Archive for November, 2009
As far as sensationalist headlines are concerned, this one ranks pretty high. But it’s not altogether an inappropriate one to use in describing this story, although I do find it a little ironic that I chose to write about this after Thanksgiving holidays — a time specifically set aside for gastronomic excess.
This morning, CNN’s website featured a story on Lincoln University, a historically black college that has instituted a different take on the physical fitness requirements many schools implement for their undergraduates. Like many private and public institutions, Lincoln requires their undergraduates to meet a certain physical fitness requirement in order to graduate. However, unlike other schools, Lincoln is basing their distinction between “fit” and “unfit” students on body mass index (BMI), and are requiring students who have a BMI greater than 30 to take a special physical fitness class, called “Fitness for Life” that meets three times a week and includes aerobic exercises like water aerobics and Tae Bo.
For those of you who are unaware, BMI is an index used by health professionals to determine one’s general health. It is calculated by entering one’s weight and one’s height into a formula that generates a score can then be compared against what a healthy person’s “expected” score should be. Heavier people would, of course, have a higher BMI than lighter people of the same height. The BMI score can then be categorized against indicators of health:
BMI Categories:
- Underweight = <18.5
- Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
- Overweight = 25-29.9
- Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater
As a researcher in the biomedical sciences, I can tell you that BMI remains a basic tool in the toolbox of physical trainers and body composition phyisiologists, primarily because BMI is so simple to use. Compared to more accurate measures of determining a person’s body composition (i.e. how much of their body is muscle, fat, etc.), BMI requires only a tape measure and a scale, making it one of the easiest numbers to calculate in the field. In fact, BMI is so straightforward to calculate that free BMI calculators abound on the Internet – here’s one that I regularly use to monitor my own BMI.
But, here’s the dirty truth about BMI that health professionals are loath to reveal: it just isn’t a very good measure for determining a person’s health.
It turns out that the label “healthy” has nothing to do with appearance and weight; rather, it has everything to do with cardiovascular health. Folks with a lot of fat tend to carry it in their midsections (abdominal if it’s under their skin around their bellies, visceral if it’s built up around their internal organs), and this fat is directly linked with increased health risks, such as hypertension, atherosclerosis and heart disease. That’s because more fat in your belly area means that you have more fat built around your internal organs, making them work less efficiently. In addition, more fat around your belly indicates you’ve got more fat throughout your body, including fat built up on the inside of your blood vessels reducing their diameters (like a drain slowly clogging with hair), making it more difficult for your heart to pump blood through them.
And really, therein lies the rub: it’s not that the fat is directly making a person unhealthy. In fact, both men and women need a fair amount of fat in their bodies to maintain health — indeed, for women, more than 20% of their bodies need to should be made up of fat to avoid problems with menstruation. Instead, what makes an overweight person unhealthy is the amount of work their heart has to do to keep pumping blood through their bodies, particularly as vessels get blocked with fat deposits. Eventually, their heart becomes too weak to generate the extra force to keep blood pumping away, and it fails.
In other words, folks with high BMIs need to reduce their body fat and strengthen their hearts, in order to stave off the progressive risks of cardiovascular disease. But notice, I didn’tsay that folks with high BMIs need to lose X number of pounds or hit a target weight (or BMI). A person’s weight is a convenient measure of fat, but it relies on an assumption that people have a generally constant (or predictable) amount of weight that is due to muscle or bone — which is untrue — such that any increases in BMI are due to excessive weight from excessive fat.
As all of us know intuitively, some people have large (heavier) bones, and some people have small (lighter) bones. Some people have lots of muscle, and some have very little muscle. BMI assumes a generic percentage of each person’s weight is due to bones and muscles, but it’s quite easy to fool BMI by having non-average bone structure or muscle. Even moderate athletes who do strength training will have more than the typical person’s muscle. Since muscle weighs more than fat, athletes tend to weigh more than non-athletes, and since BMI is blind to what kind of tissues make up a person’s weight, it will classify an athlete as having a higher BMI as a non-athlete of the same height. In fact, a superior athlete like Arnold Schwarzenagger, in his heyday, would have been considered obese (or even morbidly obese) according to the BMI scale. Moreover, a person’s appearance has as much to do with one’s genetics (and age) as anything else; even people with good cardiovascular performance may appear pear-shaped or even have some abdominal fat; the fat alone doesn’t make them unhealthy.
Which is why many of us in the scientific community use BMI with a grain of salt. BMI data are so easy to collect that patients can be sent home with a scale and can be taught to collect the necessary numbers on their own. But BMI is an imperfect measure of health; what we really should be looking at are measures like body fat percentage, which directly measures how much of a person’s body is composed of fat (versus muscle and bone), allowing us to accurately determine a person’s risk factors for disease. Or for that matter, we should measure performance on aerobic tests (such as running or swimming) to determine one’s health.
Unfortunately, our society’s close reliance on BMI has helped encouraged a weight-conscious culture that associates weight (and therefore appearance) with health, producing an unhealthy (pardon the pun) obsession with losing weight without actually promoting cardiovascular health. Weight loss pills fill the aisles of pharmacies, and gastric bypass surgery and liposuction is abused by dilettantes looking to squeeze themselves into the latest Vera Wang fashion. Even shows like “The Biggest Loser” celebrate shedding pounds, but spends comparatively little time teaching contestants about reducing heart rate, blood pressure, or cholesterol — the true culprits for a larger person’s poor health prognosis.
Which all leads me to the article that prompted this blog post. Lincoln University wants to enroll students with a BMI greater than 30 into fitness classes. These classes will probably promote education on healthier living, but are also an institutionalized fat camp, designed to put students through an aerobic workout designed to help them shed pounds. On the one hand, I believe it is important for students to receive an education on physical fitness in college (and even in high school), and a class that teaches students about exercise and nutrition will help those who need a “wake-up call” about their health and encourage them to for their own fitness. With the obesity epidemic the way it is in America, twenty-something students need to know the grim prognosis if they can’t walk a flight of stairs without being out of breath.
That being said, I think it is completely unjust for Lincoln University to target students with high BMI’s for this fitness class. Even though school administrators have taken steps to address the imperfect measure of the BMI (by taking waist circumference, which will be lower in athletes with high BMIs due to increased muscle mass), the current system of targeting students with high BMIs is just a grown-up version of the same schoolyard antics: let’s all point and laugh at the fat kid. As a society, we’re titillated by the mental image of fat people doing aerobic activity — how else do we explain the popularity of shows like “Celebrity Fit Club”? Mandating that “fat” students take fitness classes is just another way of telling overweight people that they are different, lazy, unworthy, ignorant or stupid, and altogether deserving of our finger-pointing. As a society, we blame the overweight person for being overweight, and in so doing we lose sight of the definition of “healthy”.
We assume that people of “normal” weights don’t need this kind of aerobic training, yet how many of your “normal weight” friends can run a 5K in under 30 minutes? How many eat the proper balance of protein, fat and carbohydrates each day? How many have a systolic blood pressure below 120 and a heart rate below 90? How many of your “normal weight” friends smoke, drink, and engage in other risky behaviours that could compromise their current and future health? How many of your “normal weight” friends lack sufficient upper body strength to perform 20 push-ups?
The bottom line is that all of us have something we can learn from a “Fitness for Life” class, and if Lincoln University wants to promote health in their student body, they should require all students to perform to a certain standard in a physical fitness test, regardless of BMI. If students can’t demonstrate sufficient fitness, then they should be enrolled in the “Fitness for Life” class, again, regardless of BMI. If, as the school states, this new mandated class is intended to promote physical activity in our nation’s youth, than that opportunity should be extended to all students based on their fitness (or lack thereof) – not based on an imperfect, sloppy measurement of health that even health professionals should eschew.
And why does this story hit so close to home? Well, those of you who have followed this blog for some time probably know that I have struggled with my weight for my entire life. Being Asian made it all the worse; all of my APIA female friends were stick figure thin, while I felt alien in my curvaceous skin. The message couldn’t have been plainer: growing up, I simply knew that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. As a child, I was encouraged by my parents to be academic; consequently, I grew up with virtually no emphasis on productive physical activity. I didn’t play a sport, and only through my high school’s physical fitness requirement did I learn how to do distance running. And although I was teased my whole life for being large (or endomorphic, or Reubenesque, or any of those other euphemisms used to try to soften the blow of being called ”fat”), I didn’t know how to make the lifestyle changes I needed. For the first 25 years of my life, I concentrated on trying to tip the needle of my bathroom scale and only ended up running myself in circles. I don’t even want to recount the dark thoughts I had at the bleakest points during my struggle with my weight.
This past January, I found myself at my heaviest and in the worst shape of my life. My turning point was when I needed to walk up a small incline near work to go to a local get-together. The incline, barely more than thirty feet in elevation, caused me to be out of breath. I was only 26 years old.
From January onward, I decided to make a change in my life, and one that would stick this time. Rather than to focus on pounds, I have educated myself (with the help of an incredible physical trainer friend of mine) on cardiovascular fitness and appropriate nutrition, and I have prioritized physical activity in my life. I learned about heart rate and blood pressure, about the benefits of different kinds of aerobic training, and even started to lift free weights to improve my muscle mass. And yes, now that I have been on a schedule that involves nearly daily cardiovascular activity and strength training, I have lost more than 40 pounds. But, more importantly, I have raised my systolic blood pressure (I was hypotensive and prone to dizzy spells indicating a weakened heart), reduced my resting heart rate by nearly 30 beats per minute (the lower the better), and corrected an anemia that prevented me from donating blood (I am once again a regular blood donor).
And as for that little hill that caused me to start on my physical fitness journey? Let’s just say that last month, I climbed the tallest mountain in Southern Arizona.
That’s not to say that I’m done — far, from it. The biggest change in my life is that I now look forward to the physical activity that I have incorporated into my daily schedule. I am motivated by fitness goals, and I celebrate my fitness milestones however private they may be. For the first time in my life, I am within “normal” (or athletic) ranges for weight, body fat percentage, hip-to-waist ratio, and heart rate, and I finally feel in control of my own health.
Yet, I am still a curvy girl, and I probably always will be. But I bet you this: I could probably run rings around several of the extra-skinny girls who go to my gym, many of whom are so fixated on the “thin is in” mentality that they can’t maintain a two-minute sprint on the treadmill and refuse to perform any strength training with anything heavier than a 2lb-weight. Those girls might be thin, but they haven’t spent much time improving their health.
Which leads me to the biggest lesson I learned this year as I got into shape: no amount of name-calling, finger-pointing, or social mockery will help an obese person get into shape. In fact, the last thing an overweight person needs is ostracization; you simply cannot shame a person into getting fit. Frequently, overweight people are saddened, embarassed, or frustrated by the health risks associated with their obesity. They aren’t overweight because they don’t care about their health or their appearance — they are overweight because they don’t know what they can (or should) do to fix it. Meanwhile, those who indulge in name-calling and giddy pleasure over insulting the “fat” people amongst us do so out of insecurity — because every person suffering from low-self-esteem feels better if they can make another person feel even lower.
If we’re going to overcome the obesity epidemic in America, we need to divorce health concerns from superficial appearance, and focus on educating America — all of America — on what they can do to get (and stay) healthy. We should make everyone want to get in better shape by supporting, not berating, those who aren’t. But, we must also remember that overweight people must choose to make a change in their lives. That choice cannot be made for them, neither by Lincoln University administrators nor by overgrown schoolyard bullies.
But I do guarantee this — if you’re contemplating making that change, take it from me: it was the best choice I ever made for myself.
Posted in All About Jenn | 14 Comments »
I kind of wish I could go to this: The first national Asian American civil rights conference to be in L.A.
The 2009 Advancing Justice Conference: Asian American and Pacific Islanders Building New Foundations for Civil Rights is an inaugural national civil rights and social justice conference expected to draw community and government leaders and legal professionals from across the country.
The conference will be held in Los Angeles. It will be the largest gathering of advocates and community leaders from the AAPI community to share, network, mentor, and address the major policy issues facing our nation today.
The Advancing Justice Conference is a joint project by the Asian American Institute (Chicago), Asian American Justice Center (Washington, D.C.), Asian Law Caucus (San Francisco), and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California (Los Angeles).
The conference will cover a variety of issues including immigration reform and enforcement, immigrant integration, human rights, civil rights and national security, health care, Census 2010, redistricting, low-wage workers’ rights, hate crimes, and LGBT rights.
Act Now! If you’re in L.A., this might be a great event for you to attend.
Posted in Act Now!, Asian Americans | No Comments »
I don’t know if the #1 is an implication that there are more lazy link-blogs to come, but here are a couple of good reads I found today:
California may be a beacon of diversity, with Asians, Latinos and African Americans comprising the majority. But when it comes to its nonprofit sector, that racial and ethnic diversity is not reflected, and Latinos are especially underrepresented, according to a recent study.
Although Latinos are more than one third of California residents, they represent just 6 percent of directors and 28 percent of staff jobs at nonprofit groups. Among members of boards of directors, Latinos are just 9 percent.
Asian Americans are also underrepresented in leadership positions, though less dramatically. They are 12 percent of Californians, but just 7 percent of executive directors of nonprofits.
Rola admitted that the amount of research done in the area of Asian LGBT studies is still small, calling the field “relatively new territory.”
But before examining the experiences of Asian members of the LGBT community, Rola stressed that her use of the term “Asian” does not imply a uniformity of experience for “a host of people from very different, disparate groups.” Every culture is different, as is every family, although Rola suggested that a shared “history of war” helps to tie them together.
Rola described how many Asian Americans struggle to form a cultural identity in a society that is not predominantly Asian, and explained that students of color tend to go through six stages of understanding their culture: conformity, dissonance, immersion, emersion, internalization and integrative awareness. These steps outline a tumultuous and emotional process where the student first tries to fit in with the dominant culture before changing his or her worldview and consequentially taking steps to define himself or herself as Asian American.
Posted in Asian Americans, Link-Blogging, Politics of Race | No Comments »
I saw this short post on Time’s Detroit Blog today: Still Getting It Wrong on Affirmative Action. In it, blogger Darrell Dawsey comments about the recent news that civil rights groups in Michigan have brought an appeals case challenging the constitutionality of a rcent ballot measure banning the practice of affirmative action in Michigan state schools.
Dawsey doesn’t get into the constitutionality of affirmative action in his post; rather, he complains about the persistent perception of affirmative action as merely a “race thing”. Dawsey writes:
Yes, I think affirmative action is a palatable, if mild, remedy to the ongoing discrimination that women and people of color face in Michigan and around the country. But this take isn’t about cheering the court’s decision to hear the challenge to race preferences or even affirmative action itself, for that matter. Rather, it’s about the implications of the persistent, narrow belief that affirmative action is just a set of “racial preferences” — when the truth is that the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white women.
No, I’m not saying that blacks, Latinos, Arab-Americans and Asian-Americans haven’t also benefited. (The University of Michigan, for instance, has 11 percent fewer minorities than in 2006, in part because affirmative action was outlawed.) But it’s the idea that these minorities, not white women, are disproportionately helped by affirmative action that inflames much of the opposition that we saw here three years ago.
I agree with Dawsey: affirmative action suffers a public relations problem. Affirmative action is frequently discussed in terms of race — both by proponents and opponents of the practice. Yet, the reality of affirmative action is far more nuanced: affirmative action not only is intended to benefit members of all underrepresented ethnic groups (Native Americans, and underrepresented Asians to name a few), but it also benefits applicants who come from other underrepresented backgrounds including class, gender, and faith.
The problem is the word “minority”, which in our society has become a codeword for “Black”. This is not only unfair, it is inaccurate: critics of “minority”-targeted initiatives present narrow-minded arguments that fail to accurately represent the full spectrum of people encompassed by the word “minority”. It paints reasonable and useful policies with a tinge of racial favoritism. And above all, it reinforces the notion of Blacks and Latinos as the bottom rung of our social hierarchy, rather than one of many underprivileged yet deserving minority groups.
That being said, I’m not sure that Dawsey gets it right with the point of his post. Dawsey argues that opponents of affirmative action, in colouring (pardon the pun) the debate as a “race thing”, are motivated by racial hatred in their opposition.
Many who voted against affirmative action had it in their heads that black people and other minorities were somehow getting something they didn’t “deserve” or were receiving “something for nothing.” Sure, some will howl that I’m wrong — that affirmative action opponents were driven solely by noble desires for “fairness” and “equality” — but I’m not. I’ve lived in Detroit much of my life. And I know well that even though many of us here consider it uncomfortable or impolite to discuss race when talking about why metro Detroit is what it is — and that includes its standing as one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in the U.S. – intense racial hatred remains alive and well.
While racism is clearly alive and well in today’s America, I’m not sure what use there is in characterizing the majority of affirmative action’s detractors as seething racists. Clearly, there is a perception that underrepresented minorities are being accepted despite the appearance that they are ”less qualified”, but I simply don’t believe that all or even most of affirmative action’s critics are primarily fueled by this misconception.
Affirmative action is a tough issue: neither side has a clear, moral (let alone legal) stance to advocate. Even proponents of affirmative action admit it is an imperfect (dare I say “band-aid”?) solution to a tough societal problem. To over-simplify the other side as racists does nothing to improve the quality of the debate on affirmative action, and turns the whole thing into finger-pointing and name-calling.
Related posts:
Posted in Affirmative Action, Racism | No Comments »
The last couple of weeks have felt like a marathon. I’ve been preparing for a rather critical conference in D.C. for the last several days, and last Tuesday, I attended a conference that had attendees scheduled from the crack of dawn through to 10pm at night.
Nonetheless, the conference went well and I got some great feedback on my research. Which means that now that I’ve had a chance to recuperate and take a breather, I’m ready to blog again. Thanks for sticking around!
Posted in All About Jenn | No Comments »
In a news story only Fox News could publish, with Tuesday’s election results comes the headline: “Whites Become Minority on NYC City Council“.
Cue racial hysteria.
Interestingly, Whites have been the racial minority in NYC for the last several years.
Posted in Politics of Race | No Comments »
Speaking of people of colour who don’t get the appropriate kudos they deserve for a job well done, at least some folks are breaking the race barrier and getting the spotlight they deserve.
I don’t follow sports, but thankfully my Google! Alerts do. Seems that Yankees player Hideki Matsui, who is playing his last season with the team this year, helped score six runs to lead the Yankees’s first World Series victory since 2000. No small feat, even for a talented player like Matsui; his performance earned him the first World Series MVP honour to be awarded to an Asian or Asian American player. Congrats, Hideki!
Also, a post office in San Francisco’s Chinatown may be renamed for Lim Poon Lee, who was postmaster for the area since 1966. During his tenure, Lee established the post office that will likely bear his name, and worked tirelessly to increase the representation of Chinese Americans in the postal service. This article has a full biography of Lee, who passed away in 2002, but sufficed to say, being postmaster was only part of Lee’s great accomplishments during his life.
Lee enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1943, and after training as a counterintelligence specialist, he served in the Philippines and then Japan. Lee used to recount, Chan said, his company’s dispatch to Hokkaido, where they found that Chinese war prisoners in Japanese labor camps had launched a revolt against the Japanese.
The Army asked Lee to stop the riots because he was the only soldier who spoke Japanese and Chinese. His solution, as a representative of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, was to swear in the Chinese troops as members of the U.S. Army with their same ranks.
After World War II, Lee entered college and received his law degree in 1954 from Lincoln University. He continued his community advocacy while working in court systems in San Francisco, and in 1959, he helped found the Chinese American Democratic Club.
“He was ahead of his time and was very influential,” said former state Sen. John Burton. “He was one of those that encouraged the Chinese community to stand up for their rights and not be intimidated by the government.”
Chan said naming the Chinatown post office after Lee “will remind people of my children’s generation that there were Chinese Americans who, when called upon, made a difference.”
Posted in Asian Americans | No Comments »
No, that’s not a Jeopardy question.
According to CNBC sports reporter, Darren Rovell, there’s a distinction between “American” and “technically American”. Why? Because Rovell believes that naturalized immigrants aren’t really American.
Apparently, Meb Keflezighi, a marathon runner who immigrated and naturalized more than a decade ago, won the NYC marathon recently, prompting a newspaper headline to read “American Wins Men’s NYC Marathon For First Time Since ‘82″. Rovell took exception to that headline because Keflezighi, who is an American citizen, simply isn’t American enough. He writes:
Keflezighi’s country of origin is Eritrea, a small country in Africa. He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country.
Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.
No. No, he’s not.
Keflezighi isn’t “technically” American. He’s American. There are two ways to be American: 1) get lucky and be born on the right soil, or 2) state your allegiance and affiliation to America. Often, naturalized Americans have done more to establish their “American-ness” than those who are American by accident of birth. Which isn’t to say that naturalized Americans are more American than domestically-born Americans; being American isn’t a question of degrees. Instead, it’s simple math: one is or one isn’t American.
Rovell’s opinion piece reeks of the kind of xenophobia that remains all-too-common in parts of America, including here in Arizona where immigration is a local as well as a federal issue. The kind of nationalist zeal that would encourage distinction between “real Americans” and naturalized Americans is the same misguided bigotry that would defend racial profiling of illegal immigrants as “crime suppression”; they are both rooted in the pretense that “real Americans” are White Americans, and everyone else must be ”ringers” (to borrow Rovell’s analogy). How often have brown-skinned Americans faced harassment here in Arizona at road-side stops by Border Patrol, while Whites drive casually through?
As the child of first-generation immigrants, I find it revolting that naturalized citizens still face suspicion and skepticism. Chinese immigrants are still stereotyped as perpetual foreigners despite having worked hard to naturalize, while no one questions the fealty of domestic-born American citizens. I can’t help but remember that less than 150 years ago, Asian immigrants of all ethnicities were denied the right to naturalize as Americans based exclusively on our race; are we really so far from that mentality even now? Americans are still perceived to be White, while people of colour have their nationality questioned or outright denied. Who can forget the infamous headline when Tara Lipinski beat fellow American Michelle Kwan to win an Olympic figure-skating gold? The MSNBC headline read: “American beats out Kwan” — implying that Kwan was not American, or at least not as American as Lipinski.
Just 24 hours after posting his anti-immigrant ranting, Rovell posted an apology. Sort of. He admitted he hadn’t fact-checked his piece, and that Keflezighi had been an American throughout his formative running experience.
But, he still insisted that we should only celebrate an American winning the NYC marathon when that American had been “brought up in the American system”.
All I was saying was that we should celebrate an American marathon champion who has completely been brought up through the American system.
This is where, I must admit, my critics made their best point. It turns out, Keflezighi moved to the United States in time to develop at every level in America. So Meb is in fact an American trained athlete and an American citizen and he should be celebrated as the American winner of the NYC Marathon. That makes a difference and makes him different from the “ringer” I accused him of being. Meb didn’t deserve that comparison and I apologize for that.
Sounds like it’s all “technically” a re-packaging of the same ‘ol xenophobia to me.
Posted in Racism | 3 Comments »
Although predictable to all but the most politically obtuse, John Liu made history yesterday when he overwhelmingly won the position of NYC comptroller. In doing so, Liu became the first Asian American to win a city-wide position in NYC. While this is a remarkable victory for Liu, it remains a sobering landmark moment, considering that the Asian American population in NYC has been around since the early nineteenth century.
Yet, I congratulate Liu in his victory: John Liu has been amongst the most vocal advocates, nationally, for the Asian American community, and he has worked tirelessly for his constituents in NYC as city councilman. However, his victory, and the election results in other races, also teaches us that Asian American candidates, like many other minority politicians, cannot win solely by relying on their ethnicity to carry them to victory.
Liu, as Calvin Prashad of APA for Progress points out, reached out to African-American and Latino community leaders as a city councilman and as a candidate for NYC comptroller. He became a popular political representative because he campaigned and worked across racial bounds, while simultaneously ensuring that each community felt they had an advocate in him. Liu was able to garner support from Asian American voters, locally and nationally, by using his clout as an elected representative to raise awareness regarding APIA community issues and concerns, but he did not marginalize himself as merely an Asian American candidate.
Similarly, Repubican Peter Koo overcame incumbent Democrat Yen Chou to win Liu’s old seat as city councilman in NYC’s 20th district. Prashad notes that incumbent Chou relied upon Chinese-American support in a district that includes Flushing, NY which has a large Asian population. Koo, however, counted Jewish and Korean business owners amongst his supporters, and was able to build a multi-racial and multi-ethnic voting base. Both Koo, and Margaret Chin who won a city council seat in NYC’s 1st district which encompasses Manhattan’s immense Chinatown, are prominent community leaders well-known, and well-respected, by their voting constituents.
In Virginia, Korean-American Democrat Mark Keam emerged victorious against Republican Jim Hyland to represent VA’s 35th District in the State House of Delegates. Although Keam’s district contains only approximately 10% Asian Americans, Keam won by 2 percentage points over his opponent, Keam was able to build a campaign that transcended racial lines in order to become the first Asian American elected to the Virginia State House.
Other Asian American candidates didn’t fare as well. Kevin Kim lost NYC’s 19th District to Republican Dan Halloran in part by attacking Halloran’s religious beliefs. And Sam Yoon’s campaign to be the first Asian American mayor in Boston fell flat yesterday, I believe in part because Yoon relied on schticky racial stunts to distinguish himself from the pack. At one campaign event, Yoon (who is Korean American) passed out fortune cookies to event attendees in a clear attempt to paint himself as the “ethnic” candidate.
Prashad of APA for Progress does a great job of enumerating the lessons learned from yesterday’s election results. In an act of blatant plagiarism, here’s my list for future Asian American candidates hoping to be elected to local office, some of which I draw from my own experiences (and mistakes) helping to run a local state representative race:
- Be a community leader. Nothing beats widespread recognition as a community leader. If a diverse group of local names respect you, half your work is done — but that means that the time to get involved is now.
- Tap the team. There are some really talented political activists within the Asian American community, and a widespread network of politicos who blog across the nation on APA political issues. These are also folks who are training the next generation of young campaign managers and lobbyists. Get these folks on your side – they can help with advice, fundraising, and just raising your profile.
- Transcend the “ethnic” divide. It doesn’t matter what the demographics of your district are, do not rely on an minority face and an ethnic name to carry you to victory. Voters (particularly minority voters) prefer candidates who prove themselves to be well-rounded, and who can advocate on behalf of a number of communities. Reach out to other community leaders and build a multi-racial coalition. If you don’t, you’ll look like you’re trying too hard to pander, and you run the risk of rendering yourself “out-of-touch” or even irrelevant.
- Don’t patronize the Asian American voter. Asian American voters are evenly spread between Democrats and Republicans, and we won’t be swayed merely by an Asian face. Shoot, Bob McDonnell, the new governor-elect of Virginia, courted the Asian American vote in the last several months, helping launch his campaign to victory over Democrat Creigh Deeds. Asian Americans are conscentious and educated voters – treat us like we are.
- Pick a few resonating issues, and change the conversation. Don’t try to campaign on every issue under the sun (although you’d better be capable of doing so). Change the conversation to focus on a few key issues you are good at, and hammer those home with voters. Successful candidates are ones that are able to communicate their priorities to voters, and those priorities resonate.
- Be money conscious. Don’t waste your campaign funds. If you know a guy who knows a guy who can do it just as well as a consultant for cheaper, pick your friend of a friend. Keep your materials professional looking, but the more money you save by doing things in-house, the more you have to spend reaching out to voters.
- Go high tech. Get a good, professional website, and make sure you use direct mailers and phone-banking to maximize your contact. Don’t shy away from radio, television, or even social networking like Facebook to spread the word about your race.
- Don’t go negative. Nobody likes a negative campaigner, and nobody likes a negative race. It’s easy to get bogged down in bad feelings against your opponent, but you must make sure your campaign retains the moral high ground. Bottom line, just don’t do it.
Posted in Act Now!, Asian Americans, Elections, Politics, Politics of Race | 1 Comment »
(Picture taken at Hotel Congress on November 4th, 2008 moments after Obama delivered his acceptance speech)
365 days ago, today, I was glued to my computer, wracked with anticipation over the 2008 general presidential election. Living in McCain country, I was largely insulated from the Obama-mania that swept the rest of the nation. I had worked for the Obama campaign; indeed, I was one of the founding members of Tucson Obama for America, before it became incorporated into the national campaign.
But, our supporters were still being harassed by local Republicans. McCain bumper stickers were abundant while Obama signs seemed to disappear from street corners almost as soon as they were erected. Obama was polling well, but I still had my doubts. Had the youth GOTV movement done enough? Were American voters ready to elect a president of colour? Would McCain pull the biggest upset in American political history, proving without a shadow of a doubt that there remains a glass ceiling for racial minorities seeking higher office?
But, as evening approached, it became clear: not only had Obama won, but he had won overwhelmingly. The energy and excitement produced a euphoric high in me: I rushed to Tucson’s Hotel Congress, where young and old Democrats were milling in the streets, celebrating the moments before the election was officially called for Obama. Four or five huge televisions had been set up, each showing the live election feed on different channels. Beer flowed into every glass, and the music blared until the wee hours of the morning.
I remember that I jumped out of the car before it had even been put into park, and ran towards the party entrance. Giddy with excitement, I found my friends and nearly tackled them to the ground. I couldn’t stop screaming — ”OBAMA! OBAMA! OBAMA!” – to everyone I met. I called up a friend of mine (whom I had coerced to vote in his home state of New Jersey) on the cell and greeted him with a chorus of “OBAMA! OBAMA! OBAMA!” in lieu of “hello”. I grinned from ear-to-ear all night, despite the outcome of several local elections (banning same-sex marriage, and the loss of a few contested seats to Republicans).
The adrenaline, the excitement, the optimism for the future I experienced was a feeling shared by a majority of the country that night. For young people like myself, Barack Obama represented overwhelming change for the White House. Obama not only promised to enact tangible change in foreign and domestic policy, he promised to change the tone and tenor of the debate. Gone would be the days of Bush era saber-rattling.
But beyond the campaign promises – which were more numerous than one could count — Obama was a symbol. He was proof that young people and racial minorities could join together to make a difference against the established status quo. He was evidence that all the sweat, the sleepless nights, and the donated money had made an impact on our collective futures. He demonstrated the importance — the necessity, even — of getting folks to participate in the political process. There was no question this time: Obama was elected with a sweeping mandate, and finally there was light at the end of a dark, dark tunnel that had taken us eight years to traverse.
For Asian Americans, the 2008 presidential election was a watershed moment in our political history. Barack Obama was one of the few candidates on either side of the aisle to make real commitments and outreach efforts to the Asian American community. With a childhood wherein he was surrounded by Asian/Asian American faces, Barack Obama was as much our community’s candidate as any. Consequently, Asian Americans participated and voted in numbers far over-shadowing previous elections, and for one of the first times in recent memory, we were discussed as a viable voting community in national news. An APIA political machine first established during the 2004 Dean campaign re-mobilized for Obama, and produced an amazing relationship between the Obama campaign and the APIA community. Unlike in other communities, Obama’s campaign produced clear, in-depth plans about how the Obama administration planned to improve the livelihood and well-being of Asian Americans, both as first-generation immigrants and as a growing domestic constituency.
In return, countless Asian American celebrities, including Kal Penn, John Cho, and Kelly Hu, took time from their schedules to traverse the country as advocates for an Obama presidency. They spoke not just to other Asian Americans, but to voters at-large, making the case for Barack Obama. On the Internet, those of us lacking the notoriety of a Hollywood celebrity worked tirelessly to blog and organize local events for the Obama campaign. I remember, a few weeks before the election, standing back and marveling at just how powerful the APIA political community has demonstrated itself to be.
Since that night, the Obama bubble has taken a beating. The president’s approval rating has suffered a slow decline since his inauguration, and some setbacks and gaffes have marred the optimism that swept the nation on the eve of November 4th, 2008. But I, for one, remain optimistic. I refuse to give in to those who would turn the word “hope” into a dirty, taboo four-letter-word.
Contrary to the arguments of Obama’s detractors, supporters of the president aren’t idolators. We know we elected a man, not a messiah, to the presidency. I, for one, am patient with the president – he has made mistakes but I think even just changing the attitude of the White House is an amazing achievement. Consider: in Obama’s first year, the recession has taken a turn for the better, diplomatic relationships have been re-opened, and healthcare reform is experiencing a real, and viable, debate.
Every administration includes its share of bumps along the way. But, I think we must hold on to the hope and optimism we felt a year ago. A year ago, racial minorities of every creed and shade came together to overturn the status quo and make a difference. A year ago, we refused to give up. A year ago, we elected the first person of colour as president. A year ago, we achieved victory and yet, even then, we did not stop working. A year ago, the idealists won out over the skeptics and cynics, and a year from now (or perhaps two, or three, or four) we will see even greater fruits from our endeavours. A year ago, we changed the world.
And, that is what the Obama presidency has and always will signify to me.
Posted in Asian Americans, Elections, Politics | 2 Comments »
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