Notes On the State of Asian Americans

Assimilation into Belmont

I have always assigned little meaning to the term ‘Asian American’. In my personal experience as a nominal Asian American of Chinese origin, Asian Americans may have even less in common than so-called “people of color”. Similarly to Hispanic Americans, another pan-ethnic group with commonly underestimated levels of heterogeneity, Asian Americans identify primarily with the ethnicity derived from their country of origin, rather than the pan-ethnic label of Asian American. But Hispanic Americans are at least united by a common language and to a lesser extent certain phenotypic features. By contrast, there is absolutely nothing similar in language, culture, or appearance between a Chinese guy and a Filipino or Indian guy. Indeed, when I am asked about what I think of the “Asian American community”, or my “lived experience” as an Asian American, I often reply in all honesty, that I have more in common with an unhyphenated White American than I do with a non-Chinese Asian American.

Nonetheless, as Asian Americans have increased as a share of America’s population, they have begun to exercise a decisive role perhaps not in national politics, but in the local politics of high-profile metropolitan areas. This has led to more attention on the political orientation of Asian Americans and their ideological and cultural origins. In this paper, I shall synthesize the research on this topic with commentary based on observations and insights from my personal experiences. 

At present, the most important reality about Asian Americans for America’s political system is that they mostly vote blue. 62 percent of Asian Americans lean towards the Democrats compared to 34 percent who lean towards the Republicans. The balance of support between the two parties varies across Asian American subgroups. But Democrats have the edge among Asian Americans of all origin countries except Vietnamese Americans. The case of Vietnamese American exceptionalism can likely be explained by two factors. The first and most obvious explanation is that most Vietnamese Americans either fled Communism as refugees during the Vietnam War or are descended from those who did. Many Vietnamese Americans are thus instinctively attracted to the party of Reagan, and recoil from the party that is associated with the political left. The second likely explanation is that Vietnamese Americans, on average, possess far lower levels of tertiary education relative to other Asian American groups. As of 2019, just 32 percent of Vietnamese Americans above the age of 25, have completed at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to 54 percent among Asian Americans as a whole. And besides being White, not having a college degree is the strongest predictor of support for the Republicans today. This latter explanation is also an important explanation for why Asian Americans, as a whole, lean blue. 

What I have detailed thus far is widely known and acknowledged. But there are two curious and striking features of the political orientation of Asian Americans, which deserves closer investigation. The first is why native-born Asian Americans are so left-wing relative to their foreign born counterparts, especially those who have lived in America for 20+ years? The second is why the partisan leanings of Asian Americans differ so widely across age cohorts, relative to other ethno-racial groups? 

The former is a pattern that stands in sharp contrast to Hispanic Americans, the other principal immigrant group in contemporary America. As data from Pew Research shows, third-generation, American-born Latinos are more likely to lean towards the GOP than their foreign-born counterparts, likely because they are more confident about their place in America, and therefore more at peace with the GOP’s restrictionist views on immigration.

My theory for Asian exceptionalism in this regard based upon my personal observations, is as follows. When Asian immigrants first arrive in America, they are attracted to the Democratic party because they are relatively insecure about their place in America. They are less likely to speak English well and endure more discrimination. Therefore, they naturally gravitate towards the party perceived to be more friendly towards immigrants and protective of ethnic minorities. The longer they lead lives in America however, the more secure they grow about their place in America. They improve their English, improve their economic circumstances and acquire greater wealth. After all, Asian Americans are the highest-earning ethno-racial group in America. The average Asian woman literally earns more than the average White man.

On the basis of these factors, Asian immigrants who have lived in America for 21+ years thus begin drifting towards the GOP. Asian immigrants also come from countries with more conservative social norms and cultural values relative to the US. Those who have grown secure about their place in America are therefore more likely to vote more on this basis, rather than based on their immigrant and ethnic minority status. This makes the right-wing Republican Party more attractive.

This is a theory that comports well with my mom’s political journey as well as that of her friends and our relatives. When my mom first immigrated to America, she was relatively apolitical because political participation wasn’t something that China, her country of origin, encouraged to put it mildly. She tended to vote for the Democrats because as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, she experienced the greatest professional and financial success under Bill Clinton’s presidency which took place during the dot-com bubble. In recent years, however, she and virtually all her friends have become very partisan Republicans due to several factors. Firstly, she purchased multiple rental properties during the 2008 financial crisis and became a small landlord. It’s therefore in her material interests to vote against Democrats and their proposals to impose rent control. 

Secondly, the Democrats have become a party that espouses stances on social and cultural issues well to the left of the median American. In the past Chinese immigrants like my mom who originate from atheist China, and are pro-choice and largely ambivalent about gay marriage unless you shove it in their face too much, comfortably fit among the Democratic Party’s big tent. A party that considers it bigotry to not believe a man can become a woman or that criminals need punishment, not rehabilitation is off-putting for my mom and her friends.

Furthermore, the Democratic Party’s support for racial preferences in favor of Blacks and Latinos over Asians and Whites, is off-putting to my mom and her friends, since their children are often the victims of such policies. From their perspective, their economic success as immigrants and ethnic minorities proves that America is not an institutionally racist country and makes them profoundly unsympathetic towards Black Lives Matter protests and their various claims of perceived racial injustice. As my mom put it to me during the summer of 2020, “I came to America speaking no English, with no marketable skills and no money in my pocket. And yet I’ve gotten to where I am. These Blacks can do the same if they quit whining, stop being lazy, and get a job. But no, they want special privileges from the government. That is not fair!” Her views are certainly far from representative of every Asian immigrant. But I can certainly say that over the last 3 years, with the BLM protests vandalizing Chinatown and with the subsequent increase of Black-on-Asian crime, I have heard them echoed to me with great frequency among older Chinese people in Chinatown. They explain a great deal of recent events that have awakened the nation’s interest in the political orientation of Asian Americans, from the local recall elections in San Francisco, to the majorities the Republican New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin won across every New York City Chinatown.  

The views of older, Asian immigrants that I detail above differs sharply however, from that of younger, American-born Asian Americans. This population in contrast, is not one that was born and educated in socially conservative Asian countries, but rather the ‘woke’ schools and universities in California and New York where roughly three-quarters of the Asian American population reside. Unlike Hispanic Americans, which is a group that generally holds relatively low levels of tertiary education, Asian Americans are the most highly educated ethno-racial group in the US. As of 2022, 59.3 percent of the Asian population had a bachelor’s degree, compared to 41.9 percent among the White population, and just 20.9 percent among the Hispanic population. Given the high levels of education polarization in America, it seems likely that the American-born Asian population’s high exposure to American universities is responsible for their affinity for the Democratic Party. I have heard so many stories from my mom’s friends, who generally share her conservative views, and react in horror when their children who attend UC Berkeley walk out in the street with BLM placards or express support for ‘gender-affirming care’. They often ask my mom, with incredulous helplessness, why it seems like only her kid is not a left-wing loonie. 

In the past, I have written about how college-educated whites, a group that once formed the backbone of Republican support, is now increasingly a core Democratic constituency because of their culturally liberal attitudes. Perhaps the answer to why American-born Asian Americans are Democrats is because they are assimilating so well. But rather than assimilating into the archetype of the conservative working-class white guy with a pickup truck and a rifle, Asian Americans are assimilating around the archetypical college-educated white liberal who sips latte and eats tofu.