Yeni Wong has been a Democrat for a very long time. And
she has also, as a loyal Democrat, not only worked on behalf of issues and
causes that she believes in but supported a lot of Democrats over the years. “I
am a proud Democrat, and I support Democrats up and down the ticket. Always
have, always will,” she said.
Yeni has given me an exclusive interview on her views
about why Asian Americans are such loyal Democrats. She posits two
possibilities: racial prejudice and identification with other minorities. Here
are excerpts of the interview, edited for length and clarity.
Why are Asian Americans such loyal Democrats?
The first reason is that despite their affluence, Asian
Americans are on course to become a mainstay of what Stan Greenberg, the
Democratic pollster, calls the “rising American electorate”: the liberal
alliance of black and Hispanic minorities, single women, and young voters.
Asian Americans make up about 6 percent of the US population and about 3
percent of the 2012 vote. Those relatively small numbers mask considerable and
continuing growth.
More remarkable is the huge shift in Asian American voting
patterns in recent years. No other group measured by exit polls has changed its
political allegiance more dramatically.
Asians are slated to outnumber Latinos as the largest
immigrant group coming to the United States, according to a study by the Pew Research
Center released last year. Specifically, Asian immigrants and their children
are projected to make up roughly 88 percent of the country’s population growth
over the next half century. That means being able to capture the Asian American
vote is as important as ever. In the last few presidential elections, Asian
Americans leaned heavily Democrat.
Why have Asian Americans shifted so strongly to the
Democrats—more than doubling support for the party’s presidential candidates
since 1992?
First, there’s race. The feeling of social exclusion
stemming from their ethnic background might push Asian Americans away from the
Republican Party. Many studies, such as Henri Tajfel and John Turner’s work on
the psychology of intergroup relations, have shown that one’s identification
with a broad category of people—be it on the basis of language, ethnic, or
racial solidarity or some other trait—is important politically. Republican
rhetoric implies that the nonwhite “takers” are plundering the white “makers,” which
has cultivated a perception that the Republican Party is less welcoming of
minorities. That might help explain why Asian Americans, despite their “maker”
status, prefer the Democratic Party—even if the GOP doesn’t discriminate
against Asians specifically. And many Asian Americans do feel as if they don’t
get equal treatment.
According to the 2008 National Asian American Survey,
nearly 40 percent of Asian Americans suffered one of the following forms of
racial discrimination in their lifetime:
·
being unfairly denied a job or
fired,
·
being unfairly denied a promotion
at work,
·
being unfairly treated by the
police,
·
being unfairly prevented from
renting or buying a home,
·
being treated unfairly at a
restaurant or other place of service, or
·
being a victim of a hate crime.
We found that self-reported racial discrimination was
positively correlated with identification with the Democratic Party over the
Republican Party.
How have Asian American voters gone from Republican to
Democratic?
Asian Americans tend to support a strong social safety net
and a stronger role for government in everyday life. Asian Americans are more
likely than the US public in general to support Obamacare and to support environmental
protection over economic growth. In the case of immigration, support among
Asian Americans for a path to citizenship for the undocumented has grown
steadily, so as the Republicans’ rhetoric on immigration has become more
punitive, the community has actually moved in the opposite direction.
Asian Americans are the best-educated, highest-income,
fastest-growing race group in the country. The political liberalism of
Americans of Asian descent is notable given their affluence, success in the
marketplace, and the high status of jobs they hold. In the Asian American
workforce, 60 percent have a college degree, compared with 37 percent of
whites, 27 percent of African Americans, and 18 percent of Hispanics. Fifty
percent of Asian Americans have managerial or professional jobs, compared with
39 percent of whites, 29 percent of African Americans, and 20 percent of
Hispanics.
Asian Americans also stand apart from other Americans of
all races and ethnicities in family structure. On the divisive issue of abortion,
Asian Americans are more liberal than the general electorate. Asian Americans
believe abortions should be legal in most or all cases, compared with an
eight-point spread in the general public. In this respect, Asian Americans are
similar to another minority voting group with strong Democratic ties: American
Jews. They, too, have incomes and educations well above average. Jewish support
for Democrats is similar to that of Asian Americans.
Asian Americans share with blacks, Hispanics, and Jews an
experience of previously marginalized status and social exclusion. These four
constituencies also share a belief that a commitment to hard work and
self-reliance does not conflict with a belief in a strong government and a
reliable safety net. Such views stand in direct contrast to those of the Tea
Party and Wall Street wings of the Republican Party, both of which see
self-reliance and big government as antithetical to each other. It may prove
that the values that Asian Americans, Jews, blacks, and Hispanics share will
create sufficient cohesion to sustain a liberal coalition, even as some members
of the coalition fail to ascend the socioeconomic ladder in lockstep with the
others. That is the current conundrum of the upstairs-downstairs American left.
Why do Asian Americans tend to vote Democratic?
In my experience, Asian Americans tend to be fairly
economically and socially conservative. So they do lean more toward the values
of classical liberalism on economic and political policy while also placing
equal emphasis on traditional values, as American conservatives do. However,
today’s Republican Party is actually much, much more conservative/reactionary
than most of the First World. So while many Taiwanese people agree with
Republicans on economic issue, and gender inequality is even greater in Taiwan
and Japan’s strongly masculine societies, they don’t agree with Republicans on
these issues. When Republicans compare Obamacare to communism or fascism,
that’s not going to trend very well with most Asian Americans who’ve lived
outside of the United States.
When Republicans talk about how government interference
with health care is a road to disaster, Hong Kong and Singaporean Americans are
going to be rightly skeptical, as Bloomberg ranks their socialized, universal
health-care systems respectively first and second in efficiency. It’s also hard
to convince Indian Americans or Chinese Americans that environment and industry
regulators such as the EPA and FDA are a bad thing, as they likely know first-
or secondhand what a difference such regulations make in quality of life and
public safety. Also, when Republicans argue that any nondefense spending is
government pork, it probably won’t resonate with Japanese Americans who’ve seen
the benefits of Japanese government investment in hybrid-vehicle technology,
robotics, and Internet infrastructure.
In fact, most Asian countries seem to believe firmly in
technology and education investments, while the Republicans seem fixated on
budget cuts and ending renewable energy investments. So while Asian Americans
might have had more in common with Republicans of the past, current Tea Party
Republican appeals to flag-waving and fear mongering are more likely to turn
Asian Americans off. Similarly, issues like banning abortion and stopping
immigration don’t have much resonance with most Asian Americans. We also don’t
see the “war on religion” as many leading Republican politicians/commentators
describe it.
Why don’t Asian Americans vote Republican?
When we examine presidential exit polls, we see that 74
percent of the Asian American vote went to the Republican presidential
candidate just two decades ago. The Democratic presidential vote among Asian
Americans has steadily increased from 36 percent in 1992, to 64 percent in the
2008 election, to 73 percent in 2012. Asian Americans were also one of the rare
groups that were more favorable to President Obama in the latter election. This
dramatic change in party preference is stunning. No other group has shifted so
dramatically in its party identification within such a short time period. Some
are calling it the “GOP’s Asian erosion.” Moreover, Asian Americans as a group
have a number of attributes that would usually predict an affinity for the
Republican Party. Asian Americans’ income is, on average, higher than any other
ethnic group in the United States.
So why are Asian Americans leaning left instead of right?
The feeling of social exclusion stemming from their ethnic
background might be pushing Asian Americans away from the Republican Party.
Since the Democratic Party is seen as less exclusionary, we find that
triggering feelings of social exclusion makes Asian Americans favor Democrats.
How is this politically consequential?
It is important to note that our findings do not mean that
social exclusion is the only reason why Asian Americans are Democrats. However,
they do provide some insight on why Asian Americans are leaning left today.
Understanding Asian American political behavior has important electoral
ramifications. According to a 2013 US Census report, while Asian Americans are
only 5 percent of the US population and about 4 percent of voters, in some
states, they make up a considerably higher proportion of the electorate. Asian
Americans make up 12 percent of likely voters in California and they had become
9 percent of the overall US population in 2015.
How do you see the rise of Asian Americans?
Asian Americans trace their roots to any of dozens of
countries in the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Each
country-of-origin subgroup has its own unique history, culture, language,
religious beliefs, economic and demographic traits, social and political
values, and pathways into America. But despite often sizable subgroup
differences, Asian Americans are distinctive as a whole, especially when
compared with all US adults.
As mentioned above, Asian Americans exceed other groups in
the share with a college degree but also in median annual household income and
median household wealth. Asian Americans have a pervasive belief in the rewards
of hard work. In fact, Asian Americans sometimes go overboard in stressing hard
work. Their living arrangements align with these values. The latest immigration
wave from Asia has occurred at a time when the countries with the most
emigrants have experienced dramatic gains in their standards of living, but few
Asian immigrants are looking over their shoulders with regret.
For the most part, today’s Asian Americans do not feel the
sting of racial discrimination or the burden of culturally imposed “otherness”
that was so much a part of the experience of their predecessors who came in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On a personal level, Asian Americans
are more satisfied than the general public with their financial situations and
their standard of living. About four in ten Asian Americans say Asian Americans
are more successful than other racial and ethnic minorities in the United
States.