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GOLDSEA |
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, 06:06:35 PM)
NOVA has always been anti-Asian. Take a look around and you will feel the hostilities eminating from the ground. I think that's how bad it has been. Sorry to ruin the Asian pride in the region. Power to those who are from Maryland, the state that chose to fight on the side of the Union and not the Confederacy during the Civil War, unlike Northern Virginia, Southern Virginia, and everywhere Virginia south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Blinders On
Tuesday, June 11, 2002 at 18:29:05 (PDT)
To Man of Lha-sa(mancha):
I am convinced, by reading your prior messages, although somewhat valid, that you are an Asian Uncle Tom (Read Uncle Tom's Cabin--it's a good book), or it could be that you are White, from another region, playing with Asian readers who visit this place. If I am incorrect in making such assumptions, so be it. It's difficult to believe that you've heard a racial slur directly at you only twice within the last 7 years living in NOVA. Are you @@@@@ kidding me? Everything else may sound logical to a naive mind, but to a veteran of NOVA and of its arcane expression of anti-Asian hate, not a chance. Get out of town--no pun intended. It's just a waste of time attempting to educate a "washed" mind. No offense.
Cosmo
Tuesday, June 11, 2002 at 16:40:37 (PDT)
NOVA Cosmopolitan
"In my experience, racism in NOVA has become selective over the years, but the expression of so called, "anti-Asian hate," still exists and will continue to exist . . . Asians need to wake up to the reality in this country and not be blinded by their own, particular experiences, whether these individual experiences were positive, negative, or neutral as per Man of Lha-sa, Metropolitan Aware, and Ken."
Ahem . . . I certainly hope that I haven't been "blinded" to anti-Asian hate in NOVA or America in general and I certainly didn't mean to come off as a pro-NOVA cheerleader. If I am blind to anti-Asian hate here, perhaps I just haven't been looking in the right places or maybe I'm just lucky.
I've spent 7 of the past ten years either here in NOVA or in MD. During that time, I've been called an ethnic slur twice, asked where I was "really" from probably a half-dozen times and spit at by a homeless person once (I'm assuming it was b/c of my race, b/c other non-Asians walking by were not spit at). That is about it for "overt" acts of racism. No cops have pulled me over for reckless driving, no courts have denied me translators, no skinheads or Klansmen have chased me down the streets. Assuredly, there have been times where I've got lousy service, or merchants have tried to rip me off, but I have no evidence that these were race-based events (I didn't see other non-Asian customers getting any better service on those occassions).
I have been involved in various Asian American organizations and campaigns both professionally and as a student (Hey Ken, I was part of the campaign to get the Asian studies program at the college I'm betting your studying at in Baltimore.) so I like to think I'm connected to the community and not a big twinkie. If anti-Asian hate is rampant here, I'd like to see it and help to confront and resolve it.
NOVA isn't an APA paradise, but this isn't Birmingham 1950 either. Media stereotyping, job discrimination, housing discrimination, and anti-immigrant violence are big APA issues, but they aren't specific to NOVA, and it doesn't seem to be worse here than in other parts of non-West Coast Asian America. Talking about some vauge anti-Asian hate system which few of us can see, and few are presently effected by makes us sound like conspiracy theorists (see "Undercover Brother").
Not to knock everyone's experiences from the 70s and 80s, or as school kids, but I'm most interested in what is happening now. I'm betting that most of the posters at Goldsea in this area are like me, Asian yuppies with no kids. So help out a blind man with this quesion "What are the effects of the anti-Asian hate system on APA yuppies in NOVA?"
Man of Lha-sa(mancha)
Sunday, June 09, 2002 at 17:29:21 (PDT)
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