As the son of a Chinese restaurant owner in Seattle and a self-described food fanatic, I was intrigued when a friend suggested that I visit Las Vegas’ Chinatown on a recent trip. Las Vegas has a Chinatown? Expectations were moderate, as I thought I would find a half-dozen older Chinese restaurants and groceries within a two- or three-block radius. When I got to Spring Mountain Road, I was stunned to find not a small Chinatown, but a huge and vibrant international district sprawling over three miles, complete with strip malls (some brand new) packed with a huge variety of restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, boba shops and other retail establishments from countries all over Asia and the Pacific Islands. I was equally stunned to learn that Las Vegas’ Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) population had increased by 250,000 over the last 10 years.[i] Given the explosive growth of the AAPI population across the U.S. (e.g., 1.9 million in Texas alone[ii]), I should not have been surprised. But as May is AAPI Heritage Month, I wondered how states with new AAPI populations would deal with difficult issues like anti-AAPI violence, the “model minority” myth and data aggregation/disaggregation. And as a longtime AAPI Washington state trial judge who just joined JAMS in February, I wondered what I could tell other neutrals about the complexity and importance of language when dealing with the growing AAPI population.

Hon. Lawrence E. Mooney (Ret.) Named Business of Pride Awards Recipient
St. Louis Business Journal recognizes outstanding LGBTQIA+ leaders within the community