Q&A: AAPI Politics
Asian Americans are a large, fast-growing demographic that's dealt with recent and ongoing politically-driven prejudice. Why aren't we talking about their votes?
Below you’ll find edited excerpts from an interview with Diana Hwang, founder and executive director of the Asian American Women’s Political Initiative (AAWPI). This is part of my series of conversations looking at race relations in this Presidential election year, compared with 2020. I previously spoke with DEI expert Malia Lazu; you can find that here.
I have more of these Q&As lined up in coming weeks that I think you’ll be interested in. If you want to support this effort, please consider a free subscription to this newsletter; or upgrading to a paid subscription; or sharing with your social media circles. It would really help!
Bernstein: To most people, and I'll admit I'm one of them, if you ask me about race relations in 2020, I immediately think George Floyd and Black Lives Matters. But the pandemic was a very tough time for a lot of Asian Americans. What did the community really go through?
Hwang: Trump was using straight-up xenophobic language: the Wuhan virus, and it was China's fault. There was a perfect storm: everybody was locked down, and there was a scapegoat for your suffering. There was a “slap an Asian” challenge in San Francisco. One of our fellows’ mom got that slap in the face. There was just no distinction [among Asians]—Suni Lee [a Minnesota-born champion gymnast of Hmong descent] talked about being assaulted in Los Angeles. Our elderly were attacked. Asian American women were being pushed into subways. A woman in New York was taking out her garbage, and someone threw acid in her face. There was a fundamental daily fear, not wanting to leave the house.
Bernstein: In addition to those people who wanted to lash out violently, there was widespread genuine fear of people who looked a certain way—which I imagine, in addition to the isolation, feels like a message that you don’t belong here.
Hwang: Yeah. Like, you're not American enough. In Boston, Chinatown literally cleared out. It was a daily underlying fear that you might get physically attacked, but also that no one trusts you.
Bernstein: You suggest that Asian Americans wanted to isolate, to withdraw. Was there also any feeling of wanting to get more involved, to try to change things?
Hwang: I do think it was a real awakening for our community, the need to present a narrative. If people think that Asian Americans are all doctors, lawyers, and engineers, then why should you invest in us? And it shows up in lots of ways. Like, us not being sampled in basic studies—we were really literally invisible. After the Georgia mass shooting, we were all collectively trying to make sense of it and figure out what to do. Our Asian American-ness could not be avoided. And only through that did I learn that before the Chinese Exclusion Act there was the Page Act, which prevented Asian women from immigrating to this country because there was an assumption that they were prostitutes. And once I knew that, the shooting of six Asian women at massage parlors made sense to me. It wasn't an isolated incident. When this country is under attack, Asian Americans become the enemy.
Bernstein: That’s interesting because I come from a Jewish heritage, and that historical awareness that you're talking about is so built into our culture. When there is scapegoating of Jews we recognize the signs, the stereotypes, how it fits in. You're saying that within your community, there wasn't that sort of awareness?
Hwang: Yes. We tend to keep our head down. It’s a survival technique, to try to be invisible. We're a heavily immigrant community; most of us are daughters and sons of immigrants who came from a country where it was unsafe to be politically active. They come from a lot of turmoil. There's a lot of generational trauma that honestly, our parents don't talk about. My own history was kept from me. But in this moment of widespread trauma and targeting, we could not ignore it anymore.
Bernstein: What about now, as the pandemic has faded from public discourse?
Hwang: Anti-Asian hate hasn't gone away. After the Georgia mass shooting, it was the first time in my lifetime that I felt there was a public consciousness, that Asian Americans experienced discrimination and pain. Now a lot of Asian Americans feel like that window has closed. There is no longer any interest. People think the pandemic is over, so anti-Asian hate must be gone. But it has transformed. There is extreme anti-China sentiment, that again, because people can't tell the difference [among Asian backgrounds], is really dangerous. And it's especially dangerous because it’s bipartisan. Watching the TikTok hearing, with the xenophobic questions—they play on deep-seated, historical suspicions of Asian Americans, that we’re spies, that we’re not American enough. Georgia’s governor just signed into law legislation that bans Chinese non-citizen immigrants from owning land. And that would have been my parents. We're part of the lawsuit challenging it. There are 32 states, at least, who have this kind of legislation.
Bernstein: I see a lot of recent talk in right-wing media about the rise in “Chinese nationals” coming across the southern border. And the attempt to impeach Joe Biden is based on the claim that he’s being bribed by China, through his family members.
Hwang: If I call someone a Chinese national, that’s true, but what does it imply? Yes, China is a threat. But we've always been treated as foreign, so it is more alarming to see people in power, like at the TikTok hearing, asking a guy from Singapore: “are you here to spy on us?” There’s some deep national psyche. It's our history repeating itself.
Bernstein: Let me back up and ask, really, what are we talking about when we talk about the Asian American community, or the AAPI community? Is it really even a community in any significant sense?
Hwang: It’s a good question. AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) tries to capture the identity; NHPI (Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders) honors how Native Hawaiians feel, because they don't feel like someone from Guam. Then in this country, we're all the same thing [in people’s eyes], so there is a very American experience around being Asian American, being AAPI, being HNPI. In trying to build a political coalition, what do we really serve? Is it really reflective of our entire community?
Bernstein: I would guess that some of the COVID-related trauma that you were talking about affects Native Hawaiians but doesn’t affect people of Pakistani or Indian heritage.
Hwang: Right. And that's why there are offshoots—South Asian organizations for instance. And also trying to find where we have common ground. With my organization, focusing on gender has unified us. I saw that generic Asian-American organizations didn't care about my identity as a woman—they were not talking about reproductive justice, for example. And women's organizations were not prioritizing my immigrant identity. So where do I get to be my full self? I was just trying to create what I wish I had.
Bernstein: I have to admit, I am amazed by how underrepresented Asian Americans are in politics. I suppose that comes from my biased thinking that Asian Americans are a great success story, well educated, professional class, so why wouldn’t that show up in elected office.
Hwang: When I started this, in Massachusetts, there were no Asian Americans in the state legislature. Out of 200 legislators. Pennsylvania has one Asian-American legislator. Until last cycle, California had no women Asian Americans in the legislature—California!
Bernstein: What obstacles do Asian Americans run into in participating and succeeding in the political realm?
Hwang: When I first went into colleges to recruit for paid internships, women said to me, I don't feel qualified to apply. That is unworthiness. And I have seen that at every single level up to running for office. There's not going to be permanent, sustainable political power if we don't stop fundamentally feeling unworthy. As a candidate: running is a microcosm of everything that you experience in the world. Discrimination, sexism, all of those things, it's all directed at you. Oftentimes, there's a question about whether or not you're foreign, and it'll be coded: “are you from the district,” but really it’s the larger question.
Bernstein: We’re in an election year, and I see a lot of pundits like myself, and the people running campaigns, talk about whether the Black vote is going to turn out; is Trump going to get above a certain percentage of the Hispanic vote; what’s going to happen with the Jewish vote, because of what's happening in Israel; even whether the Arab American vote could swing Michigan. Correct me if I’ve just been missing it. but I don't recall seeing a lot of talk about the 15 million eligible Asian American voters.
Hwang: That's, again, about narrative. I'm still trying to convince people that we were part of the reason why Trump lost Georgia in 2020. We [AAWPI] go into swing states, where our voices and our vote can make the difference. In Georgia, it took all communities of color for Trump to lose in 2020. That included Asian American turnout.
Bernstein: And the Senators who got elected in Georgia as well, giving Democrats control of the Senate.
Hwang: One hundred percent right. I will tell you what Republicans do, though. When I was in Georgia for the 2022 midterms--we were helping the candidate running for secretary of state against Brad Raffensperger—there were targeted videos trying to divide Asian Americans, against Black and Latinos. Telling whites and Asians that they’re being discriminated against by Biden and the Democrats, who are preferentially giving jobs to Black and brown people.
Bernstein: They also couch the college admissions issue, banning racial preference, as something to help Asian Americans.
Hwang: There’s this idea that Asian Americans feel discriminated against and must oppose affirmative action. But 70 percent of Asian Americans support affirmative action. We were some of the architects of it. Almost every ethnic group under the Asian American umbrella tends to vote Democratic. Except for the Vietnamese, and that's partly because of their history with communist government.
Bernstein: Compared to, for instance, the Jewish population, there are so many more Asian Americans. One would think that it would be beneficial for a party to try to gain an extra five or 10 percent of that vote. And you're saying that you don't see that effort?
Hwang: I do see groups on the ground that organize our communities. When I say it took all communities of color for Trump to lose Georgia in 2020, that was a coalition of organizations of color that came together, to turn out our communities of color in a coordinated fashion. So that is always where I put my faith. But in general yes, we’re a second thought—not even a second, we're a third, fourth, fifth thought, especially in some of these states.
Bernstein: To a certain extent, Asian Americans tend to be centered in places where their vote wouldn’t matter to the national party as much: California, New York…
Hwang: In New York the Asian American turnout rate for the 2022 midterms was nine percent lower than in 2018. It for sure had an impact on the congressional races the Democrats lost there.
Bernstein: I want to go back to what you said about the coalitions of color, where they've been inclusive. I don't think that's something you can just assume, that these different groups are going to make sure that they're reaching out to the Asian American community.
Hwang: I love working in Georgia, because for me, it is real clarity. There are real stakes. It is ground zero for everything. And I find the organizing to be so much more collaborative, because you're at war. And you cannot ignore the Asian American population in Atlanta; it is noticeable, it is there. Or in Pennsylvania—they have one of the most sophisticated Asian American organizing infrastructures I've ever seen. It's really impressive. But then, like we talked about with pitting races: the 76ers have proposed a stadium in Chinatown. And because there's Black-Asian tension, pro-stadium groups have hired black organizers to say “those Asian people don't have your best interests in mind, they want to take your jobs away. “