History taking a sharp turn for Asian Americans

The pictures are striking, at least for this native Californian who has read and observed a bit of state history.

Lined up side by side in a photo display of incoming state officials and legislators are four mug shots of Board of Equalization members: The faces of one white male and three Asian American females. Each was elected from a huge district of roughly 9 million people.

The board -- powerful overseer of sales and property tax administration -- actually consists of five people. The state controller automatically is a member. And, starting next month, he’ll also be an Asian American.

So of the five tax board members, four will be Asian Americans -- three of Chinese ancestry, one of Korean.

This in a state with a long, horrible history of anti-Asian discrimination.

“We’ve come a long way, don’t you think?” says historian Kevin Starr, who has written several books chronicling California.

The three Asian American, district-elected board members are Democrats Judy Chu of Monterey Park and Betty Yee of San Francisco, both of Chinese heritage, and Republican Michelle Steel of Rancho Palos Verdes, whose roots are Korean. The controller is Democrat John Chiang of Redondo Beach, the son of Taiwanese immigrants.

The lone white guy is Republican Bill Leonard of Sacramento, a former legislator from San Bernardino.

“I don’t expect to be lonely, but I could be,” Leonard jests. “Call me in a couple of months.”

Actually, Leonard says he’s “excited” about the diversity. “The board was a staid gentlemen’s club for decades,” he notes. The new composition represents an achievement not only for Asian Americans, he says, but also for women.

The board was created in 1879, but no woman was elected to it until 1934. She served only a few months. The second woman didn’t get elected from a board district until San Francisco Democrat Carole Migden did in 2002. Migden resigned after being elected to the state Senate in 2004 and Yee, her chief of staff, moved up automatically. Yee was elected on her own last month.

The first Asian American member of the board was Matt Fong, appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1991 to replace a member who was locked up for political corruption. Fong later was elected state treasurer. His mother, March Fong Eu, was the first Asian American elected to statewide office in California, becoming secretary of state in 1974. She was reelected four times.

Chiang -- the controller-elect -- also moved up to the board from chief of staff in 1997 after his boss, Democrat Brad Sherman of Sherman Oaks, was elected to Congress. Chiang then won election in 1998.

The highest office obtained by an Asian American in California was the U.S. Senate, won by Republican semanticist S.I. Hayakawa in 1976.

Nine Asian Americans just got elected to the Legislature.

That’s the tidy, very recent political history of Asian Americans in this state.

California’s overall history regarding Asian Americans is cluttered with ugliness.

At the beginning of statehood, Chinese immigrants -- along with blacks and Indians -- “were denied the rights of citizenship and prohibited from testifying against whites in court,” Starr writes in his book “California: A History.”

There was a mass lynching in Los Angeles in 1871 of 18 Chinese men by a predominantly white mob of 500. Why? Starr writes that it “must be seen as the social and psychological paradigm of what was happening in California ... as the Chinese became increasingly the scapegoats for collapsed expectations.”

The expectation had been riches. The reality, for many, was rags and a labor glut.

Chinese immigration was prohibited by “exclusion” acts starting in the 1880s and continuing into the 20th century. “Chinese must go” was the rallying cry.

Through it all, Starr noted in an interview, “the Chinese created the trans-Sierra railroad -- an epic construction equal to the great Wall of China itself -- and built the Delta levees that the voters just passed bonds to fix.”

Under the Alien Land Act of 1913, Japanese immigrants were barred from owning property.

Moreover, the Japanese bashing was led by California political leaders, including the great progressive Gov. Hiram Johnson. In San Francisco, James Duval Phelan was elected mayor and later a U.S. senator by leading a “white California” crusade. Even the famous author Jack London titled a 1904 essay “The Yellow Peril.”

But the November election, Starr says, “shows we’re getting to the point of being very comfortable with the fact that California is an Asian Pacific nation. The general direction of California is toward a very inclusive politics that’s out ahead of the rest of the country.”

The newly elected Asian Americans on the Board of Equalization all have a story about how they got hooked on politics.

Chu, 53, helped beat back an “English only” movement in immigrant-expanding Monterey Park in the 1980s. She got elected to the City Council and later the state Assembly. Her husband, Mike Eng, was just elected to replace her in the Legislature.

Yee, 49, became politically aware as a teenager in San Francisco, translating at school board meetings for her immigrant parents. They were fighting an attempt to bus her little sister across town to racially integrate a faraway school. “It opened my eyes to the fact you can participate and have a voice,” she recalls.

Steel, 51, who’s married to former Republican state Chairman Shawn Steel, says she got politically involved after the 1992 L.A. riots as a bridge between looted Korean merchants and white community leaders. But even before that, she had focused on the Board of Equalization. It had overtaxed inventory at a downtown L.A. clothing shop owned by her immigrant mother.

“She doesn’t speak English, she doesn’t have money for a CPA, she gets very nervous and pays the taxes she doesn’t owe,” Steele says.

Years later, it may be payback time.

In generations past, Californians forbade some Asians from owning property. Now they’re electing Asian Americans to oversee the taxing of all property. It’s a compelling new chapter for a new year.

*

George Skelton writes Mondays and Thursdays. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.