Why Are Asian Voters Moving Right?

Jen Pan discusses why so many Asian American voters swung to the right in a recent election in New York City, and what this shift says about the incompetence of the Democratic Party.
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[@mynameischaku]

From what I've read about this, it seems almost meaningless to categorize Asians as a political voting block due to the extreme diversity in their circumstances. With Asian Americans having the greatest income inequality, that alone means they would have different class interests. Since immigration policies are heavily favoring wealthy immigrants from certain wealthy and populous countries (particularly China and India), and since many other Asian countries are relatively impoverished and their immigrants are generally poorer, and with native born Asian Americans still not completely divorced from their ethnic backgrounds, primarily the wealth and capital they started with, the whole situation seems to defy categorization. It makes sense how the model minority meritocracy myth gets perpetuated when the face of Asian Americans to the average American are either wealthy immigrants or the descendants of wealthy immigrants. It also makes sense that of the interests of working class Asians are ignored, and Republicans can appeal on social issue like public safety or schooling diversity quotas, even the less wealthy could be shifted to the right.

[@Jeremyho439]

YG Track Is Under Fire for Encouraging Robberies Against Chinese Americans. YG- a black rapper says : First, you find a house and scope it out / Find a Chinese neighborhood / ‘Cause they don’t believe in bank accounts.” (“Flockers” is slang for thieves.)

[@andrewlim9345]

Thanks for the video. Good look at the voting patterns and subgroups within the Asian American community.

[@leanna3625]

From my perspective being in left leaning circles, they seem remarkably tolerant of Asian racism. I've actually had to call out people who are POC themselves for saying racist shit like Asian women worship white men or that Indians have poor hygiene. And I could write whole essays on the racist way our progressive mainstream media talks about foreign media being 'problematic'. What bothers me is when called out, they get defensive and act as if racism against Asians is okay because they're a republican talking point.

[@Procopius464]

Asians are next on the chopping block after white people.

[@ladymorwendaebrethil-feani4031]

American identity policy in practice: putting all of the city's ethnic minorities to contend with artificially scarce resources like quality education and promoting growing racial tension among them. Then they come to talk about diversity and racial justice in the electoral campaign, even after segregating the population in this way.

[@flarp671]

Testing disparity isn't leading to inequality. Inequality is leading to testing disparities. I don't see what NYC would gain by applying this neoliberal Gotha program. I hate to bring arbitrary identity into this, but as a working-class Latinx person who went to a deeply underperforming high school I can assure you that my peers and I would have been better helped by remediation courses and a clear path to community college than an this emphasis on getting everybody that looked like me into Berkeley. That said, it's difficult to argue access to high-quality education doesn't improve lives. That's an argument for fixing all schools, not dragging down high-performance ones. I call this the California solution to inequality: Don't tax and spend appropriately to improve and universalize public services, just legalize theft against individual proletarian families at the hands of the lumpen. It simultaneously protects the bourgeoisie, shifts the responsibility for inequality from owners onto more-prosperous workers, and costs the state nothing in increased social spending whilst building support for punitive criminal justice policies.

[@reddy11-11]

first line is well said!

[@GrayzoneGab]

You put this so well. Im a bw from an immigrant family and, not to undercut any of my achievements, but I also recognize that it is my parents' own success and resources contributed to my more favorable outcomes. I am not a fan of privilege discourse but it definitely factors in here

[@GrayzoneGab]

You put this so well. Im a bw from an immigrant family and, not to undercut any of my achievements, but I also recognize that it is my parents' own success and resources contributed to my more favorable outcomes. I am not a fan of privilege discourse but it definitely factors in here

[@eljefeog]

By seeking to achieve equity rather than equality, the DeBlasio administration more or less tacitly communicated to Asian Americans in NYC the racist equivalent of “there are too many c**nks in the best schools”

[@tommyanomaly6193]

The real world is far more complex than "left" or "right".

[@danwarb1]

It's not. It's people who have a stake in society because they got in early and people who fall quickly for scapogoating of minorities and immigration, versus their actual interests and the interests of society. Right versus left.

[@891delta]

Not sure why she keeps bringing up "rich tech Asians". "Rich tech Asians" are seeing Asian seniors like their parents and grandparents getting victimized on the streets so of course "Stop Asian Hate" is relevant to them.

[@jmalko9152]

Informative!

[@IshtarNike]

Most Asian immigrants aren’t poor per say. They are drawn from the petit bourgeoisie and/or the PMC from their respective countries. They may be poor by American standards, but they generally have very high cultural capital and appreciable savings even if their incomes are not that high. I don’t agree with the policy around the test, but “poor immigrants working so hard it’s not fair on them” is a simplistic and romanticised narrative that ignores a lot of nuance. Yes, they are disadvantaged relative to whites, but they are not working class in the same way working class people who have been resident for multiple generations are - this goes for all groups. Immigrants who come from a country that doesn’t share a land border tend to have much higher class backgrounds than people realise. I’m not saying that’s always the case, but it’s disproportionately so.

[@larshofler8298]

There are also working-class Asian immigrants, don't let that fact be obscured by the fact that in recent decades we see trained professionals and wealthy capitalists from Asia immigrating to the US. Even to this day there are Asian immigrants struggling at the same level with other working class immigrants, they might be lesser known to the locals due to the fact they sometimes congregate in certain places like Flushing of NY. Let's not forget that Chinatown started as Coolie ghettos in the 1800s, and the Coolies who built the railway were no more petite bourgeois than any other impoverished immigrants, in fact, they were subjected to worse conditions and lower wages. I'm inclined to say, we must not confuse racial categories that the State uses to registration its population with actual, real lines of political struggle. At the same time, there are also very nuanced problem of racism, that even a petite bourgeois non-white would not be treated the same as whites of the same class. Class tension in the form of racism spills over into higher classes too.

[@larshofler8298]

You would also need to consider the effect of globalization, which in recent decades pulled highly educated professionals from third world countries to the US. You simply can't reduce this phenomenal to race or ethnicity. A wealthy professional from Taiwan or China working at the Scillcon Valley has nothing to do with old Chinese immigrants who might still be stuck in poor conditions outside of the respected part of the society. In fact, "Asian" or "East Asian" is not even a real thing. The Japanese, as early as 1900s, joined the ranks of Western imperialists and brutally colonized and exploited "other Asians" like Koreans and Chinese. Genocides were committed against the colonized ethnicities, a fact often obscured by the Western eyes who only see "Asian". In Apartheid South Africa, Japanese were considered White due to their status as a wealthy capitalist state and a source of capital investment, while the local Chinese were classified as Black. In some way, there is no such a thing as Asian!

[@hongluzhang7771]

The problem here is complicated. Many newer generations of asian immigrants older ABCs and newer people stemmed from 21th century immigration waves are by no means economically grouped in a narrow plane but culturally divisive with gaps can be said to be even bigger than those of Latino or others. The support from those particularly culturally different voters for policies like universal healthcare, or other similar public funding programs are mainly shaped by the values against a stereotypical individualism ideal which is popular among those so called liberals who also support those policies. To use a vague word, the society and the country is like just another atomic family in essence for majority of the voters who, are raised in the background of post-colonialism. And the left/right division in the voting sense simply does not work for this type of discussions as voters are in a way shortsighted and they follow the intuitive way of elaborating policies into their own interest evaluations that centered around their own socioeconomic status, their imagined community, in this instance, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or a bigger Asian identity, and then other communities will be included as well. From the voting perspective, they are just thinking like a typical conservative moralist with liberal ideas and such, and that falls right into the republican camp for now.

[@IshtarNike]

I recommend reading Eduardo Bonilla-Silvas books about the future development of race relations in America. There’s more than one type of racism. In the US it used to be bipolar - white versus black. But it is actually developing to become more like Latin America with a range of shades and ethnicities in between that provide a semblance of multiculturalism and meritocracy while still maintaining white supremacy.

[@WithoutRemorse12]

Meritocracy is not something real in America. They stole wealth and land from Black people. They used Black bodies as Economic coal for White jobs program

[@cjohnson3836]

@@WithoutRemorse12 They stole land from Natives

[@oakridgemall-8jl2h9f]

It is becoming more bipolar -- going towards hard Left, hard Right, with a hallowed out center.

[@Jake20111]

What's up at 11:40? Jen verbally quotes Bernie as saying 'Dems should be deeply humiliated for losing working class Asian voters,' but the quote shown onscreen says white working class

[@MS-wi6su]

Jen said that she was paraphrasing that Bernie quote from 2016.

[@stephanierampley5979]

Why would she choose to show a Bernie quote on screen that specifically states “white” working class voters… and then just replace the demographic by saying “Asian” working class voters…That’s misleading, no? Is Jacobin going to correct this? 🤔

[@jKLa]

@@stephanierampley5979 no she's showing the Bernie quote to say that some similar is happening now among Asians, that the original Bernie quote is relevant to this.

[@stephenoconnor1459]

These kind of videos are what KZbin is for. It's hard for big media outlets to discuss this because of pc sensibilities

[@Octoberfurst]

Well said!

[@tctyt]

Why are you crying about it? Im Filipino and I stand for Trump! 🇺🇸🦅

[@alibitter6361]

Liberal hypocricy alienating their voters, who'dve thought?

[@shreksnow1918]

The Republicans do that as well by saying that Hispanics are only here because of “illegal” immigration, and that they only bring crime. Funny thing is there’s bits of idiots who ignore that simply because they’re offended that some idiot called them Latinx (I agree it’s a stupid term. But that’s no reason to vote for a party that literally wants them exterminated).

[@brudamo9203]

Same reason they use white first names.

[@TriteNight1218]

Why is it shameful that black and Latino students are proportionally underrepresented at these schools? Liberals want to simultaneously celebrate diversity and also express indignation when all groups do not have the same exact outcomes. Diversity means that groups are actually different. They have different values, desires, motivations and, yes, abilities. If it is shameful when blacks and Latinos are underrepresented at these schools, then the implication is that it is shameful when Asians are overrepresented at these schools. You can not have overrepresentation of one group without underrepresentation of another group; that is simply how fractions work. You either support true diversity _or_ equal outcomes, and I think we all know the misery that often accompanies the attempt to achieve the latter.

[@6Diego1Diego9]

this chick is so bangin

[@GrayzoneGab]

🤣

[@urrywest]

Sliwa was my Sense... I don't know his polatics at all... His secoundary Thomas Hunt lived in my hood as of a year ago...

[@JaredAllaway]

Highest median wage in Puget Sound. But I think they include India in that statistic.

[@johoward2251]

Diversifying schools is a “pet project” hmmm well why not ignore blacks totally so that “working class” Asians in NYC can have their private schools untouched

[@rivera229]

That's not what Jen meant at all. If anything what she offers is far more radical and better for the country. End private schools, period. End the idea of taking tests to get into good schools, period. Fund the education system so every single school in every single part of the country work amazingly. Diversity is important but it won't be enough, we have to do more. I guarantee you that if it wasn't for these elitist schools making us all fight each other for our kids to have a spot, people would probably be happy with more diversity in their schools.

[@johoward2251]

@@rivera229 Can you time stamp where Jen specifically says “end private schools” because I missed that. What I got was, end pro black wokeness de facto

[@thosethatcan]

Wikipedia/ MHSA1980 ... Regan shi... Ahhhhh What!? Synthetic weed f no

[@johnsummers7121]

Gay Mexican, he him: we're looking at this as a identity politics issue so I'll address it as such to stay on topic. Asians are a higher preforming minority. We can say that as in objective measurements. You may not like that as a metric it's an existing thought process. To ignore this is to ignore the lived experience of a community that is ignored by both parties. Saying Asians can exist in a system of meritocracy and don't get the same attention that blacks get from left wing politics leaves little options for political choice. Most Americans want government supports. Trying to act like the lived experience of individual groups makes it so their is no common cause and it makes Ben Shapiro tier arguments about culture true. Also, Asian cultures not all the same the same could be said about Mexicans. The only monoliths are the poor and the rich.

[@meljini]

"Asians are a higher preforming minority. We can say that as in objective measurements. You may not like that as a metric it's an existing thought process. To ignore this is to ignore the lived experience of a community that is ignored by both parties." A lived experience or the quanitfication of it is not a metric, that's why its a lived experience. Its outside the scope of a single metric. Do you make this claim for the US or the world? would you say asians perform the best with little failure in the asian countries? I know you said the cultures are not a monolith You make it sound like someone who lives asian is doing things to portray one where "asians are a higher performing minority" think about what made that so in the context of asian people coming to the states. China has the Gaokao test. What you wrote makes it sound like if anyone else fails its because their lives and cultures dictate that because the inverse exists for asians? See how some latinos in LAUSD for ex fought for equal opportunities in HS during the los angeles Blowouts

[@AmandaFromWisconsin]

“Lived experience”. Is there any other kind?

[@johnsummers7121]

@@meljini what's your point. I'm trying to stay in the lane in which this issue is framed. If we're looking at Asians as one block, in agrogate they do better. Most of the news clips in this video confirm that at least as perception. We can't have it both ways. Either we say every segment of a group is it's own avatar or the vast majority represents the whole. That is the problem with identity politics. We're not saying all black people commit violent crime even though the vast majority of attacks on Asians were from black people. It sounds as though you're advocating no measurements of culture of any sort.

[@johnsummers7121]

@@AmandaFromWisconsin that's the language used in discussing identity politics. I didn't make it up. I'd rather talk about how there are serious culture truths that explain why Asians do better in a meritocracy and the right acts like their politics facilitate that.

[@meljini]

@@johnsummers7121 "lived experiences" provide a vast response versus a measure. Yes there are aggregates/averages yet what is behind this to explain the claim that "asians are highest performing"? And specifically in what are you meaning this in? Idk what sorta of measurements or what- I cannot arbitrate what things say x about a group of people. I do not study social sciences or policy. Jen Pan is clear that these broad strokes about the NYC mayoral block can be generalized as "racist" by liberal writers but that this is a reflection of failing Ds in NYC. Identity politics have pitfalls- i do not care for shaping beliefs/votes that way. My voting action does not get dictated by who shares a culture w me. There is one site/article that many reference as explicitly saying "black people commit more crimes on asians" which then beneath has a call to action saying "vote for law and order candidates" like if thats your source (assuming youre working w contents outside the video) then ouch

[@kyledrums]

*laughs in Xi*

[@siriuslyspeaking9720]

Do low income Asian voters vote, in higher numbers than do any other low income people, of a particular group? Are the Asians protesting in these video, really poor? How much support is the 'Poor People's Campaign' getting from poor people?

[@thosethatcan]

1:53 👁️👉🥦✌️

[@thosethatcan]

5:56

[@stephanierampley5979]

At 11:40. Why would she choose to show a Bernie quote on screen that specifically states “white” working class voters… and then just replace the demographic by saying “Asian” working class voters…That’s misleading, no? Is Jacobin going to correct this? 🤔

[@happy-go-commie]

love Jen's face on the thumbnail haha

[@deciembre2012]

The Bernie Sanders article literally said he was deeply ashamed that Democrats are losing WHITE working class voters and Jen Pan used THAT article to show Democrats falling behind with Asian voters?? Also, until Obama, AAPI voters disproportionately voted for the GOP. The fact that Dems still have them is progress. But Dems do need to hold the Asian vote.

[@bluepurplepink]

I'd rather them move towards social democracy than right-wing or the tankie route. Even better if they move towards progressive socialism. But it seems like there is a lack of strong progressive socialists in major east Asian and even South Asian media (including social media). As the left, we need to build on that by having those conversations.

[@morenitomoreno1282]

Always find it weird when leftists bitch about "tankies" in America as if they had an ounce of power or any prospect of getting any anytime soon. Spending any time condemning them in the US is reactionary shit. You're comment insinuates there's an equivalence between the right and "tankies" in the US and Asian Americans can easily go one way or another which is ridiculous. One of the 2 major parties is a far right party and the "tankie" movement is almost non existent. There's no chance of Asians going that route in mass. Going right wing is the only way Asian Americans voters can go if they're dissatisfied with the center left and the center.

[@johoward2251]

Another interesting shot at race, Asian people and their grievances seem to be of great interest to the speaker while Black “woke” issues should be attacked or ignored by the speaker and jacobin

[@Based_Proletariat]

Interesting observation, I've noticed that too.

[@johoward2251]

@@Based_Proletariat Anti Asian bigotry should be stop but so should all bigotry

[@wuhaninstituteofvirology]

east asians are traditionally hard working\business & mercantile oriented, & fiscally conservative...the communist system imposed on chinese citizens for the past 7 decades, especially mao`s disastrous communal farming plan that led to the worst famine in human history, is actually a foreign import from the soviet union, quite unnatural & goes against their commercial instincts (which is why deng xiaoping had to reform it & open up the country to international trade\investment & create SEZ`s to grow the economy)

[@spellman007]

I am literally shocked at how long it took some of you to realize "POC" is a nonsense term... just a truly stunning lack of awareness.

[@MissHeathen]

Looking at you @Andy Ngo

[@sirellyn]

Yeah, he's a real hero.

[@danwarb1]

Ignorance and propaganda.

[@BullFrogFace]

Simple. Most Asian Americans have a higher average income so they vote for conservatives/republicans because less taxes🤷🏻‍♂️

[@shreksnow1918]

That would be a truly stupid thing to do. The Republicans think that Asians created COVID to destroy them. Because of that they’re attacking random Asians in the streets because they can’t tell the difference between ethnicities. Christianity is a truly toxic religionz

[@beyourself2444]

Most Asian Americans??? You mean the Chinese and Korean Americans?

[@BullFrogFace]

@@beyourself2444 As far as I can tell from stats it's the majority of Asian immigrants. Obviously Chinese and South Koreans are far more likely to be rich or from rich families that send them money

[@ablindwatchmakerUT]

In other words, Asian Americans as a group raise their kids properly while other groups don’t have a clue, leading to these massive disparities.

[@cactusman07pim]

Meanwhile Tulsi Gabbard, Elisabeth Warren and Andrew Yang are labaled right wing. People think, hey I am too.

[@meljini]

model minority myth

[@ablindwatchmakerUT]

@@meljini There’s nothing mythical about it lol. The fake-left wokesters just can’t stand having living proof that their white supremacy narrative is utter nonsense.

[@meljini]

@@ablindwatchmakerUT Who is "real-left"? Is that narrative nonsense AND asians exist as a model minority? what do you mean?

[@ablindwatchmakerUT]

@@meljini I don’t understand what you are asking.

[@chrisray9653]

Don't forget the Orthodox Jews.

[@shreksnow1918]

That would be the dumbest decision ever. They’d be voting for the party that literally wants them to die in the Rapture, and be tortured forever in hell.

[@jtec99]

Moving right because they're stereotypically the smartest people in the room.

[@tassosplatis2143]

Easy answer: they want their kids to learn math and (real) science. Not CRT and cultural marxism

[@ih8google]

*scary buzzwords* 😱

[@tassosplatis2143]

@@ih8google you know it's true

[@bigbadborders]

The politics of race and gender is pretty toxic. You said "Asian" in your monolog 50 times, you should start using universal language, the politics of us all is the only way to win nationally.

[@tianyiliu856]

We admit that the language of particularity has the danger of nationalistic tendencies. Yet, on the other hand, the so-called universalist language, historically, has done damage to some groups in the sense of defending the de facto privileged groups (it is still probably so today); the conservatives in the first half of the 20th c. had constantly attacked the so-called black "nationalist" for not being universalist, while people like Marcus Garvey have repetitively claimed that any white people who would support their project of building the independent African states are welcomed. I also admit that today identity politics has gone into a dangerous and futile situation. I would argue that the only universalist language is a language of universalizing the proletariat/capitalist tension. And this tension has various forms in different cultures. Different cultural legacies, whether good or bad, are preserved in different languages that are inevitably particular. And if those cultures have problem, we have to address it (in this sense the culture of political correctness is just covering up those problems instead of exposing and eventually solving them). This is 21th c.; there is no myth in the culture of the Other, if we seriously want to know about it. For example, we cannot deny that there is a strong tendency in the East Asian Confucian culture (of which I am a member, I don't deny the fact of being a member of it, but I am against this tendency) of capitalist pragmatism in the sense that the Confucian culture is a culture without any transcendental (formal or concrete) pursuit (of God, of eschatology, etc.) so that the entire energy of the society is devoted into money making in the real world in the current life. If Max Weber were to live in the 21st c., he would definitely write a book titled "Confucian ethics and the spirit of capitalism" (Weber himself, in his book on Chinese religions, realized it to a large extent). In addition, the Chinese diaspora is usually anti-communist for obvious reason; it's sad that today the Chinese culture is divided into the far-right nationalism/imperial expansionism, led and promoted by the CCP in mainland China (CCP has shifted to the far right in the recent years; it is in no sense "communist" any more; leftist pro-worker protests have been ruthlessly crushed these years by the CCP, tougher than the pro-parliamentary democratic protests; I know some leftist personal friends that have been arrested by the police in China) and a conservative "anti-communist" laissez-faire centre-right, which is the dominant tone in the oversea Chinese media. There is virtually no leftist media in the Chinese language. This is the fact that we really have to reflect on.

[@gamerknown]

@@tianyiliu856 "while people like Marcus Garvey have repetitively claimed that any white people who would support their project of building the independent African states are welcomed" Yup, Garvey was willing to collaborate with white capitalists who supported black nationalism but not black communists who opposed it such as Cyril Briggs - a nobly intersectional rejection of either class or race reductionism.

[@tianyiliu856]

@@gamerknown Well, yes, Garvey was an anti-communist, but there are plenty of other black communists (there are numerous; Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance in general; Huey P Newton and the Black Panthers in general) who were pejoratively called black nationalists. What I mean is simply that we should always be aware that there is a possibility that even the most progressive universalist voice could be used in a way which de facto privileges some groups; the USSR was criticized even by some black leftists like Garvey's enemy WEB DuBois for sometimes being imperialist, i.e. promoting some "USSR first" policies. I would just add that in some cases, national independence is the absolute priority of all anti-capitalist struggle, so that even some anti-communists should be our allies (although we must be very careful); this was the case in Lumumba's Belgian Congo in the 60s (and in numerous other cases in Africa) and in the Japanese occupied area of China in the 30s.

[@tianyiliu856]

@@gamerknown Btw I am absolutely against those liberal critiques of class reductionism. I even doubt if we can put class/race/gender in parallel terms. On the one hand, those politically correct liberal professors keep talking about this trinity but absolutely have no serious attention to the capitalist modes of (re-)production, as if talking about modes of (re-)production is the duty or fashion of some stupid old leftists, while they believe they themselves are fancy creators of new theory. On the other hand, race and gender are much more, if not entirely, determined by biological/cultural historical facts, rather than by the economical system; class is a social category which one always has the freedom to jump out of (let's not deny that a capitalist or a upper-middle class person can sincerely be a communist (I am not referring to some stupid environmentalist Bill Gates, but people like the leftist economist Paul Sweezy, being the son of a high-rank manager of a big bank) and poor people can be rich by some ruthless commercial manipulation (no matter how small is the possibility), which is the reason why there was the Wall Street bets story recently); class has much more fluidity and I would say that the only moment of telling who is a class enemy is during a revolution.

[@gamerknown]

@@tianyiliu856 "I would just add that in some cases, national independence is the absolute priority of all anti-capitalist struggle": What determines this? Is Sukarno's Indonesia an example of successful anti-imperialist alliances with the native bourgeoisie? Should workers subordinate themselves to the nationalist cause like they did there?

[@thosethatcan]

How much of this is related to cost of energy? Fossil sludge cancer fumes death s..? Ask India, .. Anyhew. EV up..Nissan leaf yt./ Dala's ev repair*👁️✌️💚⚖️🌱🌎🫂🚙🔌⚡🎛️👍🛹💪☕🎨🪖👁️

[@brudamo9203]

Same reason they use white first names.