When Mike Park first heard about the recent shootings in Atlanta, he was angry and scared. But almost immediately, he had another thought.
“We can’t just sit,” he said. “We can no longer sit in our little enclave.”
Born in South Carolina, the son of Korean immigrants, Park grew up wanting to escape his Asian identity. He resented having to be the only student to speak on Asian Pacific Day and was embarrassed when his friends did not want to dine at his home because of the pickled radishes and cabbage unknown in his refrigerator.
Now 42, Park embraces both his Korean heritage and an Asian-American identity he shares with others of his generation. The Atlanta shootings that left eight dead, six of them women of Asian descent, made him feel an even stronger sense of solidarity, especially after an increase in incidents of prejudice against Asians across the country.
“I really think this horrible crime has brought people together,” said Park, who works as an insurance agent in Duluth, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb that has a quarter of Asia. “It really is an awakening.”
For years, Asian Americans have been among the least likely of any racial or ethnic group to vote or join a community or advocacy group. Today they are emerging in public life, running for public office in record numbers and voting like never before. They are now the fastest growing group in the American electorate.
But as a political force, Asian Americans are still taking shape. With a relatively short voting history, they differ from demographic groups whose families have developed party loyalties and electoral trends over generations. Most of their families arrived after 1965, when the United States opened its doors to people in Asia. There are vast class divisions as well; the income gap between rich and poor is greater among Asian Americans.
“These are your classic undecided voters,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, president of AAPI Data. “These immigrants did not grow up in a Democratic or Republican family. You have a lot more persuasion. “
Historical data on Asian American voting patterns is patchy. Research analysis shows that the majority voted for George Bush in 1992, Ramakrishnan said. Today, most Asians vote for Democrats, but that masks profound differences by subgroup. Vietnamese-Americans, for example, are more inclined towards Republicans, and Indian-Americans have a strong tendency towards Democrats.
It is too early for a final analysis of the Asian-American vote in 2020, either by parties or by ethnic lines. But one thing seems clear – the share of Asian Americans seems to have been greater than ever. Ramakrishnan analyzed preliminary estimates from the electoral data company Catalist which were based on available returns from 33 states representing two-thirds of eligible Asian American voters. Estimates revealed that adult Asian-American citizens had the largest increase in voter turnout among any racial or ethnic group.
As relatively young voters, many Asian Americans find themselves exclusively interested in both major parties, attracted by Democrats for their stance on arms and health, and by Republicans for their support for small businesses and an emphasis on self-reliance. But they don’t fall into organized categories. The democratic position on immigration attracts some and repels others. Republican anti-communist language is attractive to some. Others are indifferent.
Former President Donald J. Trump’s repeated reference to the “China virus” has repelled many Chinese-American voters, and Democrats’ support for affirmative action policies in schools has drawn strong opposition from some Asian groups. Even the violence and slander against Asians, which began to increase after the coronavirus began to spread last spring, pushed people in different political directions. Some blame Mr. Trump and his followers. Others see Republicans as supporters of the police and law and order.
Yeun Jae Kim, 32, first voted last year. His parents moved from Seoul to a Florida suburb when he was a child and started a truck parts recovery business. Kim graduated from Georgia Tech and later worked at Coca-Cola in Atlanta, but, like his parents, he was so focused on doing that he didn’t vote or think much about politics.
Last year he changed his mind. But how to vote and who to choose? He and his wife spent hours watching videos on YouTube and talking in church with a politically experienced friend, also Korean-American.
“It was very difficult for me,” said Kim, who described himself as “in the middle” politically. “There are certain things that I really like about what the Democratic Party is doing. And there are certain things that I really like about what the Republicans are doing. ”
He wanted to keep his vote private. But he said that voting made him feel good.
“I was very proud of the country,” he said. “As if everyone is together in this. It helped me to feel connected with other people who were voting as well. “
Part of the new energy in Asian American politics comes from second-generation immigrants, who are now in their 30s and 40s and are forming families that are much more racially mixed and civically engaged than those of their parents. A new Asian-American identity is being forged from dozens of languages, cultures and stories.
“Right now, it’s maturing,” said Marc Ang, 39, a conservative political activist and businessman from Orange County, California. Her father, an immigrant from the Philippines of Chinese descent, went to California in the 1980s as a white-collar worker in the steel industry. The state now houses about a third of the country’s Asian-American population.
“Suddenly, we are the best doctors, the best lawyers, the best executives,” said Ang, who pointed out that the approximately 6 million Asians in California are equivalent to the size of Singapore. “It is inevitable that we become an electoral bloc.”
Ang, a Republican, worked to defeat an affirmative action proposal in California last year. But he praised Democrats and their efforts to draw attention to last year’s storm of slander and physical attacks, which he said was a galvanizing force, unifying even the least politically involved people from countries as different as China, Vietnam , Philippines and South Korea.
More Asian Americans are running for office than ever. They include Andrew Yang, one of the first leaders in the running for mayor of New York, and Michelle Wu, a councilor who is running for mayor of Boston. A Filipino-American, Robert Bonta, has just become California’s attorney general.
At least 158 Asian Americans ran for state legislatures in 2020, according to AAPI Data, an increase of 15% over 2018.
Marvin Lim, a representative of the state of Georgia, calls himself a 1.5 generation immigrant: He came from the Philippines to the United States when he was 7 years old.
Mr. Lim spent several years providing public assistance and said his family “did not see bootstraps working for us”. He became a civil rights lawyer and started voting for Democrats because his values, he said, were more in line with his. Now 36, he won a seat in the Georgia House in November, and last month he met President Biden during his visit to Atlanta after the shooting.
“I have never felt so important,” he said.
Asian Americans tend to Democrats. Even more so among those born in the United States. But there are things that keep Asians from Democrats too.
Anthony Lam, a Vietnamese immigrant who fled as a refugee in the 1970s and grew up in the Los Angeles working class, used to vote for Democrats. But, as a hairdresser in San Diego, he became increasingly frustrated by the guidelines for coronavirus blockages and discouraged by protests during the Black Lives Matter protests. When he criticized the loot, he said that some white Democrats punished him.
“They said, ‘You don’t understand racism,'” he said. “I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. Did you understand racism now? I have lived with it for 40 years. ‘”
Lam voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. He supported Yang in the Democratic primaries last year. But he said he ended up voting for Trump, mostly out of frustration with Democrats.
Despite recent increases in political representation, some Asian-American communities still feel invisible and some members argue that this could lead to a shift to the right.
Rob Yang, a Hmong-American who owns shoe and clothing stores in Minneapolis and St. Paul, grew up poor as a refugee. He saw the turmoil that followed the assassination of George Floyd in his traditional Hmong community, largely from the working class. Their own stores were stripped of their merchandise during the Black Lives Matter protests.
Mr. Yang voted for Mr. Biden. He said he supported the Black Lives Matter movement, but that some in his community did not. Years of feeling invisible frustrated and demoralized them.
In his view, Asians still do not have enough voice and he fears that the pressure of holding everything back for years is reaching dangerous levels. He said he feared that a populist Asian leader, “an Asian Trump,” might have a large following when he exploited this frustration. “We have been holding everything for so long that it will take the right circumstances to explode,” he said.
For Park, the insurance agent in the Atlanta suburb, the attacks in his city and others across America were a striking reminder that economic success does not guarantee protection against the racial animus that is part of American life. Now it is up to Asian Americans, he said, to stand up and claim their place in American politics.
“It is moving away from the idea that ‘the nail that comes out is hammered,'” he said. “We are realizing that it is okay to stand out.”