In May, Illinois REALTORS® will honor the accomplishments of Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI).  

AAPI includes people with ancestry from at least one of 50 countries on the Asian continent as well as the Pacific islands of Melanesia (New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands), Micronesia (Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia) and Polynesia (New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Easter Island).   

Here are six great ways you can join in the celebration: 

• Visit the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum. You can make a one-hour appointment by reservation on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Saturdays are exclusively for members. The museum has about 350,000 artifacts that span 10,000 years.  

• Watch the PBS five-hour documentary series, “Asian Americans,” originally released in May 2020. Visit the PBS website to see other video and streaming resources as well as its interactive gallery with references to the transcontinental railroad, early Hollywood, McCarthyism, Hawaiian statehood, the West Coast Labor Movement of the 1930s and more.  
• Read “The Making of Asian America: A History.” The book by award-winning historian Erika Lee tells the little-known history of Asian Americans in the United States from their first arrival to the present day. The U.S. National Archives also offers a video of Lee discussing her book. 
• Join the Greater Chicago chapter of the Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA). Expand your network and support real estate associations in Illinois like AREAA that represent the diversity found in the industry.  
• Learn about the “No Other” campaign and the role that Chicago REALTOR® Vicky Silvano of Baird & Warner played in it. Before the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting AAPI data for quarterly homeownership reports in 2016, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders checked the “Other” box when providing census data on race. As AREAA’s national chair, Silvano and a team of colleagues lobbied for AAPI inclusion so they could not be overlooked by the news media or by lawmakers and government agencies developing housing policies.  
• Check out the list of AAPI resources in Chicago for advocacy, arts, community organizing, culture, human services, professional organizations and research.