What if, in 100 years, still no female president, and no other "firsts" either?
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  What if, in 100 years, still no female president, and no other "firsts" either?
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Author Topic: What if, in 100 years, still no female president, and no other "firsts" either?  (Read 2580 times)
Unapologetic Chinaperson
nj_dem
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« Reply #25 on: July 05, 2017, 01:44:00 PM »

I forgot to mention Asian-Americans. Asian-Americans are getting a reputation for superior performance in education and commerce. That's where many top-notch politicians come from.

There is some truth to that, but we have to be careful not to fall into the "Model Minority" myth mud. (Try saying that three times fast!)

While we are well-represented in sectors like tech and medicine, we aren't represented well in politics (as well as mass media and business leadership). Just look at how many Asians there are in Congress and other halls of power versus; it's very small. Now why is this so?

1. The idea that Asians are Perpetual Foreigners. This is a big one; most Americans still have the idea, consciously or unconsciously, that Asians are distinctly less American than whites and African-Americans. Note that the first wave of Asian immigration happened concurrently with the massive wave of European immigration in the 1800s. While Irish, Italian, Slavic, and Jewish Americans were able to assimilate into the "White" collective, Asians continued (and still continue to some extent) to be cast out as the "other."

In the WWII era, millions of Japanese Americans were sent to what were essentially concentration camps; some German and Italian-Americans were too, but neither approached the scale of deporting an entire ethnic group like Japanese-American internment was. Today, we still see anti-Asian attitudes everywhere, from Steve Bannon's "civic society" comment, Steve King's "someone else's babies" quip, the slaying of an Indian engineer in Kansas, and so on.

And that's just listing the high profile incidents; I'm sure you're aware of the casual anti-Asian attitudes people have in certain dark corners of the Internet. And depending on how Americans perceive China as a rising threat, this may get worse in the future.

2. There's the idea that Asians are not suitable for leadership positions because we are "timid," "subservient," "unassertive," etc. Some of that is perpetuated by ourselves, whether via culture or via learned attitudes; for example, I hear my Chinese relatives say "no wonder Company X is doing better in China - they have a white boss!"

A lot of that is held in the form of bias (implicit or otherwise) by non-Asian Americans. For example, a poster here (won't name him for obvious reasons) made a post where he essentially said: "Timid groups like Asians and Hispanics are good; assertive groups like Blacks and Muslims are bad."

In the private sector, because of that, you have a lot of Asians face discrimination in the promotion process, such that most of them top out at middle management. So can you imagine how unthinkable it is to many Asians to go into politics?

3. Asian Americans are generally uninvolved in politics compared to Whites and African-Americans. Just look at the "California's Missing Voters" thread and see how much lower our voter turnout rate is compared to the other two groups. This is exacerbated by the fact that neither political party bothers to engage with the Asian American community. Notice that Hispanics also have lower turnout rates.

Now I do think it's getting better, despite our present challenges; for example, while practically everybody in the past would dismiss anti-Asian racism, today you see plenty of people rightly condemn it, at least on the Internet. We are also improving our media representation, albeit slowly. Baby steps. So while the picture isn't as rosy as you appear to make out to be, I do agree that we will get an Asian-American president. Eventually.

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True; we already have two potential part-Asian prospective presidents (say that three times fast): Kamala Harris and Tammy Duckworth. But again, it's only two people; we need to get more Asians (and part-Asians) into politics to ensure that our voice is heard and to ensure that we do get an Asian president (and that OP's quasi-dystopic scenario doesn't come to pass).
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Technocracy Timmy
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« Reply #26 on: July 10, 2017, 02:44:06 PM »

This is exacerbated by the fact that neither political party bothers to engage with the Asian American community. Notice that Hispanics also have lower turnout rates.

Unfortunately a lot of this has to do with the size and distribution of Asian Americans. There are over 3 times as many Hispanics in this country as there are Asians. And many of those Hispanic voters live in crucial swing states (AZ, NV, FL, etc.) plus without winning over a consistent segment of Texas Hispanics, the GOP would've lost in 2000, 2004, and 2016.

Honestly, Asian Americans aren't gonna become a targeted demographic group until states like Washington and New York come into play. This requires the GOP to abandon their southern strategy and to court upscale voters of all races. Asian Americans will become a crucial voting group in such a realignment.

I was going to respond to the rest of your post about Asian stereotypes with my own personal experience but my experience is pretty unique compared to the average American. I grew up a couple miles away from little Saigon and had a lot of Vietnamese friends growing up. My first manager was a 29 year old Vietnamese guy (though he was raised here) and I hear Vietnamese every day at work from coworkers and customers. Probably a very different environment than most Americans have experienced. Tongue
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