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ASIAMS.NET |
ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
Is the D.C.-Baltimore Area the Center of Asian American Conservatism?
he greater D.C. metro area (including Baltimore and Northeastern Virginia) is not only the seat of the national government but the center of the U.S. defense establishment. The contractors and the large intelligence agencies -- most of which are headquartered there -- are easily the biggest employers of the region's affluent science and engineering professionals. An estimated 22% of these technologists are drawn from the 400,000 AA who make up 8% of the region's 5 million residents. This heavy concentration in the defense sector makes the area's Asian Americans not only the nation's most affluent, but also the most politically and socially conservative.
Home of AA Conservatism?
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The Asian influx into the D.C. area is largely a post-Vietnam
War phenomenon. The capitol's small but comely Chinatown on H Street between 6th and 8th boasts about 20 restaurants and a number of shops but they cater mostly to tourists and the lunch-hour crowd. Currently only about 1,000 Chinese live in Washington D.C. -- and that number has been shrinking steadily. Most live in the suburbs of northern Virginia (46,000) and southern Maryland (52,000). The D.C. area hosts only the 10th largest Chinese American population but a high percentage are degreed science and tech professionals with security clearances.
Similar credentials are found among the 110,000 Corean Americans who make up the area's largest Asian nationality. They enjoy access to 53 Corean restaurants, mostly in Annandale, Arlington, and in Aspen Hill in Maryland's Montgomery County. The vast majority of Coreans here are staunchly Republican -- not surprising since their fortunes turn on the dollars allocated to defense spending.
Vietnamese are another Republic-leaning Asian nationality with a heavy D.C.-area presence. Virginia is home to the nation's third largest Vietnamese population (40,000), mostly in the state's northeastern part. Less than half that number make their home in Maryland and D.C. combined. They do manage to support a nascent Little Saigon in Wheaton.
Indians, who received over half the H-1B visas issued to foreign tech workers beginning in 1992, have been drawn by the area's defense sector. In 2001 the 52,000 Indians living in Virginia surpassed Filipinos as that state's most numberous Asian nationality thanks to a 143% increase since 1990. An equally large number of Indians have immigrated to take advantage of Maryland's abundance of science and tech jobs.
Another good indicator of the D.C. area's political conservatism is the relative scarcity of Japanese Americans who have traditionally skewed strongly in favor of democrats. Neither Maryland nor Virginia ranks among states with the top 10 JA populations.
Is the D.C.-Baltimore area really the home of AA conservatism? Or have the more recent waves of young AA newcomers begun embracing the more liberal values of the Clinton era?
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WHAT YOU SAY
[This page is closed to new input. --Ed.]
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 06:06:33 PM)
I don't think that the population of white people needs to decline for less Asian hate. To me that assumption is wrong. I am sure that if any population was all mono-racial there would be less problems perhaps, except for intra-racial hate within ones own race, but that theory also has so many ethical bads to it and is full of so many wholes, and what a boring stagnant society. It sounds so putrid and ethnocentric. I think that having a DIVERSITY is a good plan for any area.
I have been reading this DC forum with interest, and am saddened that certain posters have encountered racism at the hands of Caucasian people , assuming Caucasian, perhaps other races too?
My husband came here from China at 10, was teased and mocked at school by children because his English was not good. He worked delivery for his relatives restaurant in downtown DC while in Junior High also. In school , at first, he heard snickering and kids making fun of him. Those same kids soon became his friends as they became educated about who he is and learned about his culture and his shared stories.
He still maintains these friendships, and he has changed what the once ignorant people knew about himself and his culture. So instead of adding to the hate and automatically assuming that all "White" people are in on some "broad conspiracy", I have seen firsthand that alot of prejudice and hate stems from ignorance and passed down from families.
I know that I do not attend any secret societies or meetings planning against my Asian husband and thinking of ways to disempower my half Asian son.
Sadly their will always be people that are just full of hate and hate you because of your skin color no matter what you do. But you cannot condemn a whole race because of some who think that way, unless you want to contribute to the evil, like the Nazis did. Hate crimes are real and vicious. I am scared of them myself.
I am VERY aware of prejudice and not in denial to this . We drove to a western part of Virginia last weekend to a little fresh water beach my husband heard about at work. When we arrived it was a very small town and it was full of, if I may use this term, red-necks. We still went to the beach. The first thing my husband said to me was "Are you nervous honey?" and I only relaxed my guard a bit when people started to make conversation and I saw an Indian couple having fun there also.
Still my husband said "Wow I am the only Chinese guy here." But we had fun, did not have any bad encounter, made conversations and are going to go back.
I think racism must decline. And conspiracy stories should have something to back them up to resist sounding like a bitter racist person yourself and to not sound like a reverse version of some KKK nut.
Who is this "guard" that keeps coming up? I do not make light of your experiences, but you still refuse to get specific and educate us. It makes it appear that you are wallowing in your own very transparent hate for "anything" that is white.
hannybunbun
Thursday, June 27, 2002 at 05:46:09 (PDT)
I lived in Northern Virgina for a little over 5 years now and truly love it here. There's a sizable Asian population in Fairfax County. I have to be honest and it might be way out there to say that there's no racism in NOVA, but in the 5 years I lived here, I never really had a racial incident happen to me.
LTC
Thursday, June 27, 2002 at 01:47:39 (PDT)
If you're an Asian teenager living in DC and your parents can't afford to send you to a private school, you have basically 2 choices to make concerning your education.
1. Go to Wilson High School. I belive this is the only public school in the city which is not majority black and in most if not all cases, ghetto. Wilson HS from my understanding is where most if not all Asians go to school in DC. It's located in a nice neighborhood, also very close to American University.
2. You can move in with a relative and go to school in Northern Virginia, where you will find that most schools will have a considerably sized Asian population(5-15% ?).
LTC
Thursday, June 27, 2002 at 01:37:52 (PDT)
"Consider the existence of anti-Asian hate, even if your "whitewashed" minds can't grasp it, because it's deep--rooted in NOVA."
Anti-asian hate...all over the place not just in NOVA...have you ever been to Northern Georgia...I read from another board that they were going to beat up someone from Iceland for having married a Singaporean woman and they only let them go after they found out that he was not from the area. Do you know of CNN...they are so color conscious that they put a white looking Iranian, Rudi Bakhtiar as an anchor and fired Joie Chen. Any white looking person, however poorer the country such as Iran is preferred over an Asian from a rich country such as Singapore. And by the way, many Iranian women in NOVA who look white consider themselves white and are intensely prejudiced against Asians and other non-whites. I have heard anti-Asian bigotry from white looking Iranian women as well especially after Bakhtiar knocked out Joie Chen. And in the Elim Date show, recently there has been inter-racial casting...in some shows you have one Asian woman and three white women competing for a white male...and almost invariably the three white women think that the guy would eliminate the Asian woman...because he does not really want a mail order bride, a slut or a whore...all code words for racism, ie., "why would he want to contaminate his kids with nonwhite blood."
"Get out of town, before they make slaves out of you, without you knowing it."
If I get out of town, there would be a one less me, ie., Asian and that means if everyone thinks like this whites would become a majority again...something I do not want at least here in Arlington.
"If you can make it to Maryland, you're a free man, like in the pre-Civil War days, and like the level of anti-Asian hate you will feel."
...and perhaps he can add another vote to defeat Connie Morella and end the racist GOP majority rule of Tom DeLay and other bigots in that party on November 5, 2002.
Novasian
Wednesday, June 26, 2002 at 13:33:28 (PDT)
To Man of Lha-sa et al.:
The dialogue is beneath me, since I am dealing with a "guard" of some sort that will be used to devastate the Asian group in NOVA. You are definitely not a person of Asian origin, or someone who knows about the racial history in the NOVA region, or someone who can properly identify the Mason-Dixon line, the line between freedom and slavery for African Americans and others who were held as slaves before the Civil War. How many non-White history courses have you taken? Any independent research during your secondary education, even?
The only way for progress is to tell the truth and not with falsified picture of change or progress. Real progress will only come about through teaching of proper history. If you don't have the necessary experience in the NOVA region, adhere to those who have, because they were in the region, fighting for the rights and prestige that you can now, barely taste in NOVA. Consider the existence of anti-Asian hate, even if your "whitewashed" minds can't grasp it, because it's deep--rooted in NOVA.
Get out of town, before they make slaves out of you, without you knowing it. If you can make it to Maryland, you're a free man, like in the pre-Civil War days, and like the level of anti-Asian hate you will feel.
XXXO
Monday, June 24, 2002 at 17:09:07 (PDT)
"What would you change about NOVA that would make you feel less Anti-Asian hate?"
Hopefully the proportion of whites in this area would continue to decline and racism would continue to decline. Scondly we also need fewer characters such as Blinders on, Metropolitan Aware and XXXO.
Novasian
Sunday, June 23, 2002 at 12:38:43 (PDT)
XXXO,
Maryland was never a confederate state, but the Mason-Dixon line is the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. Maryland was a slave state. I may have never had the benefit of a NOVA education, but the facts can be checked with any encyclopedia.
"NOVA is full of anti-Asian hate, and this is well know within the region, unless you are White, denying once again the existence of racism, Asian, Uncle Toms, defending the Whites who are feeding them with misinformations and misconceptions, or other minority groups that are happy to see Asians being controlled and destroyed by various uses of anti-Asian hate."
Man of Lha-sa is an Uncle Tom. Just look at how he described other Asians in one of his earlier posts. He calls Asians at Eden "Rice Boys." What a pathetic attempt at a racist slur by a typical Asian Uncle Tom. I am convinced that Man of Lha-sa is either White, posing as an Asian, or he is an Asian Uncle Tom. Enough said... Such anti-Asian hate in NOVA. I feel it everyday."
All right, assuming for a moment that I am an Uncle Tom or a white person masquerading as an Asian . . . again I ask you, please tell us what "Anti-Asian hate" are you talking about???
I have never said that there wasn't bigotry or prejudice here, I'm just curious to hear what other Asian Americans are going through. All I get from you XXXO\Metropolitan\Cosmo is this rant about how you feel all this hate, and then when I ask you to describe it, you call me "whitewashed" or Uncle Tome. Weak.
All right, maybe I should ask a different question, "What would you change about NOVA that would make you feel less Anti-Asian hate?" I do not mean this to be a confrontational question. Help a poor whitewashed/sellout/whiteboy wannabe/Uncle Tom understand NOVA.
Man of Lha-sa(mancha)
Saturday, June 22, 2002 at 13:18:09 (PDT)
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