WASHINGTON (AP) – Speaking at the Georgia state Senate floor last week, Michelle Au begged her colleagues to “face” the mounting hatred of Asian Americans during the pandemic. A day later, an armed man shook the Atlanta area killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent.
For Au, who joined the state Senate in January as his first Asian American woman, the attack was heartbreaking validation of your fears. It is also encouraging her and other Asian Americans to press for greater political influence in Washington and other centers of power.
“People in our communities are hungry for representation that looks like them,” said Au in an interview. “I don’t think people can see problems if they haven’t experienced them in the past.”
There are at least 160 Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in 33 state legislatures across the country, according to the American Asian-Pacific Institute for Congressional Studies. An impressive number of 51 are seated in the Hawaii legislature. And of the 535 members of Congress, only 17 are of Asian or Pacific Islander descent, according to the Congressional Research Service. There are also three non-voting delegates who are Asian American and Pacific Islanders.
President Joe Biden and his aides have been under repeated pressure include Asian Americans in his cabinet, including during a private meeting with Senate Democrats on Monday night. Sens. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois pressured Biden’s senior advisers to expand the representation of Asian Americans in the government.
Duckworth then took it a step further, telling the White House on Tuesday that it would oppose any candidate who did not bring diversity to the Biden government – a move that could sink some, given a 50-50 Senate split.
“I have been talking to them for months and they are still not aggressive,” she said. “I’m going to be a no-no for everyone until they figure it out.”
Biden chose Katherine Tai, who is an American Taiwanese, as her main commercial envoy. She was confirmed last week, becoming the only Asian American to hold a ministerial-level position in the new administration. Vivek Murthy, son of Indian parents, is Biden’s nominee for general surgeon, a sub-office position.
Many Asian Americans say that the feeling of being marginalized politically will take years to fully overcome. Last week, an emotional Congressional hearing launched a national spotlight on combating racism among the community – but there is unlikely to be any major legislation addressing the issue.
“I think symbolism and representation are important, but only to a certain extent,” said Aarti Kohli, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice. “What’s more important is to actually get the job done.”
There are signs of change.
Kamala Harris, whose mother was born in India, is the first black woman and descendant from South Asia to become vice president. More than 300 Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders ran for public office in 2020, according to the Asian-Pacific-American Institute for Congressional Studies.
More seem to be preparing campaigns for the future. Madalene Xuan-Trang Mielke, president and CEO of the group, said that her organization recently conducted training for people interested in participating in municipal and state legislative disputes and had about 30 participants. It also encourages community members to participate in local councils and commissions.
“We are experts on the subject in a wide range of sectors and we must make this a reflection of our democracy, with people like us and others taking part in any kind of public policy conversation,” said Mielke.
Asian Americans are looking at other key offices across the country.
In New York City, former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is gaining attention – and campaign money – in a bid for mayor. And in California, home to the country’s largest Asian American community, elected officials are asking for Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom will appoint an attorney general of Asian descent as successor to Xavier Becerra, who was chosen as Biden’s secretary of health and human services.
Still, Stop AAPI Hate, an activist group formed when pandemic-related outages were occurring in the United States, received nearly 4,000 self-reported incidents of prejudice or discrimination from all 50 states last month. And nearly 3 in 10 Asian Americans said they had been subjected to slander or racial jokes since the coronavirus outbreak began, according to data from the Pew Research Center released last summer.
Janelle Wong, director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, researched how acts of discrimination can affect political participation. She said that such incidents can sometimes alienate members of the affected community – but more often, they increase political activity.
Wong pointed to California’s strict anti-immigrant laws, backed by Republicans in the 1990s, which helped mobilize Latinos to vote for Democrats and turned the state into fiercely blue in a generation. Democrats hope that a similar change may have started more recently in Arizona.
Wong said that the Asian-American population started to grow in the mid-1990s with the creation of the H1-B visa program, which made it easier for employers to hire immigrants in specialized professions. Many of these people have been in the country for more than 20 years, and they, or families of second-generation immigrants, are beginning to impose themselves politically, registering to vote and voting at higher rates.
In the November election, 70% of Asian American voters supported Biden, according to AP VoteCast, a national poll of the electorate. Asian Americans now represent the country’s fastest-growing ethnic minority, accounting for nearly 5% of qualified voters in last year’s election, according to the Pew Research Center.
US Census data showed that the community saw one of the biggest increases in voting rates for any group in the 2018 midterm elections compared to 2014, jumping from about 27% of qualified voters who actually voted in 2014 to 40% in 2018 But the largest Asian-American communities are still concentrated mainly in non-decisive presidential states, which means that none of the political parties have concentrated significant resources in reaching voters.
“There is not the same incentive for parties to mobilize them, and it is much more difficult because it requires some resources, it takes some attention to scope and language to understand Asian-American issues as well,” said Wong. “All of these things contribute to lower rates of political participation among Americans of Asian descent, but people – wrongly, I think – assume that Americans of Asian descent are somehow less interested in America’s civic life. “
This is evolving. Wong points to parliamentary disputes in Virginia this year, where Asian-American voters in Washington’s suburbs can have a decisive influence.
“People are now much more involved, especially as people in positions of power are constantly silencing our community,” said Michelle Chan, a Malaysian-American Chinese voter in Alexandria, Virginia.
Kohli of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice said the community could also change House districts in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Texas during the 2022 midterm elections.
Democratic Congresswoman Grace Meng of New York, first vice president of the Asian-Pacific American Congress Caucus, said many Asian Americans responded to the shootings by trying to protect themselves better, donating to civic groups and even forming brigades to walk with older people. in mostly Asian neighborhoods or distributing whistles to try to contain incidents of racism and violence. But she said that greater political engagement is the next step.
“We are literally taught not to speak openly and not to rock the boat,” said Meng. “And so, especially during the past year, it was a great challenge to tell our older generation of Asian immigrants – Asian Americans who may have even been here for three decades – that now is the time to be no longer invisible, that they have to speak loudly. “
Nabilah Islam, an American Democratic strategist and organizer from Bangladesh in Georgia, ran for Congress unsuccessfully last year. She said she felt compelled to do so because, although she had lived in her district outside Atlanta all her life, she “never saw anyone who looked like me” on campaign.
“What really makes the difference is having activists from within your community showing up,” said Islam. “For a long time, we have had this top-down strategy where normally, quite frankly, these white consultants come and say how you should organize your communities. But they never visited these houses and spoke to these families. “
The Asian American and Pacific Island community encompasses people from a variety of different heritages and cultures who generally speak languages other than English. Organizers say they are working to better unify these distinct heritages, while teaming up with activists from other backgrounds, including African Americans and Latinos – and that showing public support after the shootings could make these efforts easier.
“Asian Americans did not necessarily grow up with this defense vocabulary and how to fight for ourselves,” said Meng. For this, it was necessary to “learn this from other communities, such as the black and Latin communities, and walk alongside them, witnessing their struggles”.
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Associated Press writers Emily Swanson and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.