Pay Attention to the Asian Vote
Why AAPI voters are mobilized like never before
Despite a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, 2021 culminated in a series of political wins from members of the community in the United States, and as the 2022 midterm elections approach, the AAPI voting block should not be overlooked.
In November 2021, Michelle Wu won Boston, Massachusetts’ mayoral election, becoming the first woman, first person of color, and as the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, the first Asian American to hold that position. Sokhary Chau took the oath of office on January 4 as mayor of Lowell, Massachusetts and the first Cambodian mayor in United States history.
39-year-old Indian Tibetan lawyer Aftab Pureval became the 70th mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, making him the first Asian American to do so in his state’s history.
While these historic wins give more representation to Asian Americans across the country, they are repeatedly reported under the context of increasing Asian-American hate.
Data compiled from March 19, 2020 to Sept. 30, 2021 by Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit organization that tracks hate crimes and discrimination against the United States’ Asian American and Pacific Islanders population, includes Massachusetts and Ohio among the 20 states with the largest number of reported hate incidents.
Over that two-year span, 10,370 hate incidents were reported according to that same data, and Massachusetts accounts for 3% of cases nationally, while Ohio has 1.2%.
Examining this data leaves a bitter aftertaste to what are otherwise momentous occasions for the AAPI community in the United States. Aside from the violence toward Asian Americans, the other angle is how these wins are starting to fill the representation gap.
For instance, since 1959, there have only been eight Asian Americans in the U.S. Senate, and currently there are two.
Even New York, one of the most diverse states in political representation in the United States, also served firsts for the Asian American community.
Julie Won now represents Queens’ District 26 and Linda Lee leads the same borough’s District 23, making them the first Korean Americans elected to the New York City Council.
While Won celebrated in 2021, she noted that a lack of representation in law makers has the potential of turning those political wins into long-term losses.
“During the pandemic, what we kept on seeing is that people who don’t understand Asian immigrant stories painted us as a monolith,” Won said. “If you don’t see yourself in rooms where political decisions are made, then you’re always going to be at a loss.”
For instance, one important issue for the AAPI community is language translations.
Despite Asians and Pacific Islanders making up 18% of New York’s population, they “…remain understudied and misrepresented, despite being among the city’s fastest-growing populations,” New York Commissioner Dave Choksi wrote in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene 2021 report, “Health of Asians and Pacific Islanders in New York City.”
“Often described as a single group, APIs in NYC, as elsewhere, are diverse, representing more than 48 unique countries and speaking various languages and dialects,” he continued.
Cambodian Council Member Sandra Ung, who now represents District 20 also in Queens, includes expanding language translations as one of her goals in office.
“When you roll out a program without figuring out the language access part to it, people (for whom) English is not their first language, they’re not going to get the benefit of the resources,” she said.
Shekar Krishna shifted roles from community activist and civil rights attorney to City Council in 2021, making him one of two South Asian Americans currently serving on it.
“The fact that you have this disconnect between how essential and ubiquitous taxi drivers are in our city and the city’s failure to step up and fix the problem it created,” he said, “just tells you the way in which our communities are completely invisibilized.”
He is joined by Shahana Hanif, who played an active role in the Bangladeshi American community as an American. She is the first Muslim woman to hold a seat in New York City Council. As a representative of Kensington in Brooklyn, she is also the only Asian representative outside of Queens.
Minnesota, which made history by electing an all-Muslim city council, elected Azrin Awal to be mayor. Like Hanif, he is Muslim and Bangladeshi.
There are many articles highlighting these Asian Americans in politics. But the reason I list them is to highlight that their words post-victory speak of disaggregation of the Asian bloc. There is not a joyous tone, but rather an urgent one.
That urgency becomes more understandable once you examine how like other minorities in United States history, Asian Americans faced barriers in being able to vote in the first place.
The Dark Roots of America’s Immigration Policy
The Naturalization Act of 1970 allowed only free white individuals to obtain U.S. citizenship, effectively excluding Asians. Almost a century later, the Chinese Exclusion Act became the first law targeting a specific ethnic group. It did not recognize Chinese citizens as having a right to vote.
Along the tumultuous path that would eventually lead to voting rights was the Immigration Act of 1917.
Its intent was to limit immigration from southern and eastern Europe by imposing a literacy test. Migrants over the age of 16 had to prove that they could read “not less than 30 nor more than 40” words in English or in “some other language or dialect.”
Aside from failing that test, an individual could be banned for falling under the category of “undesirable,” which ranged from anarchists to people with disabilities.
The act included a provision that any country “on or adjacent to Asia” could not come to the United States, unless their nation had an agreement with the United States, like the Philippines. That area, which stretched from the Middle East to southeast Asia, is called the Asiatic Barred Zone.
The 1924 Immigration Act changed revised the previous immigration system by having allotments per country, but again, citizenship did not extend to the members in the Asiatic Barred Zone.
Americans of Asian ancestry finally obtained the right to vote in 1952 under the McCarren Walter Act, but it wasn’t until the Immigration Act of 1965 that the quota system was scrapped, and Asians started coming to the United States first on labor visas then through family reunification processes.
Looking Forward
Today, the Asian population “is projected to reach 46 million by 2060,” according to The Pew Research Center.
As NPR highlights, that same year Census data “shows that Asian Americans increased their [voter] turnout rate by more than any other racial or ethnic group between the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections.”
This increase in voter participation is reported with a tone of surprise, but it had been building for years.
“It reflected both long-term investments from grassroots groups in organizing and the immediate threat that many Asian Americans felt from former President Donald Trump — including his policies to slash legal immigration and his racist labeling of the coronavirus as the “China virus” and even “kung flu,” Ronald Brownstein wrote in The Atlantic.
From gerrymandering in redistricting maps to 19 states, and potentially more, passing restrictive voting laws, Asian Americans now face challenges in the upcoming midterm elections.
However, the bloc’s strength was noted during the pandemic, in states like Georgia. In the face of persistent racism and hate crimes against them, the AAPI community still grew its political representation.
