AsianWeek » Asian Votes and Obama

Asian Votes and Obama

By: Vu Duc Vuong, Feb 19, 2008

Tags: Giang Ho, Opinion |

On this new year of the Rat, at the corner of 42nd and Santiago in San Francisco, I witnessed a brief encounter that would warm the heart of Martin Luther King Jr. and would energize Barack Obama.

As an Asian family said goodbye to another Asian family at the corner, a nondescript car pulled up, stopped at the stop sign and from inside a voice bellowed: “Gung hay fat choy!” Startled, we all looked at the driver. He was alone, a middle-aged black man with the biggest smile. The two families replied in unison: “Happy New Year!” and the man drove on.

There’s hope in my own neighborhood.

This year, we are blessed with an array of competent, patriotic and historic candidates for the presidency. The three remaining viable candidates would make us proud: a former POW who advocated normalization with the country that tortured him; a woman so smart one wonders why she didn’t become president before her husband; and a mixed-race African American who’s as tough as Lincoln, as inspiring as JFK and as determined as Mandela.

So it pained me to see how my fellow Asian Americans voted on Super Tuesday. I wouldn’t mind it if they voted for McCain, Clinton, Edwards or even Huckabee or Paul, because they believed in their messages or trusted their personalities. But it disturbed me when I hear APIs admit that the reason they refused to vote for Obama was because he was black. In the California Democratic primary, Asian Americans voted for Hillary over Barack by a margin of roughly 3 to 1. CNN aired a report from Seattle, Wash., with an Asian woman saying she would vote for Clinton because she’s white.

Have we forgotten it was the civil rights movement that revolutionized this country and ushered in waves upon waves of “liberation” movements for other oppressed people? From the women’s movement and other ethnic-based communities to equality for the elderly, for gays and lesbians, and immigration reform?

Specifically for us Asian Americans, we were excluded by law from this country in 1882, and it was only in 1965, in the wake of the civil rights movement, that we were allowed back in on an equal footing with other immigrants. As a community, we forever owe a debt of gratitude to African Americans for blowing away the foundations of so many discriminatory policies in this country.

That debt does not mean that all of us post-1965 immigrants and children of immigrants must vote for Obama, but it requires us to look beyond his skin color.

We live in historic times this year, when we will likely elect either the first woman or the first non-white president of this country. Let’s cast our votes wisely, not to feed old bigotry, but to build a better future for ourselves and for our children.

Vu-Duc Vuong is a teacher and writer in the Bay Area (vuduc.vuong@gmail.com).

Comments

The CNN report was certain another example of distortion to misguide its audience about the perception of Asian or Asian Americans. Yes, the young Japanese man gave his own general opinion on why his thought most Japanese American would not vote for Obama. That in my own opinion was not entirely correct nor was definitely not even a general representation of how most Japanese American would feel. It was simply his own opinion and own general statement. The Asian woman who gave the honest yet politically incorrect answer about why she wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton. Again, from the accent of the Asian woman, she was most likely born outside of the US and probably did not know this statement would be purely offensive not only Blacks but other Americans as well. Unfortunately, the viewers of this program would simply think like the author who thinks that Asian Americans did not want to vote for Obama because he is black, or half black.

I voted for Hilllary Clinton and not Obama purely because Hillary has proven in her abilities to work with Asian Americans at least in New York. That is where I am from. Obama promises changes. He promises at lot of things to the fed up Americans. At this time, he can promise that he can change the night to day and people would probably believe it too. I met Hillary Clinton and have seen how she worked with people especially Asian Americans. That say, I did not like how she did not have balls to vote against the war in 2003. But one can argue that she literally does not have balls. But then again, John Kerry did the same vote and I also believe he has no balls. So that is just the literally sense.

In California, I believe most people voted for Hillary not because they want to vote for a white person but it is due to the following reason.

The 80-20 Initiative is an Asian American political organization that seeks to form an Asian American voting bloc affecting the United States presidential election. It derives its name from its goal of uniting 80% of Asian American voters in supporting one presidential candidate, and its mission is to remedy the alleged oppressive and long-standing inequities facing Asian Americans across academia, private enterprise and the federal government.

In January 2008, The 80-20 Initiative issued a call to defeat Senator Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary. This was the result of the Obama campaign’s refusal to respond to a questionnaire from the 80-20 Initiative. The campaign had asked to change the wording of questions before answering. Eventually, the Obama campaign was given extension by the 80-20 Initiative and responded to the questionnaire. The 80-20 Initiative’s emails calling for a defeat of Senator Obama were criticized,although probably unjustifiably, as being “misleading” and “political bullying”.

–bruce yang on Feb 19, 2008
Hey, I know it’s off-topic, but I just came upon a wonderful, wacky website about Obama at http://obamawill.com

My wife - a Clinton supporter - took a look and said it was the first thing she’d read that made her want to vote for Obama. Go figure!

–Bill Vroom on Feb 19, 2008

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