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Asian Americans Climb US Political Ladder

By Radio Singapore International
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Asian Americans have won key positions in Congress, state legislatures and local councils. These elections were held parallel to the nail-biting presidential race.

Six million Asian Americans were registered to vote and have become an increasingly influential voting group.

An exponential increase of the Asian American population is expected in the next decade, giving them more and more political clout in local politics in the United States.

Will they change the face of American politics. Howie Lim first put this to Professor Paul Harris of Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

PH: It's important not to overstate this kind of perception. One interesting aspect of second and even third generation or even first generation Asia Americans, to a great extent, is that they focus on being American first and I think that it would be wrong as many people in Asia tend to do is to think that Asian Americans hold on to their specifically Asian identity too much. The long and the short of it is I would not expect there be a big change as a consequence of this. I mean, it's obviously good on a normative level that there's more of a variety of different backgrounds of people now serving in all levels of the US government but I would not expect there to be some major shift. Perhaps there will be a slight tendency towards more preference towards Asia when it comes to trade and economic issues but that's likely to happen anyway because it's in America's overall interest.

They are such a and diverse group. There are Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans etc etc and even though America has always been a melting pot nation of different cultures, how will that affect the cohesiveness of the United States?

PH: I don't think it will have any kind of adverse effect what so ever. It's especially interesting how accepting all Americans are of this diversity but I can assure you that the higher that they move up in politics, Asian Americans are going to have to emphasise their Asianess less and less as they go because their constituencies are going to grow more and more so it's going to be quite rare for anybody for example, could be president or a senator while catering specifically to other Asian Americans. It's not entirely the case when it comes to the House of Representatives and of course, offices within state where it's possible to focus on one ethnicity a bit more. But one advantage that Asian Americans have, and this is somewhat of an indictment of the United States, is that they seem to be having more success than other minorities in the United States and I'm thinking, for example, black Americans or even Hispanics Americans which are a very large minority but have relatively little representation.

Asian americans make up 4.7% of the US population. We know the Vietnamese-Americans backed Bush because Kerry denounced US involvement in the Vietnam War. How much did they factor into this presidential election?

PH: Well, I think that they¡'re important but I would also say that other minorities were also important. It was a relatively close election. One would have to look at the specific statistics. A lot of Asians that won key positions live in many of the states that President Bush lost and I'm thinking about California in particular so we ought not to overstate the actual value of these people's votes. But certainly, they were catered to by all of the candidates, President Bush included. Of course, President Bush has been much more successful with a certain core of Hispanic Americans who often times tend to vote Republican, especially the second generation Hispanic Americans.

That was Professor Paul Harris from Lingnan University in Hong Kong. Associate Professor John Whalen Bridge is from the Department of American Studies at the National University of Singapore. He gives his views on the issue.

JWB: Asian Americans are becoming more and more important in the American political landscape but I don't think that's going to change any of the party affiliations dramatically. But what we will see is Asian Americans having a different kind of face in public American culture but we've seen a movement away from stereotypical representations of the sort that people have objected to over the last several decades and what we'll see is popular culture beginning to target the Asian American demographic in terms of how America describes itself to itself, we'll see a large difference there. But I don't it's going to change the difference, say, between democrat or republican, conservative and progressive matters.

Piyush "Bobby" Jindal is the first Indian American to win a House of Representatives seat in New Orleans. What do you think he'll represent or in general what do you think the Asian American will represent in politics in America?

JWB: There are different images of this. When we see Indian Americans running in particular districts, they have been not necessarily progressive or conservative, it has been a function in large part of the demographic or where they are particularly running. If somebody's running in Louisiana and they want to be a senator and it's a very conservative state, then what we're going to see is this minority member within American politics who is appealing to his base in that way. In that sense, Asian Americans, as they enter into politics in the next decade, are going to be saying you shouldn't presume I'm either conservative or progressive because I'm Asian American. There's a different feeling there then there would be with African American candidates where there is a presumption that one is supposed to be on the democratic or liberal side when knowing that African Americans have been voting heavily for democratic candidates and Kerry was working very hard to mobilise that. But with Asian Americans, you're going to find a different pattern in that way. We'll see a more even split in their political policies.

Earlier I spoke to a Professor Harris who said that Asian Americans in politics will have emphasis their Asianess less and less. What are your views?

JWB: If we consider American ethnic groups, historically, the African American movement in the 60s and 70s has been modelled for many other movements. So we've had the African American civil rights movement as a direct challenge to the American political process and then we've had several other groups trying to come in and work within the same framework. Now with Asian Americans, we already have a mixture of groups from Japan, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Korean Americans, Laotian Americans, Cambodian Americans, the Philippines, Indians. These different groups who do not come from a homogenous background, calling them all Asians in this sense, means a presumption that they all fit into the same category. I think we'll see some rebellion against this kind of idea.