Minority Representation Matters: Possibilities of Advancing Social Justice and Expanding Political Representation by Asian Pacific Americans

• In Event: Representation or Pandering? Elected Officials, Candidates, and Parties

Abstract

In the world of U.S. minority politics, Asian Americans have been considered the privileged people whose socioeconomic achievements have earned them the label of the “model minority.” Among U.S. elected officials of color, Asian American men and women have been found to obtain the highest levels of education and family income as a whole, even if they also register the highest rates of the foreign-born (Hardy-Fanta et al. 2016). Regardless of their personal accomplishments, and as members of a nonwhite population whose group history and journey to equal citizenship have been punctuated by experiences of structural racism, sexism, nativism, and labor exploitation, elected officials of Asian descent are also expected to confront legacies of racial exclusion and settler colonialism in the present day. How do they navigate the triangulated space between the “model minority” and the “perpetual foreigner” as community leaders and representatives in mainstream electoral politics? Specifically, how have Asian American elected officials been able to address the need for justice beyond their own jurisdictional and ethnoracial identity boundaries? To what extent and in what ways have they been able to form issue coalitions with representatives across gender, ethnicity, and racial backgrounds? To help answer these questions, we engage both a proprietary and comprehensive national database of APA elected officials serving at federal, state, and local offices in 2020 as well as qualitative data composed of in-person interviews, journalistic reports, biographies, oral history interviews, and other narratives and accounts of an extensive list of mostly progressive-minded APA elected officials whose public service ranges from the mid-1950s to the present-day. We argue that a nonwhite elected official’s personal or family-based adversity in the process of political socialization can help equip one with insider knowledge and a sense of responsibility and determination to advocate for the less fortunate or the structurally disadvantaged--both within and outside of the ethnic community and jurisdiction. We also maintain that an elected official’s experience with or knowledge of group-based discrimination may lead to recognition, if not identification, with ties that link up the fate of one’s own group to that of other minority communities. Together, we believe both trajectories can facilitate the formation of intersectional coalitions for substantive representation and advocating of social justice for all.

Authors

• Nicole Filler, University of Massachusetts, Boston

• Pei-te Lien, University of California Santa Barbara