What a brown Governor means

Down on the brown side's series on Bobby Jindal's election has me thinking more about his victory, and the response of the grassroots versus institutionalized power broker type groups.

As an individual, I am continually impressed by Asian Americans and other minorities who are able to win in places where they have no natural base - think State Rep. Sue Chew in Idaho (D), or State Rep. Swati Dandekar (D-Iowa) who is running for a State Senate seat. Both of these are more amazing to me than Democratic Texas State Rep. Hubert Vo, though I love him, because Houston actually is a quarter APIA, unlike Iowa and Idaho.

Many of my friends who are progressive and South Asian American are disgusted by Jindal's victories the way that Elaine Chao disgusts me. In being a flack, and providing political cover for implementing terrible policies that hurt Asian Americans, all while sharing the same skin tone as me, and being in a position of power to actually be able to change things for the better, all while hewing to the "conservative" line of turning back the clock, and shutting the door in the faces of the children, the unemployed, and the middle class. I'm sure Bobby Jindal will prove to be a far better token than Elaine Chao since he appears to be much smarter. I'm sure I will be furious at him for turning his back on his immigrant roots, like Alberto Gonzles.

But the more optimistic part of me thinks that these victories, regardless of what party the candidate belongs to, highlights a change in racial attitudes and perceptions. It also means that a sea change is coming in how our APIA community, and our elders, perceive politics. That it's more acc eptable for second and first generation kids to be politically active. And to me, it holds out the promise of a whole wave of APIA candidates, at all levels, across the country. Overall, if we have more APIAs involved on both sides, I hope that it'll be considered less exotic by both our community elders, and the average citizen, if an Asian American is involved in fundraising for a candidate. Or directing the field campaign. Serving as a campaign manager. Or even running.

It's one of the reasons why I write about APIAs working presidential campaigns on both sides - even though I don't always agree with the politics of everyone involved, I think it's important for both parties to be actively outreaching to our community. One of the reasons why the campaign finance scandal in '96 was able to gain such traction is because there were barely any APIA staffers at the DNC, or on Capitol Hill. Many people were pissed off at the insinuations, and scared for their own positions. We lacked critical mass, and we lacked positions of significant power within the party apparatus to say, "Don't you even dare scrapegoat us - if you want our money and our votes now and in the future, you're going to figure out a way to fight this without painting us as the exotic, shapeshifting, inscrutable Oriental giving money for God knows what nefarious reason." Many of the big national APA civil rights organizations were in their infancy, and our community got HAMMERED.

And if you look at how the Clinton campaign is handling the so-called Chinatown donor scandal, they've picked very inclusive language:

"Asian-Americans in Chinatown and Flushing have the same right to contribute as every other American," Howard Wolfson, a campaign spokesman, told several newspapers. "We do not ethnically profile donors."

(As opposed to the Norman Hsu stuff.)

One example is Republican Matt Fong, former State Treasurer of California, and 1998 challenger to incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer (D). Here's a review of his candidacy in the conservative National Review:

The California GOP has the reputation of being terminally unpopular among racial minorities. Fong, as a fourth-generation Chinese-American, could change all that. It's tempting not to dwell on Fong's ancestry because he doesn't make much of it himself. Yet it's an important feature of his candidacy. Exit polls reveal Asian-Americans to be among the most reliably Republican voters in the country. In 1996, they were more likely than whites to support Bob Dole. With non-Hispanic whites soon to become less than 50 per cent of the California population, the state GOP believes it will need a different kind of candidate to succeed. ''The conservative message doesn't have to change,'' says the California GOP's political director, Mike Madrid, ''but we need to put a new face on it.'' A Fong victory in November will show that conservatives have less to fear about growing minority participation in politics than they might think.

This is demographics at its best. At its worst, it's tokenism. Either way, it's hard for people ilke Matt Fong and Bobby Jindal to erase the color of their skin, which will always result in episodes like this:

Matt Fong, a Californian Republican running for the Senate two years ago, continually found himself running into the brick wall of racial suspicion on the campaign trail.

Even though his family had been Americans for four generations, journalists frequently asked him where his loyalties would lie if China attacked the US.

The root of the trouble may be that Asian-Americans are perpetually associated with the "Chinese threat" - the only remnant of the Cold War that Americans still take seriously.

Keep in mind - this isn't the VOTERS, but rather the journalists. It's just one example of how a media filter can substantially change an election. Btw, I wasn't fond of many of Fong's policies (flat tax?!?) but I despised the casual xenophobia.

On APIA VOTE, they are technically a nonpartisan organization even though most of the board is very Democratic, and if you read between the lines, the release doesn't celebrate Jindal's accomplishments as much as it celebrates a generic biography, a template son-of-immigrants -makes-good candidate.

Christine Chen, Executive Director of APIAVote states, "Jindal's win demonstrates the positive electoral engagement of the community including the growing political clout of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) and especially the Indian-American community who have been proactive in promoting activism in political campaigns at all levels."

I think it reflects an overall excitement that APIAs can win in states that aren't heavily APIA-dense, and that it's an overall benefit that results from when APIAs get active. I don;t doubt that IndoPAC and other groups are just happy to have another high-profile APIA, and to use it as an example of why their cause is correct. I might not be making a substantially different point than DotBS, but that's my take.

Bobby Jindal ascends the Louisiana Governor's seat

On the face of things, so much has changed in the South, and in Louisiana in particular. An Indian American Republican, Roman Catholic convert named Bobby Jindal has won the Governorship of a state that has also elected the infamous David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan to a public office in the late 1980s.

This is a very different world, and nation, than the one that the KKK was founded in - where a brown man who is the son of immigrants, can go to corners of Louisiana seeking votes from David Duke's followers, and win by appealing to very fundamentalist, supremicist values. I guess this is the beauty or bewilderment of America, god bless us.

For another, he did not have the support of a majority of the state’s blacks, about a third of the population, who vote Democratic.

Yet Mr. Jindal, with his decisive victory on Saturday, appears to have overcome a significant racial hurdle that blocked him in 2003, according to analysts: race-based opposition in the deeply conservative northern and eastern parishes of Louisiana that once supported the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

A born-again Roman Catholic, Mr. Jindal made a particular campaign target of these areas, visiting them frequently and bringing his brand of devout Christianity to their rural churches. His social-conservative message — teaching “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution in public schools, a total ban on abortion, repealing hate-crimes laws — would have been welcome in these areas.

Bobby Jindal is the intersection of the possibilities that America affords - a study of contrasts and unlikely alliances. And he is by all accounts, a very smart man, unlike Elaine Chao. I.e., I do not think he will be a quiet figurehead like her. This will both be good and bad for APIAs - for one thing, I believe he is eminently qualified for the job, given his resume. But a frequent talking point of Obama's is that two people will excellent resumes, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, got us into our nation's worst foreign policy mistake in this century.

I am glad that we've progressed. But the question is: will Bobby Jindal represent Indian Americans and Asian Americans well? Will he pursue a policy agenda that will truly benefit the working class, immigrants, and folks like his parents when they first moved here? Folks over at Sepia Mutiny have their own questions and concerns. If I had to place my bets, I'd have to say no. But I'd love to be proven wrong.

Amardeep has this quietly moving paragraph:

If Jindal wins, his victory will suggest to me he’s somehow overcome both sides of the immigrant’s anxiety syndrome: the part that comes from others’ mistrust, and also the part that comes from himself — his own sense of being something different, something other than a “normal” American, or in this case, a representative Louisianan. If he wins, I won’t cheer, but I will, I expect, quietly feel a certain sense of pride at his accomplishment despite my strong disagreement with his kind of politics. Not just because he’s a fellow desi — it’s actually more complex than that. Rather, the pride will be because he’s a fellow desi who’s evidently achieved, after a struggle, something I’ve long aspired to do: shake that dude’s hand.

For me, this represents a victory of the Ken Mehlman school of the GOP, the one that reaches out to the National Urban League and recruits Mel Martinez to head up the Republican National Committee. It's the smarter, more future-forward part of the GOP that recognizes how much demographic changes are going to affect national politics for the years to come. It's also this part of the GOP that says with one hand, "come, come, we welcome you" and the other hand is stabbing minorities and immigrants in the back with crappy bills like the immigration legislation that thankfully didn't pass. It's wicked smart - position yourself like you're pro-immigrant, but actually tout policies that would prevent more brown people from entering the country.

For better or worse, this part of the GOP is the one on the wane at the national level. But if the GOP leverages Bobby Jindal correctly and fully utilizes him, they can make a dent in the South Asian American vote and money race. Especially since Bush and company did heavy damage through special registration and by spreading suspicions of brown people all over - at the airport, at school, and at the workplace. I'm not sure that better packaging and marketing of racist, sexist, classist policies by the GOP is something to cheer - because Lord knows I hate Michelle Malkin for providing racial cover for endorsing special registration and internment. Shitty products that burn your fingers off when you touch them are still piss-poor investments, no matter how shiny, or what color the box it comes in is.

I guess the only net benefit I can see to this is that if this inspires more Asian American kids to think that they too can run for office, and if it makes our parents and grandparents think that politics is not the totally evil machine that it sometimes can be, that it can be a worthwhile and achievable goal, then I'd be happy. Meantime, color me 95% unimpressed. I have no high hopes for him pushing forward a progressive social agenda, but I do fervently hope that he doesn't have any hidden foibles like his homestate senator, David "Diaperman" Vitter. Cos you know that would just make brown folks the diaper fetish terrorists who like to wear towels on their heads and red dots between their eyes. On the face of things anyways, that's what people would think on the airplane, before they call security and get your ass hauled off.

Oh, and lastly, I can scarcely bear to watch Lou Dobbs. His two flogging horses of trade and immigration always, always wind up piling on immigrants in a no-win situation - Latino and Asian American. It's a psuedo-populist appeal that has been converted into xenophobic riots and exclusion acts in the past.

Hmong leaders - changing of the guard

Well, I was saddened to learn that Joe Bee Xiong has passed away. Xiong was the first Asian American city councilman in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and he made a respectable run for the State Legislature a few years back in a highly Republican district that was majority white. He was a leader and a community figure, and he played a large role in the Chai Vang case (the Wisconsin hunter.)

On the bright side, Pakou Hang, a sharp young activist who worked for former Sen. Paul Wellstone and current State Senator (and Majority Whip) Mee Moua, is running for St. Paul city council. She's young, talented, and female, and ready to implement new ideas and willing to listen to the voices of the entire community. She's got some of the best, most politically active, most progressive organizations backing her - SEIU, ACORN, Progressive Majority - in addition to Congressman Keith Ellison. She managed to hold off having the DFL (Democrat Farmer Labor) party make any endorsement in the race, but carries the endorsement of the DFL's Feminist and Stonewall caucuses, which is an achievement considering that she's up against an incumbent with over a decade of experience. Here's two articles about her historic campaign. Btw, the other guy is the business candidate - was endorsed by the chamber of commerce. . .

Vote Pakou for change, and while you're at it, throw her some change ;) Cos lord knows $13,000 is not a lot for a political campaign, even if you are a scrappy Wellstone organizer who knows how to hold down costs. But Bryan Thao Worra probably has a more thorough and nuanced on the ground analysis of all of this.

PS: I HATE the new blogger. Google and blogger just went down for 5 minutes, causing me to lose my entire post. At first I thought it was my connection. Damn new blogger.

PPS: Check out the case of this 13 year old Indian American boy from Utah who is headed for the National Spelling Bee. He's an "angry speller" who wants to win so that Bush will pay attention to his parents plight (he's been crying since they were deported over a year ago.) Go Kunal, go!