Awakening the New “Sleeping Giant”?: Asian American Political Engagement

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ong ◽  
Melany Dela Cruz-Viesca ◽  
Don Nakanishi

The 2008 election was a milestone in the emergence of Asian Americans as a factor in American politics, with national television news networks openly discussing and analyzing California’s Asian American voters. Most mainstream analysis, however, had very little in-depth understanding of the population. This essay provides some insights into the absolute and relative size of the Asian American population, along with key demographic characteristics, their participation in electoral politics, some of the barriers the encounter, and future prospects. The brief is based on analyzing the most recently available data, the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS) and the 2006 November Current Population Survey (CPS). This analysis builds on a previous analytical brief which examined the emergence of Asian Americans as California politics’ new “sleeping giant,” a term that was applied to Hispanics in the 1980s and 1990s because of their rapid growing numbers.

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Takeuchi ◽  
Oanh Meyer ◽  
Nolan Zane ◽  
Stanley Sue ◽  
Manveen Dhindsa ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-46
Author(s):  
Oliver Wang

Oliver Wang interviews documentary filmmaker Arthur Dong. Originally from San Francisco, Dong began his career as a student filmmaker in the 1970s before releasing the Oscar-nominated short film, Sewing Woman in 1982. Since then, his films have focused on the role of Chinese and Asian Americans in entertainment industries as well as on anti-LGBQ discrimination. In the interview, Wang and Dong discuss Dong's beginnings as a high school filmmaker, his decision to turn the story of his seamstress mother into Sewing Woman, his struggle to bring together the Asian American and queer film communities and his recent experience in staging a “Hollywood Chinese” exhibit inside a renovated bar in West Hollywood.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 30-41
Author(s):  
Mallory Yung

The perception of racial tensions in North American settler countries has historically been focused on the Black/White relationship, as has much of the theoretical legal discourse surrounding the concept of “race”. Accordingly, the scope of much critical race scholarship has been restricted such that it rarely acknowledges the racial tensions that persist between different racially-excluded minorities. This paper hopes to expand and integrate the examination of Black and Asian-American racialization that critical race scholars have previously revealed. It will do this by historicizing the respective contours of Black and Asian-American racialization processes through legislation and landmark court cases in a neo-colonial context. The defining features of racialization which have culminated in the ultimate divergence of each group’s racialization will be compared and contrasted. This divergence sees the differential labeling of Asian-Americans as the ‘model minority’ while Blacks continue to be subjugated by modern modalities of exclusionary systems of control. The consequences of this divergence in relation to preserving existing racial and social hierarchies will be discussed in the final sections of this paper.


2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Douglas Miller ◽  
Douglas Houston

There is a serious lack of demographic and socioeconomic data about Asian Americans living in distressed areas. The approach suggested to address this problem is community development with professional and academics to provide updated information on many issues such as poverty, educational attainment pertinent to these disadvantaged AA communities. The article discusses the selection criteria employed to choose the fourteen distressed communities that is analyzed. Details describing demographic characteristics, such as most AA communities are racially diverse, are supplemented with statistics to provide concrete data. Unemployment and poverty go hand-in-hand and in distressed AA communities these problems are occurring in higher frequency than other communities. The typical depiction of an AA community as a rich ethnic-enclave is debunked. The dominant problems in these communities are also representative of the problems most immigrants face today. The motivation for this analysis is to compel policy-makers to develop further research into these communities to understand their problems in order to make policies effectively addressing their needs.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-90
Author(s):  
Bill Imada

In recent years, data has shown that there has been significant growth in Asian American Pacific Islander-owned (AAPI) enterprises. Driven by demographic changes, related in large part to the history of immigration policy, the AAPI population has been growing, and this has been accompanied by AAPI innovators and entrepreneurs leaving greater marks on American society and the U.S. economy. This growth, however, is not without risks and threats. The legacy of being “othered” by mainstream society means that AAPI success in business and in the corporate landscape can be met with resentment and criticism. This article explores the history of AAPI entrepreneurship and current trends. It also examines the challenges that the community may continue to face and offers recommendations on how to ensure continued growth and expanded opportunities for AAPIs in business.


2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Stuart Ishimaru

Despite the long history of Asian Americans of fighting for fundamental rights, Asian Americans appear to be less active in complaining about employment discrimination. For example, in 2003, Asian Americans filed proportionally fewer employment discrimination charges with the EEOC than other minority employees. This article examines the factors that create an atmosphere in which Asian Americans do not file as many charges of employment discrimination with the EEOC as one would expect. Also, it explores possible ways to motivate Asian American communities and individuals to engage in and recognize the community’s investment in the equal employment opportunity process. Specifically, it proposes additional outreach and education to Asian Americans to be informed of their rights as well as areas for further research and additional


2021 ◽  
pp. 233264922110184
Author(s):  
Pawan Dhingra

Discussions of white supremacy focus on patterns of whites’ stature over people of color across institutions. When a minority group achieves more than whites, it is not studied through the lens of white supremacy. For example, arguments of white supremacy in K-12 schools focus on the disfranchisement of African Americans and Latinxs. Discussions of high-achieving Asian American students have not been framed as such and, in fact, can be used to argue against the existence of white privilege. This article explains why this conception is false. White supremacy can be active even when people of color achieve more than whites. Drawing from interviews and observations of mostly white educators in Boston suburbs that have a significant presence of Asian American students, I demonstrate that even when Asian Americans outcompete whites in schools, white supremacy is active through two means. First, Asian Americans are applauded in ways that fit a model minority stereotype and frame other groups as not working hard enough. Second and more significantly, Asian Americans encounter anti-Asian stereotypes and are told to assimilate into the model of white educators. This treatment is institutionalized within the school system through educators’ practices and attitudes. These findings somewhat support but mostly contrast the notion of “honorary whiteness,” for they show that high-achieving minorities are not just tools of white supremacy toward other people of color but also targets of it themselves. Understanding how high-achieving minorities experience institutionalized racism demonstrates the far reach of white supremacy.


2020 ◽  
pp. 106591292098345
Author(s):  
Jae Yeon Kim

In the early twentieth century, Asian Americans and Latinos organized along national origin lines and focused on assimilation; By the 1960s and 1970s, community organizers from both groups began to form panethnic community service organizations (CSOs) that emphasized solidarity. I argue that focusing on the rise of panethnic CSOs reveals an underappreciated mechanism that has mobilized Asian Americans and Latinos—the welfare state. The War on Poverty programs incentivized non-black minority community organizers to form panethnic CSOs to gain access to state resources and serve the economically disadvantaged in their communities. Drawing on extensive archival research, I identify this mechanism and test it with my original dataset of 818 Asian American and Latino advocacy organizations and CSOs. Leveraging the Reagan budget cut, I show that dismantling the War on Poverty programs reduced the founding rate of panethnic CSOs. I further estimated that a 1 percent increase in federal funding was associated with the increase of the two panethnic CSOs during the War on Poverty. The findings demonstrate how access to state resources forces activists among non-primary beneficiary groups to build new political identities that fit the dominant image of the policy beneficiaries.


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