Asian-Americans Like Clinton, Don’t Like Trump

[applegrove]

Asian-Americans Like Clinton, Don’t Like Trump

By Ed Kilgore at NY Magazine

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/asian-americans-like-clinton-dont-like-trump.html

"SNIP.............



One of the more surprising exit-poll findings of the 2012 presidential election was that Asian-Americans voted for Barack Obama in higher percentages (73-26) than did Latinos (71-27), despite having (on average) much higher socioeconomic status and less of a pro-Democratic partisan tradition. And that's why a 2014 exit poll finding that Asian-Americans were divided evenly between the two parties was hotly disputed.

Whatever did and didn't happen in 2012 and 2014, there's fresh evidence that the often-forgotten (until California votes!) Asian-American community, which is growing rapidly, is in the current environment tilting pretty strongly away from Donald Trump's GOP.

A new national survey sponsored by several Asian-American and Pacific Islander advocacy groups shows a recent trend toward affiliation with the Democratic Party, a strong hostility to Trump, and a relatively high level of affection for Hillary Clinton, the most popular in this demographic of the various candidates for president in both parties this cycle.

The survey suggests that the Democratic Party's favorable-unfavorable ratio among Asian-Americans has improved from 55-29 in 2014 to 66-19 today, even as the GOP's ratio deteriorated from 39-39 two years ago to 31-46 now. There are a couple of likely explanations for this trend. For one thing, President Obama's job approval numbers among Asian-Americans have significantly improved from 50-36 in 2014 to 67-23 now. And the Clinton-Trump choice seems to be a no-brainer for many of these voters.



..............SNIP"

[gollygee]

1. Trump is xenophobic and proud of it, and that hits a specific kind of racism Asian-Americans face

"The perpetual foreigner."

People who are not Asian in the US act like Asian-Americans aren't American. All the time. Xenophobia affects them very strongly, no matter how many generations their families have lived in the US. That kind of racism is why Japanese Americans were put in camps while my family, some of whom actually had German accents, were allowed to live freely in the US during WWII.

Anyway, back to my #1 reason Trump won't win this election: he won't get enough votes from people of color and women.

[Journeyman]

2. The previous war was when the Germans suffered most, this despite generations of living in the US...

World War 1 was a period of vicious attacks upon our German-heritage citizens, and not a small dose of silliness either (sauerkraut renamed 'liberty cabbage' and other equally fatuous acts).

Your points on Asian-Americans being looked upon as "perpetual foreigners" and their greater difficulty in blending in to the "crazy quilt" of humanity within our borders, are quite valid and regrettably very prominent within our society. It's a shame, too, as there are plenty of good people in all our many varied groups, and too little time available in any one life to waste it in needless, unfounded fear and hate.

[gollygee]

4. They were never locked up.

Japanese Americans suffered the way you're talking about, AND were locked up.

[cagefreesoylentgreen]

5. True

But some unique German-American dialects like Texasdeutsch went all but extinct during WWI and the decades after due to the "kraut panic."

Still nothing like being locked up though.

[Journeyman]

6. And Germans were lynched, lost jobs, and faced countless other discriminations . . .

In Australia, they were herded into camps, and discussions were made here to do the same. Many German-Americans were imprisoned during the war, some "for their own safety," and many for trumped up charges of espionage, sabotage, and disloyalty. The American Protective League, which became a semi-official branch of the Justice Department, actively spied upon fellow citizens, as did a plethora of other, superpatriotic organizations such as the National Security League and the Commission of Public Safety, to name but a few. Many of these groups created organized efforts to hound people from their jobs and homes, forcing them from the towns they had lived in for decades. German churches, schools, societies and newspapers were denounced as disloyal, both by citizens and by various levels of the government.

These attitudes and actions carried over into the next war as well, so though we can debate relative experiences and see latitudes of difference between the various approaches, the idea that German-Americans lived freely within our borders during the Second World War is a fiction ungrounded in the realities of events.

[gollygee]

7. German Americans lived more freely than Japanese Americans during WWII

I know that German Americans faced discrimination. My grandmother has told me about it. Japanese Americans did too, and over 100,000 of them were locked up, for a couple of years.

[cagefreesoylentgreen]

3. I wish this was true of my Chinese family

I had to listen to my elderly Chinese dad go on a rant last night about how much he hated Clinton and was voting for Trump. While I'm not much of a Clinton fan either, I was facepalming all the way through it.

I'll vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is, even if I have to hold my nose while pulling the lever. But I'm not excited about it.