a higher rate than any
other group. White residents who aren’t Hispanic were
overcounted by 0.6%. The Black population was
undercounted by 3.3%, those who identified as some other
race had a 4.3% undercount, almost 5% of the Hispanic
population was missed, and more than 5.6% of American
Indians living on reservations were undercounted.
Civil rights leaders blamed the undercounts on hurdles
created by the pandemic and political interference by
then-President Donald Trump’s administration, which
tried unsuccessfully to add a citizenship question to the
census form and cut field operations short.
The census not only is used for determining how many
congressional seats each state gets and for redrawing
political districts; it helps determine how $1.5 trillion a
year in federal funding is allocated. Overcounts, which are
revealed through a survey the bureau conducts apart from
the census, occur when people are counted twice, such as
college students being counted on campus and at their
parents’ homes.
In the 2020 census, 19.9 million residents identified as
“Asian alone,” a 35% increase from 2010. Another 4.1
million residents identified as Asian in combination with
another race group, a 55% jump from 2010. Asians now
make up more than 7% of the U.S. population.
Some of the growth by Asians in the 2020 census may be
rooted in the fluidity of how some people, particularly
those who are biracial or multiracial, report their identity
on the census form, said Paul Ong, a professor emeritus of
urban planning and Asian-American studies at UCLA.
“People change their identity from one survey to
another, and this is much more prevalent among those
who are multiracial or biracial,” Ong said.
Lan Hoang, a Vietnamese-American woman who works
at the same coalition as Chau, listed her three young
children as Asian, as well as white and Hispanic to
represent her husband’s background. She used the census
as an opportunity to talk to them about the importance of
identity, even reading them a kids’ book about the head
count.
“It talks about how important it is that you let others
know that you’re here, this is who you represent,” Hoang
said. “When I filled out (the form), they were totally
surprised. ... ‘Yeah, you’re three different things in one.
You’re special.’”
Conversations about declaring one’s Asian background
are especially meaningful given the anti-Asian hate
brought on by the pandemic, Hoang added. Eight people,
including six women of Asian descent, were fatally shot
last year at Georgia massage businesses, and thousands
more attacks against Asians have happened across the
U.S. since 2020.
Such factors may have led some multiracial people who
ordinarily would have indicated on the census form that
they were white, Black, or some other race to instead
select Asian, Ong said.
“When that happens, people who are multiracial go in
two directions: They reject their minority identity or they
embrace it,” Ong said. “With the rise of anti-Asian
hostility, it forced some multiracial Asians to select a
single identity.”
Another factor that may have contributed to the Asian
overcount is the fact that young adult Asians were more
likely to be in college than other racial or ethnic groups:
58% compared to 42% or less for young adults of other race
or ethnic backgrounds. That may have led them to be
counted twice, on campuses and at their parents’ homes,
where they went after colleges and universities closed
because of the pandemic.
UCLA junior Lauren Chen spent most of her freshman
year back home in Mesa, Arizona, in 2020. Her father
included Chen on the household census form even though
Census Bureau rules said she should have been counted at
school. Chen has no idea if she was counted twice.
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