Testimony : ONE PERSON’S STORY ABOUT A COMMUNITY’S LACK OF POLITICAL CLOUT : Asian-Americans: ‘We Are Still Treated Like Foreigners’

Asian-Americans have been victimized by an odd stereotyping that stresses the success of some while ignoring the painful and persistent problems of many in our community.

It’s not to say there aren’t immigrants who come in with some money. Or that there isn’t that entrepreneurial spirit. But there are a lot of poor people who are Asians working in factories, in dead-end jobs in restaurants and who have no other way to get out. The stereotypes that are perpetuated about the successes that some Asian-Americans have had in American society really distort the struggle of the huge and growing population of the limited English-speaking and poor immigrants and other Asian-Americans who make up most of our community.

In my work, on a day-to-day basis, I see the struggle and the suffering that people are going through. Over the past several years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of cases of family violence directed at women and children in the immigrant Asian community.

I see a lot of kids who don’t have the supervision and guidance they need because the parents are working to survive to make a living for the family. I see kids who are confused and depressed because they don’t speak English well and there is not enough help for them in the schools or services to help them adjust to a new culture. I also see some highly trained professionals--pharmacists, doctors and engineers--who can’t find jobs and no one to help them with the necessary skills.

The county’s data say that 46% of Asian-Americans in L.A. County speak little or no English. The same data show that 21% are living in poverty. Our rates of poverty are comparable to other communities of color, like African-Americans, in both the county and the state, yet we continue to be overlooked.

As a recent example, the California Department of Finance, which calculates population projections for the state, released a report in April on the state’s ethnic breakdown over the next 50 years and divided it into “black,” “Hispanic,” “white” and “others.” They just left out the fastest-growing segment of the population, which is Asians.

Growing up as an Asian-American in California and having worked in nonprofit agencies in the Asian community for the past 20 years, I’m dismayed at the lack of progress. We are not present at the table where governmental decisions are made that affect our community.

In the state of California, with 10% of the population being Asian-American, we have not had an Asian in the state Legislature for more than 12 years, until Assemblyman Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard) was elected in November. In the history of the city of Los Angeles, there has only been one council member of Asian ancestry, and at this point there is none.

The lack of representation continues at all levels where important decisions are made. I do appreciate March Fong Eu being (California’s) secretary of state--the model that she provides to other Asian-Americans is important--but there needs to be much more progress in representation at policy-making levels.

In the area of tensions between Asian-Americans and African-Americans, I think that reflects the way our society is structured. There is an underclass and there is a depressed merchant class and at that point those two structures in society rub against each other, so the conflict is there. But that conflict is between the two lowest positions on the totem pole, each struggling not to be at the bottom. And everybody looks at that fight and that friction and nobody looks above to see all the other forces that are bearing down on these two groups that places pressure on them and keeps them down at the bottom.

Right after the riots, I didn’t meet any Asians in L.A. who didn’t feel extremely uncomfortable being Asian, and there was really a sense of being targeted for ills that we had no control over.

My agency saw individuals who were severely beaten on the street. I was very fearful. I was very careful about where I went and where I took my children. In a room or in a restaurant with a mixed group, there was apprehension because you just didn’t know what people were thinking and how they were viewing you at that point.

Nobody cared about Asian-Americans. We were just a throw-away community, or that is how it felt at that point. It was very demoralizing. It was quite traumatic for many people. I think, as for many people, that was the single incident in my life that has really changed how I look at my work, how I look at my family and their future.

I was talking to a Jewish-American student and he asked me about culture. He said that they have debates among his friends about what is Jewish culture and how can they be sure they pass on the right things. They are afraid that the next generation will lose the culture. And he asked me if I feared that for my children or for Chinese-Americans in general. I never fear that because they will never be allowed to forget their heritage; even if they don’t remember, people will always throw it in their face because their (features) are quite physical in terms of what their heritage is. There is always that consciousness when you are a person of color--you always know where you stand in the room and what other people look like. Because how people look at you is going to be different than how you see yourself.

For Asian-Americans, we wear our heritage on our face and so no matter how many generations we’re here, people still treat us like foreigners.

I have an 8-year-old son and he was told by an African-American boy in his class that he wouldn’t play with him because he was told he had Japanese germs. My husband is Japanese-American. My husband was born in an (internment) camp in California. And my daughter, when she was in the first grade, had a white boy call her with so much disdain, “Chinatown,” and after a while she didn’t want to go to school. She wouldn’t tell me why. She thought there was something wrong with her. Racism is alive and well.