Ask HN: How can I become politically active and promote Asian-American rights?

11 points by _wt8k 5 years ago | 9 comments

I am Asian-American, and I'm growing concerned over rising discrimination against Asian-Americans. Asian-Americans have no social or political capital, i.e. in my experience, anti-Asian racism isn't taken as seriously as racism against other groups, and it isn't "trendy" to support Asian-Americans on social media. I am scared that prejudice against Asian-Americans is increasing, and neither of the two mainstream US political parties have a reliable track record for us. We're basically ignored and politically irrelevant. I predict that Asian-Americans need to quickly build social and political capital or else the coming years will be rough for us.

I feel that one of the problems is that Asian-Americans tend not to be politically active. I want to be the change I want to see in the world. Some of my thoughts:

- It's important to build soft power through culture (e.g. by having more Asian-American artists)

- Asian-Americans are said to be the "new Jews," so maybe I can look at whatever Jewish-Americans did to advocate for their rights as a model

How can I best promote Asian-American rights? Also, what can I do to protect myself from the general dirtiness and dangers that come with becoming politically involved?

neither_color 5 years ago |

>it isn't "trendy" to support

As another non-black minority I can second that the incessant pandering to one particular group has us all scratching our heads going "wait what's really going on?" Lots of really strange movements are being pushed on behalf of all minorities without our input. I just want to move on with my life/career without having identity shoved in my face all the time. A white friend of mine even tried to give me "the talk" about he recognizes he has privilege yada yada and I quickly told him to cut it out.

DenisM 5 years ago | |

> A white friend of mine even tried to give me "the talk"

Wouldn't it be nice if he asked you opinion about this kerfuffle instead of "confessing" at you?

themodelplumber 5 years ago |

Hi, I'm really sorry to hear about this. :-( I wish I could offer some advice, but I wanted to express my support of what you're doing here. You deserve to have your voice heard, and all Asian-Americans deserve the unconditional & full support of our nation.

I'll contact my government representatives about what you've written, hoping it can help your efforts. Wishing you the best of luck with your work and I sincerely hope that the coming years can somehow be worked into years of promise for you and all other Asian-Americans. --Marc

_wt8k 5 years ago | |

Thank you for your support. I do not know where you live, but one issue that I am concerned about is California's ACA-5, which seeks to bring back racial preferences to public universities and will be on the ballot this November. It is being framed as being pro-equality, but I am concerned that it will also enable universities to discriminate against Asian-American high schoolers.

One idea I've heard proposed is to instead ask a yes-or-no question, "Are you black?", so that universities can help increase black representation, but the important part is that they should not be able to find out whether or not you're Asian-American. At the very least, universities should not be able to distinguish between Asian-Americans and the white majority. The understanding I've heard is that WASP elites aren't necessarily concerned about other minority groups eating away at their influence, but they know that in a meritocratic system, Asian-Americans will outperform them, and therefore they use the "holistic admissions" system to keep Asian-Americans out of top universities (e.g. Ivy League schools) and therefore prevent Asian-Americans from reaching leadership positions and endangering their influence.

Furthermore, college applications ask where you were born and where your parents went to university. Although there is an option to select "prefer not to disclose" for race, my parents were educated in China, and I was born in Japan (despite not even being Japanese anyway!), and I couldn't hide this information. Colleges should not ask this, as it allows them to discriminate against immigrant families, namely Asian immigrant families. China-related xenophobia may make such discrimination worse.

Right now, I'm in college. My dream in HS was to study programming language theory, and I wanted to get into a good university strong in type theory and constructive math. However, the admissions officers were laypeople who wouldn't have even heard of PL theory, and furthermore they negatively stereotype Asian-Americans who are interested in math or programming, or who have an academic focus. I want to make sure that other Asian-Americans in the same position that I was will get a fair shot at a good education.

raxxorrax 5 years ago |

The best strategy is to defend general rights or human rights in my opinion. You won't achieve much without wider support that is always focused on mostly individuals.

Your rights against being discriminated against is violated by a lot of modern "diversity" strategies in my opinion.

Perhaps Asians would be the last to profit from such an endeavor, but I don't really see better alternatives.

Jews were indeed similarly discriminated against. Universities had quotas to keep some of them out of higher education.

To be honest, I think minorities are abused to justify claims to power or by others for emotional needs.

It wouldn't be wrong to pronounce the specific plight Asians face, but I doubt it will help being treated more fairly. But you can certainly write representatives that there is discrimination. If that discrimination is enacted by institutions instead of individuals, it is real institutional racism for once.

xoxoy 5 years ago |

Unfortunately Asian Americans are in a tough spot right now politically with renewed interest at the state level in legalizing affirmative action, including in California.

_wt8k 5 years ago | |

Another person replied to your comment and criticized you for interpreting my post in a certain way. (The reply is now flagged and dead.) I would like to make clear that the ACA-5 is absolutely one of the political issues that I am concerned about.

aaron695 5 years ago |

> - It's important to build soft power through culture (e.g. by having more Asian-American artists)

Yes, definitely. TV. It's impossible to beat the hours of exposure TV provides. Eddie Huang might have disowned Fresh Off the Boat but it still was amazing for public opinion.

- Asian-Americans are said to be the "new Jews,"

This seems to be narrowly around University admissions. I don't think the general public would like this comparison. I also think because of religion and the holocaust it's a different route.

I'm surprised you are grouping ACA-5 with this, I think you are thinking to much around your own environment. I think it's a different topic to what a cold war with China would bring.

jelliclesfarm 5 years ago |

I hear you and I think you are absolutely right. Having said that, I don’t have an answer.

There is no ‘politically correct way’ to address this.