Asian Americans Scarce in U.S. Corridors of Power

When Gordon Chang graduated from a Bay Area high school in 1966, he headed east to college at Princeton as a high achiever imbued with a desire to serve his country.

Traveling by train to see the nation’s heartland, he immersed himself in the memoirs of George F. Kennan, one of the most respected American diplomats of the 20th century. “I was set to go to the Wilson School and work for my country,” he recalled, referring to Princeton’s prestigious Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

But Chang never made it to government service. He simply believed that he didn’t fit. So instead, he channeled his passion for world affairs into academia--he now teaches Asian history at Stanford University.

“On a personal level it was a loss, but I’ve managed to stay engaged as a scholar,” he said.

Chang’s derailed dream is more than simply a teenage change of heart. It is a story of a broken personal ideal and of the way Americans view each other across their ethnic divides.

But most of all, it is an object lesson in how Asian Americans are a minority long overlooked in the corridors of national power. In a system that has admitted the Kissingers and Brzezinskis to its highest offices, the Changs and the Fukushimas have found subtle but real barriers.

The problem seems on its way to being corrected, but only slowly. Until it is, most of those involved agree, America is the loser, virtually without Asian American participation in government even as America’s “Pacific century” is about to dawn and U.S. global interests continue to push Asia into the foreground.

Of the 145 ambassadors representing U.S. interests around the world, one is Asian American: William Itoh, in Thailand. No Asian American serves at the level of assistant secretary or above. As of September 1996, five of the 671 highest-level career foreign service officers were Asian Americans, a gain of one in the last 10 years.

“I can’t think of any Asian American who has played a major role in foreign policy positioning in our whole history,” said Warren Cohen, a professor of American diplomatic history at the University of Maryland.

Francis Fukuyama, who was once a deputy director of the State Department’s policy planning staff, achieved a high profile by equating the end of the global U.S.-Soviet competition with “the end of history.” But in 1991, when his book by that title was published, he was a consultant at the Santa Monica-based Rand Corp. think tank.

And the prominence of Asian Americans in the high-profile controversy over campaign fund-raising can only make the road to high-level government jobs even steeper.

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The reasons for the dearth of Asian American involvement are many and complex. Outright discrimination and subtle prejudices play a role. But so do many other factors, such as the relatively recent large-scale immigration, the preference of so many bright Asian Americans to seek careers in science, medicine and engineering, and an “old boy” foreign policy establishment that has historically recruited from prestigious Ivy League schools where Asian Americans have only recently entered in significant numbers.

“Yale, pale and male,” joked one State Department official, reciting an old cliche that for years summed up the typical foreign service recruitment. Chang, for example, noted that he was one of five Asian Americans in his graduating class of 800 at Princeton.

The State Department recently has broadened its recruiting horizons, but the Asian American community is not impressed, especially with the lack of high-level appointments. “If there’s an interest in seeking out Asian Americans competent in foreign policy, they are not that difficult to find,” said Glen S. Fukushima, vice president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan and a former deputy assistant U.S. trade representative.

The absence of Asian Americans in the foreign affairs establishment often goes beyond formal appointments. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they are rarely asked to contribute to the more informal debates that precede policy decisions.

International affairs advisor Jonathan Pollack at Rand, for example, recalls attending a sit-down dinner at the State Department convened by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to discuss America’s relations with Asia. He found a table of white faces.

“You rarely see Asian Americans called into events of this kind,” he said. “I’m just struck by how much of the professional debate [on U.S. policy toward Asia] continues to be a debate among white folks.”

To be sure, few in the field argue that ethnicity alone is a qualification for a high-level job.

But talented Asian Americans, including Chang and Fukushima, are convinced that their linguistic skills and cultural sensitivities give many Asian Americans an added dimension to bring to the conduct of U.S. diplomacy.

“The receptivity in Japan to such people is definitely greater,” added Mike Mochizuki, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Any American expert on Japan would be welcomed there, but I don’t think they can reach the level of intimacy of a Japanese American who speaks Japanese.”

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Aspiring Asian Americans look at emigres from Europe, such as Henry A. Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Albright, who climbed to high office in a single generation, and wonder whether the playing field is level.

“To have these people at the highest level of American foreign policy raises no question,” said a respected Japanese American who declined to be identified by name. “But it would be a revolution to have someone of Asian heritage as assistant secretary of state. This psychological barrier has not been overcome.”

One element of that barrier, Asian Americans are convinced, is a perception among many Americans that even the third- and fourth-generation Americans among them have divided loyalties.

A respected fourth-generation Japanese American, who declined to be identified by name, recalled being invited to lunch by the senior partner of a Washington law firm that had recruited him out of Harvard Law School a few months earlier.

“He knew me. He knew my background. Yet, as we rode down in the elevator together, he turned to me and asked: ‘What are your plans? Do you plan to stay in this country or go back to Japan?’ ”

But there is another prejudice that Asian Americans find still more puzzling: an apparent resistance by some Asian governments to Asian American ambassadors. In sharp contrast to European countries such as Poland, Italy and the Irish Republic, which have embraced American ambassadors with roots in their homelands, the Japanese government, for example, has happily accepted the appointments of prestigious Americans, such as Mike Mansfield, Walter F. Mondale and, as of last week, former House Speaker Thomas J. Foley, who had strong links to high places in the U.S. establishment but little previous knowledge of Japan.

Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute in San Diego, remembers the note he got from the Clinton transition team in 1992 after proposing Fukushima as a possible ambassador.

“It . . . said, ‘Sorry, no Japanese,’ ” he recalled. “I was shocked.”

One administration source familiar with the exchange said the judgment may have stemmed more from the anticipation of Tokyo’s reaction than any prejudice within the transition team. “He would have been wildly popular with the Japanese public, but the government would have been horrified to deal with someone who knows the issues,” this source said.

In recent years, however, at least some of the barriers facing Asian Americans have shown signs of coming down.

The percentage of Asian Americans enrolling in graduate programs of international studies at the nation’s most prestigious universities has doubled over the last seven years. The number of mid-level Asian American diplomats also has increased gradually.

Even key strands of the traditional old-boy network, such as the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, are now recruiting beyond “Yale, pale and male.”

“It simply makes sense that America’s diversity be seen by the nations we deal with,” said David J. Vidal, who heads the council’s efforts to broaden its ethnic mix.