Political Upheaval
Apologies for the long hiatus, folks. Maybe I should make my New Years' resolution to post more often, but we'll see if that actually happens.
A recent article from BBC News alleges discrimination against Asians (mostly people from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, so not the East Asians I talk about most on this site, but that's another article for another time) in the 2006 elections. Take a look:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7182758.stm
Of course, I think this is just scraping the surface. Asians in general are pretty invisible to the political process. You hear about candidates scrambling for "The Black Vote" pretty much every election cycle, and recently you hear about candidates scrambling for "The Hispanic Vote"; this election cycle even featured televised debates on Univision, the Spanish-language channel (although the debate itself was in English). So where is the scrambling for the Asian vote?
There is none. Why not? Part of the reason is that Asians are not as well-definable a political bloc as other minorities. Conventional wisdom holds that Democrats usually win the black vote, whereas Republicans have an advantage in Florida with the Hispanic vote, thanks to a hardline stance on Cuba. (This has changed recently though as illegal immigration has become a hot button issue.) But what about Asians? I haven't done any demographic analysis of the topic, but based on just the Asians I know for every born-again Christian social conservative who votes Republican there's an intellectual doctor/scientist who votes Democratic. There's no hot button issue like immigration that seems to move Asians as much, either. And you certainly won't see any Asians marching on D.C. for causes like the Jena 6.
I've mentioned in a previous post that there are no Asian equivalents to Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. A side effect is that Asians don't have much of a coherent political presence, and therefore politicians generally pay little attention to issues that may be important to Asian-Americans. On the other hand, maybe that's a good thing as well; I wouldn't want a politician coming out to town meetings and talking about his favorite General Tso's Chicken recipe to try and show some 'street cred' with the local Asian population.
A recent article from BBC News alleges discrimination against Asians (mostly people from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, so not the East Asians I talk about most on this site, but that's another article for another time) in the 2006 elections. Take a look:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7182758.stm
Of course, I think this is just scraping the surface. Asians in general are pretty invisible to the political process. You hear about candidates scrambling for "The Black Vote" pretty much every election cycle, and recently you hear about candidates scrambling for "The Hispanic Vote"; this election cycle even featured televised debates on Univision, the Spanish-language channel (although the debate itself was in English). So where is the scrambling for the Asian vote?
There is none. Why not? Part of the reason is that Asians are not as well-definable a political bloc as other minorities. Conventional wisdom holds that Democrats usually win the black vote, whereas Republicans have an advantage in Florida with the Hispanic vote, thanks to a hardline stance on Cuba. (This has changed recently though as illegal immigration has become a hot button issue.) But what about Asians? I haven't done any demographic analysis of the topic, but based on just the Asians I know for every born-again Christian social conservative who votes Republican there's an intellectual doctor/scientist who votes Democratic. There's no hot button issue like immigration that seems to move Asians as much, either. And you certainly won't see any Asians marching on D.C. for causes like the Jena 6.
I've mentioned in a previous post that there are no Asian equivalents to Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. A side effect is that Asians don't have much of a coherent political presence, and therefore politicians generally pay little attention to issues that may be important to Asian-Americans. On the other hand, maybe that's a good thing as well; I wouldn't want a politician coming out to town meetings and talking about his favorite General Tso's Chicken recipe to try and show some 'street cred' with the local Asian population.
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I think that the very small number of Asians (10.25 million, according to the 2000 Census) also makes us a little less than attractive to the politicians. There are three times as many African-Americans, and three times as many Hispanics as there are Asians in the US. As the Census includes non-citizens in its population figures, the number of voting Asians is rather smaller.
Furthermore, we hate each other. Admit it: Asians don't like other Asians if they're not from the same country. Much of the Asian population maintains strong ties to the 'home countries' and this only contributes to the political fragmentation. Here's what would happen if any kind of major Asian political movement ever got started: One group would want US pressure on China to lay off Taiwan; another group would want the US to push for reunification; all the other groups want something else entirely. Then they spend all their time fighting each other over things like whether Indians count as Asian.
Also, do people just forget the stories about cargo containers full of Chinamen that turn up every now and then in New York and California? Illegal immigration isn't just about Mexicans sneaking through the desert.