Where’s Asian Pacific America in Middle America?
June 25, 2004
CINCINNATI, OHIO — I’m in the middle of Middle America. And if Flip, my dog, were with me, I’d paraphrase Judy Garland: “Flippy, we’re not in California anymore.”
Specifically, I’m in Ohio, a state that is 85 percent white, 11.5 percent black, 1.9 percent Latino — and just 1.2 percent Asian Pacific American.
That’s 132, 633 APAs to be exact. You can count them on an abacus.
Compare that to California’s 10.9 percent or 3.7 million APAs.
No wonder I can’t seem to find any here outside of the obvious ones. You know, the ones that run the eateries that advertise their Asian-ness with neon signs. That’s just good business. But most of the rest of the APAs here aren’t exactly lighting up neon signs.
They keep a low profile. No Chinatowns. No pagodas.
Ohio’s a place where the Asians are still called Orientals, even by APAs.
Ohioans can’t help it. They’re still discovering that African Americans don’t like to be called Negroes.
In recent years, police actions in Cincinnati’s black neighborhoods have caused riot situations. In the meantime, the state has struggled to deal with the concept of civil rights and the idea of a modern middle-class African American community. Ohio has a black population that’s ten times the size of APAs here, but may well be more than 100 times more misunderstood.
So you can’t blame the people here for not getting around to recognizing the APA presence beyond the profligate number of “Oriental buffets.” (But judging from the size of some of the people around here who eat at those places, boy, do these Ohioans love these “all-you-can-eat” Asian joints.)
Still, the environment is such that APAs here tend to want to get lost in the woodwork. They blend in and stick out at the same time.
But they just aren’t going amok enough. The numbers aren’t here to embolden them — yet. But they will be.
You may have noticed that the U.S. Census Bureau came out with yet another one of those “The Asians are coming, the Asians are coming!” press releases.
Last week, the Census officially proclaimed that the number of people who reported being Asian grew 12.5 percent to 13.5 million.
In tandem with the nation’s Hispanics, Asians continue to grow at much faster rates than the population as a whole, according to the new estimates released by the Census.
Hispanics (who may be of any race) reached 39.9 million on July 1, 2003, accounting for about one-half of the 9.4 million residents added to the nation’s population since Census 2000. Its growth rate of 13.0 percent over the 39-month period was almost four times that of the total population (3.3 percent).
That’s what’s happening to America. It just isn’t all that apparent in Ohio as much as it is in California, and that makes Ohio kind of unique. Here it’s like a bastion of a pre-diverse America.
America, B.D.: before diversity. Catch a glimpse of it while you can.
CAMPAIGN POLITICS
Ohio is Republican country. Here’s an example of the Cincinnati mentality. The Borders where I’m writing this column had more pre-orders of Harry Potter books than it did of Bill Clinton’s memoir.
That’s just the kind of place this is. They go nuts for anything about the Reagan funeral. Clinton’s 957-page memoir? They’ll wait and politely act like it never happened.
Ohio’s the place where they know how to put the G in GOP. It’s where every house has a green lawn and a ten-foot flagpole.
I’m here to see the in-laws, the non-Asian part of the family. And my visit seems to coincide with the presidential campaign.
Here’s how to get along with your Midwest in-laws. Don’t talk politics. Instead, talk about how the Reds were unfortunate to get creamed by the Oakland A’s recently. Talk about the wait for Ken Griffey Jr.’s 500th home run. Talk about Nascar’s superiority to Indy Cars.
Just don’t talk politics. Too bad, too. President Bush is about to descend. We could have started World War III over dinner.
Bush is here to raise a few million dollars for his campaign chest. (Nobody calls it a “war chest” anymore. In times of war, you separate the campaign funds from the blood money. The general fund is the war chest now.)
Bush’s main push is to talk about something he calls his Healthy Families Initiative. What’s that? Health care? Nope. That costs money. The initiative is a combination education/propaganda tool to help families on welfare realize that families are in fact important cornerstones of America.
Whereas government used to bail out families in trouble, the Bush administration is now pushing a kind of do-it-yourself, Home Depot style of home improvement.
Here’s the Bush fantasy: If families can be counseled and cajoled into staying together, they can stave off welfare and provide stability for the kids, who will be ready to do well in school, where they’ll have high test scores, which will enable the government to save with cutbacks on education funding, on top of welfare reform.
My what a simple plan — for disaster. I mean, if that’s all Bush is planning, he’s in trouble.
How about doing something for the families. Like giving them better-paying jobs. John Kerry was also here last week and he was pushing a raise in the federal minimum wage to over $7 per hour.
Over a 40-hour, 50-week year that’s still under $15,000 a year. But it sure beats welfare and classes from the government about why you shouldn’t leave your snoring spouse.
By comparison, Bush’s Healthy Families Initiative is just a joke. But it’s what passes for campaign talk here in Middle America this week.
Reach Emil at emil@amok.com.
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