:: posted by Carina ::
I’ve been following Election 2008. One of the reasons I subscribed to cable was because so many of the debates are not shown on network tv. It’s a loss to the people who do not have that access and my hope is that one day our government will mandate that election debates are a Civic right and legislate to air them on public channels as they happen so that people are more fully informed. But I digress. This is not a rant about how cable dominates the political discussion. Instead, it’s about how Asian Americans are not even featured in the debate.
Lately, there has been a lot of talk in the media about the “Black” vote and the “Latino” vote but hardly any about the “Asian” vote. I do not consider Asian Americans to be a fringe community. Our census numbers are competitive, and at times surpass, the Latino and African American groups in all the major urban cities. Yet, there are no representatives on the political cable talk shows and no prominent mention of endorsements by Asian American politicians announced by the media. Why haven’t Asian American journalists pushed to make our voices heard? Why are they silent in what is probably the most important election in our lifetime? I’m disheartened by the vast quiet from our politicians and our media. Asian Americans have long struggled for visibility in this country and we do not do ourselves a service by not projecting our voice.
However, there is some light in the darkness of representation and it’s found on the Internet. Not surprisingly, it comes from the Asian American creative and activist community, from individuals who long ago decided to step out of the box of invisibility to help represent our perspective. There are blogs such as APA for progress, a grassroots network of Asian Pacific Americans who advocate progressive action and Angry Asian Man who recently posted about an online group on YouTube called “United for Obama” featuring activists and film industry actors like Kelly Hu and Kal Penn and directors like Eric Byler who happen to support Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
This post does not advocate a particular candidate but instead would like to shed some light into the problem our community has in finding and projecting our presence in this country. One of the reasons my siblings and I started Archipelago was to help our community represent . But how do we start to make a difference? Well, you vote. Our numbers must be counted so they can make an impact and then the media will take an interest in and start listening to what Asian Americans want to see in their government.
It’s time to start doing our homework. It’s funny to address that to a community who stereotypically always does their homework but we have ignored the American political process to our detriment so maybe it is worth a directive. Don’t cast your vote because of a celebrity endorsement or from quotes taken out of context. Read the political news and the reputable internet blogs. Watch the debates on tv and online if you have not seen them. Decide what issues are important to you and research to see how the candidates stand and vote on those issues. The website youdecide2008.com posts all the Democrat and Republican debates in their entirety so you can watch them with a clear perspective. There are also sites such as govtrack.us where you can view congressional voting records, campaign contributions and records of sponsorship for bills to see what issues candidates push forward. And if you are interested in a particular piece of legislation, go to opencongress.org to find out where it stands. If your candidate is not in Congress, look for their record on votesmart.org or do your own research on search engines such as Google.
There are no excuses for being uninformed this election cycle. Open your eyes and read what people are writing, open your ears and listen to what people are saying, then do our community a service and open your mouth to participate. And remember, on Nov. 4, 2008, please go out and VOTE.
Where are the Asian-American candidates?.. the highest serving Asian Americans I can think of were Gov. Gary Locke ( WA) and Senator Inouye of Hawaii. Why haven’t there been more? Is it a matter of culture? As far as I can see politics is a big part of life in Asian countries… but here Asians don’t want to rock the boat?
That’s the big question. Perhaps people try so hard to fit in that they don’t want to stand out. Asian Americans are often tagged as “foreign” whether they were born here or not so maybe it’s just not wanting to stick out even more? I’m sure things like apathy, face and privacy, etc. play into it as well.
Asians in America need more rabblerousers.