Education: Challenges & Perspectives – Workshop 5B: Civic Participation and Asian Americans

Jae Kim:

Gentlemen, thank you very much. Welcome to the panel “Civic Participation and Asian Americans.” I am very pleased to preside this panel because the topic of participation, in my notion, is that participation is a prerequisite and an essential ingredient to advance through the barriers to democracy, and a social instrument to safeguard true notion of democracy. It is also the only instrument to build better democracy, particularly for Asian Americans. Because of these reasons, this particular panel… understands why Asian Americans—according to their views, books and hearsay—lack participation, particularly in civic political affairs.

Today, three panelists of very famous, very well-researched, and very practical approaches about how to participating in civic affairs. The panelists have already prepared very well-researched papers. Would you kindly pass this out.

My name is Professor Jae Kim, at John Jay College, teaching Human Resource Management and Labor Law. I am going to introduce each panelist. Before that, the rule is that each panelist will speak for five to ten minutes, then I will give you a signal and then we will stop.

On my left, Mr. Ron Kim, his academic background is he got his BA from Hamilton College in political science. Particularly he is very much interested in political affairs, to pursue a master degree in urban affairs and public policy in CUNY. He has various experience participating in civic affairs, one of them is the Young Civic Alliance of Asian America, particularly advocating how young Asian American should participate in various community activities. He founded a lot of difference organizations, one of them is very valuable for those of you who understand it. One of them is for young Asian American who cannot speak English very well, particularly those first or second generation, how to participate in to improve democracy through the participation. You can see it through his bio. Now Ron Kim is going to deliver a very articulate, well organized, well researched participation in civic affairs. Ron.

Ron Kim:

Thank you, Professor Kim, you have put a lot of pressure on me now, about being “articulate.” First I would like to thank the Asian American Asian Research Institute for the opportunity to conduct this research, and thank the panelists for joining me today on this very important topic, as Professor Kim indicated, which is “Civic Participation and Asian Americans”, which is a vital topic. It is a topic that not only affects Asian Americans, but affects all races, all people of all colors, ages, it has no discrimination. It is a very important topic because it reaches out to all communities.

Having said that, if I were to stay here and talk about my own personal experience and civic participation, I can testify to the fact that I know plenty of Korean Americans, like in my family, who instead of going to a Korean community board meeting, a Korean council meeting or even a coop meeting, they rather go play golf, or they rather watch Korean videos. I am sure that many of you can agree with me on that point. But that is precisely the reason why I decided to undertake this research with the Asian American Asian Research Institute and the Young Civic Alliance.

Having said that, just to backtrack for a second. My background, which is not indicated there, I worked for State Assemblyman Mark Weprin, in Eastern part of Queens. I am his community liaison; as the liaison, I get to participate in community affairs in eastern Queens. I get a sense of how much the community has evolved, and how much they care for civic virtues. It is very discouraging that there are a lot of young Asian Americans that have no care, no interest in civic matters. All they want to do is go to PC rooms and play video games; they never really want to go into public affairs, or even care about voting, for that matter.

Having said that, I’m going to go over the general outline of the research that I have decided to undertake. Just a couple of quotations to begin with: “Much of the advancement of the human race has taken the form of such cross-cultural borrowings and influences.” That’s from Race and Culture. This indicates the diversity that we face in New York City, especially in the Queens area of New York City, where there is so many varieties of cultures and ethnic groups living out there. As a result, there are some difficulties of communication and solidarity. However, that should not be a deterrent for Asian Americans not to get involved, it should not be an excuse. They should respect diversity and should try to learn from each other. That’s one area that all Asian Americans must learn to accomplish.

The Great Disruptions by Francis Fukuyama: she focuses on social disorders of our society where she states that the more disengaged the people are, the more crime incidents that will increase, the more lack of care for basic quality of life issues, such as graffiti, panhandling, potholes, nobody is going to care. That is when our communities go down the drain. Francis Fukuyama was one of the first political scientists who came out and make that point.

Becoming American, Being Indian, this author, Ms. Khandelwal, I believe she is from Queens College. She wrote Becoming American, Being Indian, which focuses on the Flushing Queens part of New York City. She talks about one of the reasons why Asian Americans, Indian American are not getting involved with mainstream America. That is because they have ties to foreign countries, they rather care for issues that affect their countries back home and don’t want to get involved. Plus, a lot of people come from backgrounds of distrust in politics, especially in Asian American communities. I know that in Korean America communities many older generation come from a background of believing that politicians are corrupt and they can’t be trusted. Anything that has to do with civic matters they have a distaste for.

The last quotation of the introduction, “When the dragon wakes, it will shake the world.” This is a quotation by Napoleon that refers to China in the realm of the world. One out of six persons in the world is Chinese. That is a huge impact in terms of power. In Queens, in New York City, there is a steady increase of Asian Americans that are living in our communities. The more we get people to vote, the more we get people to care about civic virtues, the more power or more influence we will have in public affairs and public policies.

Moving on to general background materials. The general demographics in the U.S.—Asian American is 3%, in New York it is 5.5%. New York City demographics—there are 18% Asian Americans in Queens, specifically in northern Queens that is 24%. Community Board 7, which is the community board of Councilman John Liu, is 36%. Assembly district 22, which the one that John Liu represents, is about 54 % to 55% Asian Americans. There are a lot of Asian Americans in Flushing and eastern parts of Queens. As I touched on before, social disorder, there was a quality of life issue, community values, decline of voting. Not only in Asian American, but especially in young Americans. I believe 70% of young generation people from 18 to 25 did not vote in the last presidential election, that is a disappointing fact.

On the next part, testimonies and interviews. I put together some interviews from a variety of community leaders and members in eastern Queens. First person is Mr. Phil Hom, Chief of Staff for Councilman John Liu. According to Phil, “there is between eight to ten unreported crimes that come to us every month, and almost 100 cases every years. Most of the Chinese community are scared.” Part of the component of this research is I am measuring how much underreporting of crime is out there, as a measurement to determine the lack of civic participation in Asian American community.

Instead of going through all the interviews, let me just jump next to Mr. Terence Park, who is a Community Board 7 member for six years. He states that “all immigrant community tend to be isolated and distrustful of authority figures. In last five months I am aware of at least six biased incidents; in the last few years, I know that there has been hundreds of unreported cases of crime.” Lastly Linna Yu, she is a Community Board 7 member for 16 years in Queens. She states, “Yes, there is a serious problem of underreporting of crime among Asian Americans. In the past year I noticed at least eight cases of victimized Asian Americans who did not report. The police were sometimes prejudiced, and Asian Americans often fear them.” These are some of the factors that Asian Americans live with, in dealing with crime and civic participation.

To cross-analyze that with some crime statistics that are put out there by the government. In 1999, there were a total of 379 Asian Americans victims of biased crimes out of 9,802 total victims. I believe that is total underreporting as you have heard from Mr. Terrence Park, Phil, and then Ms. Linna Yu. There is plenty more even in the borough of Queens. From 1993 to 1998, about 1.8 female Asian Americans every year, out of 1,000, are raped or sexually harassed. Personally I can testify to the fact that I know a lot more that 1.8 female that has been harassed and did not report. On a more local level, in 2002 there were nine biased incidents at the 109th precinct, that is the precinct for Flushing; and five at 105th, which represents Fresh Meadows, and one in 111th, which represents Bayside.

Finally, what we plan to predict out of this research is that there is a correlation between civic disengagement and crime. As a minimum we want to raise the awareness of the important for civic participation in Asian Americans, and very importantly we also want to alleviate the distress and isolation that Asian Americans has to go through in the communities in Queens and in New York City. Thank you.

Jae Kim:

In my view there are two notions, that is quality vs. quantity of participation, Jewish American vs. Asian American. The Jewish Americans is much smaller in number than other Americans, but the quality of their participation is making an enormous difference, in terms of impact on the American political landscape and everything else. So the Asian Americans in terms of quantity compared to the Jewish Americans, according to Ron, is encouraging us to move in increasing quality of Asian American participation in civic affairs. Without participation there is no democracy. Democracy is only available as long as there is participation.

Next panelist is Philip Yun. You may notice from us that everybody is wearing yellow ribbon. He is the only Asian American who started the expression of appreciation for Asian Americans participating in the Iraq war. He campaigned for Asian Americans to wear the yellow ribbon, symbolizing how thankful we are for Asian Americans participating in the Iraq war. He brought enough for you to pick up one of those. We can express how patriotic we are as Asian Americans. He is the Executive Director of the New York Police Department’s Patrol North Queens, a liaison between Asian American communities and the Police Department. He organized numerous town meetings and political gathering, and the campaign of the yellow ribbons. Now he is going to give you some idea about how to initiative and encourage Asian Americans, that no one ever initiated, like the yellow ribbon campaign.

Philip Yun:

Thank you, Professor. My speech will be shorter than his introduction. Actually Ron Kim already covered the topic that I was going to discuss. As you have seen, his research paper is fantastic. His agenda is pretty much my agenda. I don’t want to reiterate, so I will be brief. Every war there is a yellow ribbon campaign, every war, in America. The day the Iraqi war began I was the one who designed this simple yellow ribbon. We were going to just distribute to 300 to 400 citizens to honor our Korean Americans who went to the Iraqi war. We have 4500 young Korean Americans who joined the U.S. military force. An amazing number of Korean Americans, some are captains, most of them are 18 to 22 years old, 1,200 of them went to war.

We decided to distribute these yellow ribbons, so we placed several articles in the newspapers. About 50 Korean American families who sent their children to war contacted us. Consequently, the Asian and American media contacted us for an interview, it expanded, the following week, 3,000 yellow ribbons were distributed. The second week, 10,000 the third week, was around 40,000 to 60,000 I could not count the exact number. So in a total of about four to five week, 100,000 yellow ribbons have been distributed to Americans. Koreans may be less than 5%; 95,000 yellow ribbons were distributed to American families. As you probably saw on TV today, George Bush had a yellow ribbon today, I am not sure if it was from us. Actually I had an opportunity to go to Washington a few days ago, but I couldn’t make it.

What I am saying is this. I am very actively involved in the Korean American community, within several groups before 1996. Because my personal situation changed, I decided to travel all over the world. In four years I traveled to about 17 countries. From time to time I came back to the U.S. to be with my family in New York. I missed my wife and my kids. But in fact I wanted to travel to give support and help who ever asked for my assistance. I traveled throughout Asia, Latin America and mostly Africa. I just come back from a Safari; it was very beautiful and thought provoking.

I really enjoyed meeting with the diversity of people from around the world. One thing I realized is that we all have in common thread, we are all human beings on this beautiful earth and that everybody is unquestionably very nice, very, very nice. Whether I could speak their language or not also with no disregard toward my Korean American ethnicity, they were all very friendly to me. As you know, there are a lot of anti-American environments created outside of the United States, Americans may not be aware of that, but it’s true.

About three to four months ago, there was a candlelight demonstration in Korea. They were anti-American demonstrations. We Korean Americans decided, to help calm them down, we said to our selves, what could we do? We got together about 40 people to create an organization, upon which, we can tell Americans in America that we are Korean Americans who live in America, and we will die in America and for America. Absolutely, we will die in America. I may die in Korea, in addition my son and my daughter, both speak Korean also, may live or die in America. My son, 14 years old, wants to go to the military after 9/11; that shows he is American.

We formed the group, and right after that there was a war. We decided we needed to do more. So that is how we started the yellow ribbon campaign. We showed the American people that we Asian Americans love our country, As Americans, and we do our duty for America. There were gains and losses on both sides. Some of the Korean Americans came to me and asked Philip, why do you do this? Sorry, for the language! You think that if you kiss Americans ass, they will think that you are American? some asked, Will you go back to your country, or will you stay in this country with your children? This is the country of freedom, all the opportunity is here. If you desire to have it, you can have it. I convinced one person, than another one by one. After three months, we grew our membership to 250 people. Now there are about another couple of hundred standing by to join our organization. After six months, we will have 500 people. Our resolution is what we stand by and declare as Asian Americans and as Korean Americans.

To conclude my speech, About three years ago I decided to join our community services with the New York City Police Department, completely voluntary work. We started with two people. Now we have 250 NYPD Patrol North Queens Asian Advisory members, consisting of six nationalities. Before we formed this organization, we felt there was a lot of racial discrimination by police officers in queens. Our goal is to try to reduce discrimination 100%. But if our organization can reduce at least, 1% of racial discrimination by police officers towards people of ethnic background for example, equal distribution of red light ticket, and speeding ticket, among other citations. Since, we created our team, we get together once a year to have our honorary ceremony called Flag Day. We invite 250 police officers to this ceremony to honor several Cops of the Year, in each precinct. In Queens, there are about 11 precincts all police officers are awarded by [James Tuller], the assistant commanding officer in Queens North. Now if you go to Flushing, which is where we started, many police officers are so friendly to Asian Americans. We feel we really made a big impact on achieving our goal.

When we participate in our community, we teach our next generation like my son and daughter. We Asian Americans should participate in our community activities, because we live here. For this reason alone, we need to participate! America is our country, our land. Of course, the country where I was born is my homeland; this is what I call the second homeland. My stepmother is the same as my mother. This is what I am saying.

We pay tax, we get financial aid, and we get great tax benefits from the government. We live here. America consists of many nationalities this is the true meaning of the United States of America. I really strongly recommend all of us participate in more community activities and show our appreciation to Americans. We are included in America. We are no longer minorities, we are moving towards the majority, as you have seen in the population census that Ron has prepared. We have to harmoniously put together our majority influence in America. In conclusion, Let’s get involved in more community activities.

Jae Kim:

Thank you. There appears to be three or four things that can be summed up. Based on Mr. Yun’s living, practical experience in getting involved in various affairs, Asian Americans as U.S. citizen, is a requirement, a duty, a mandate for us to directly involve in various civic affairs. This particular involvement will start small and incrementally, but as a result it will have a huge impact, according to the experience of the yellow ribbon campaign. So that according to Census 2075, my understanding is that minority become majority in this country, Asian Americans is going to face much change now… we are not going to get what you want.

Next panelist is Dr. Kim. He is the Executive Director of Senior Services for Korean Americans. Also he serves as the kingmaker for various politicians, including Mario Caumo. He campaigned for Mario Cuomo, Mario Cuomo became government; he campaigned for Hilary Clinton, she became a senator, and so on. In a way he was a kingmaker. How to participate in various civic and political participation, now is Dr. Kim.

Dr. Kim:

Thank you, Professor. I think you are too generous; I am not all of those things actually. At this panel, I see a lot of young faces, and I thought, “Oh my God, I haven’t done this for a long time.” Then I see [inaudible] walked in, I feel more comfortable now. In any way, I was instructed to address the current status of civic matters and Asian American participation.. I must tell you that I don’t have an in-depth study on these things, neither do I have any data on what the current status is. But I do want to describe what Asian Americans, particularly Korean Americans participation in various matters. I will talk about these things. I will also talk about what we have done to empower politically the Korean American communities.

Just out of curiosity, I looked at the dictionary to find out what “civic” means. It says that civic “is a branch of political science that deals with city, citizen, citizenship and the rights and duties of a citizen.” Very interesting. It covers a broad range of what citizens are supposed to do. If you are one of those people with intimate relation with elected officials, then you know that there are three things that matter most: issues, money and votes. Not in that order but these are the different things that matter the most.

You can see that civic and elected politicians have an unbreakable, intertwined relationship. So I am going to address how to establish yourself with the politicians. Recently New York Times reported that, a man by the name of Eugene Lam, a very well-known philanthropist, he helped out a lot of kids in the Harlem area. He is also initiating to educate young people to make sure that they actively participate in civic matters. The reason being that his finding indicates that the last presidential election, 70% of them did not vote.

This figure is very alarming. If you translate that figure into Asian American community, the figure is probably worse than mainstream, in other words, more that 70% did not participate. I think Ron indicated that it is so. We know that because during the election we went to voting booths, just to make an observation of who comes to vote. And we haven’t seen many youngsters from the Asian American community, so that must be true. I don’t have statistical data to back it up, just pure observation.

I want to look at the three different aspects: one is language, culture and acculturation, second one is ignorance, and the third is role model. In the area of acculturation, the English language is a very difficult language for Asian Americans, except I guess for the Indians and the Filipinos. This language is very difficult for Asian Americans. The adult population probably never master English. And yet, if they were able to study English at an early age, I think they can master it very quickly. But you see, language doesn’t really matter much; what’s important is acculturation.

You have to be assimilated in American culture to know what is happening, not just in your town, your city, your state, but your nation as a whole. So acculturation is very, very important. Unfortunately, in case of the Korean youngsters, even though they master language, their living habit or living environment makes them very, very difficult to assimilate American culture. I think as Ron pointed out, you go home, you eat Korean food, you go to be entertained by the Korean culture, and then you go to church. Every setting is just like in Korea, so they have no choice to assimilate American culture. This is very tragic, but it is happening.

Consequently, young people cannot and will not participate because of acculturation. II happened to meet a young fellow the other day. His father was a successful businessman. During the conversation, he just came out and said what party he belonged to. He said, “I’m a republican”. So I said, “Why?” He said, “You know, my father told me his hard-earned money is being used to help the welfare recipients. Then they vote for the Democratic Party.” This is the kind of thing they learn from the parents, and it’s very detrimental. To me, not able to be acculturated is a very, very important fact of why they are not participating in civic matters, particularly in politics.

The second thing that I’m thinking about is ignorance. Most of the adult immigrants, Koreans, Asians, and others obviously have a language barrier. They cannot follow what information is available. It will amaze you whether it is a political matter, cultural matters, and educational matters, they solely depend on the so-called ethnic media, whether it is print or electric media. Now these local ethnic media themselves are not acculturated, so they kept talking about their own cultural things. So they had no way of getting information which impacts their daily life. We have a problem with educating these people.

I’m going to go back to focus on the politics. What we did was prior to the election, we visited one of the electronic media to give us some time to explain what is going on. What is a primary election? What are the two different parties? What are the differences between them? That sort of things. They should be educated. They should make some intelligent choices as to cast their vote and whom to vote. That is one of the areas that we really have to look at seriously.

The third thing I’m going talk about is the role model. The 2001 citywide election, there’s a tremendous turnout with Korean voters in the voting booth. There is only one reason—that was because of a Korean young man by the name of Terrance Park happens to be a candidate of the city council district 20. This energized the Korean community, saying “Oh this is our favorite son. We got to somehow elect this man because he is our own kind.” So what you need is a role model. In an old saying, “he’s our favorite son.” This to me is a very significant factor of energizing the Korean community to actively participate in political processes.

Now everybody knows that John Liu broke a long standing barrier to become the first Asian American elected official. While I’m talking about this, I’m going to congratulate Judge Cohan. She’s the first Asian American elected to be a supreme court judge. This sort of things energizes the community. They’re looked up as a role model, so the community can rally behind him and support him, and act to be engaged in the political process.

I say that the three main areas, the role model, the ignorance, and the acculturation is a very, very important area to look at to become a political activist or be involved in civic matters. What did we do? Several years ago, we established a political club called Korean American Democrats in New York. We did a number of things. Number one, we did a voter registration drive. We did that by visiting church on Sunday as often as possible and convinced the pastor that this is an important matter, that we all have to participate.

Our accumulated efforts in voter registration is that our organization alone has over 5,000 registered voters. We have a tremendous number of registered Korean voters. The fruit of that is that in the 2001 election, you see that the voter registration card is translated in Korean. You go to the voting booth, there are Korean directions. This is the sort of fruit that we are striving for.

Secondly, the club sponsored events where local politicians are invited, local community leaders invited. We introduced them so they form a network, so they get to know each other. This will form a warm personal relationship. I think those lines I met the judge about a couple years back, I believe. Anyway, I think this is very important because you have to establish a personal relationship with whether a political candidate or elected official, in order to address, emphasize, or advocate your issues. Without them knowing them, you have no way of doing this. So that how we do it.

Thirdly, we designed, we sort of… this is a matter I really don’t want to get into because sometimes it conflicts with the work I do with other organizations, but this came up, so I have to do it. We organize fundraising to support either candidates or elected officials who could help us to advocate the issues that are very dear to us. This is no way of getting around this. This fundraising, the voter registration drive, and the club activity is perhaps one way of maximizing your limited resources to have an impact on elected officials and also empowering the community you serve.

As of now, we know most of the local politicians that cover from east of Sunnyside to the west of Little Neck where most of the Korean constituents reside. We have such an intimate relationship that we can ask them for what we need or what we require for the community, and they are willing to work with us. This to me is political empowerment. I guess this is about all I have to say.

Jae Kim:

Thank you, Dr. Kim. I think that your specific prescription and strategy on how to involve in the mainstream of the American politics: one is to suggest the role model energizing participation, and then the invitation of a politician, some sort of a political socialization process. In other words, get to know who we are, what we are, and who are you and so on. Political socialization would be a good idea. The third is voter registration, so on and so forward, to encourage people to participate in the basic process of the democracy. Based on your analysis of the apathy and indifference you found on the Asian Americans, it is not that they don’t want to go, or they do not go; the idea is the cultural difference. So that the socialization and particularly political socialization, and fundraising and so on, that may be a good prescription. Thank you Dr. Kim, you are very inspirational for us to know in the future. Now is the debate open to the audience. Any questions you have, raise with the individual panelists.

Audience Member:

Hi, thank you for your comments. I know that whenever Asian Americans can get together to talk about civic participation is an important occasion. But one thing about the idea of apathy being socialized and cultural is in this country until after 1943 with the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, most foreign-born Asians were not allowed to become naturalized citizen and therefore were not allowed to vote. It’s part of our Asian American legacy to be dealing with the issue of access to vote.

I wanted to ask all of you how do you feel about advocating for people who are not interested in becoming citizens, who are comfortable with permanent residency. A lot of our seniors are in that situation, especially if their language skills do not allow them to study for these tests. Not only that, this country has had a whole history of making lies that disenfranchised non-citizens. A 1996 immigration deportation law said that someone who is a permanent resident can be deported, and then the changes in the detention laws, to now the registration with the Homeland Security Department. What are your ideas about how to advocate for non-citizens, is it important, how do we put that into a program?

Ron Kim:

Well, we’re talking about democracy, what it means to be a democratic. To me a postmodern democracist took a different route that it’s not only about voting, we can do much more than just voting. That is what the young people these days seem to go towards, that they don’t feel that representative democracy is good enough anymore. They don’t feel inclusive, even citizens, they don’t feel like they belong. What difference does it make if I make one vote? They want to be out in the community and be active and those are civic virtues that non-citizens can adopt to.

Philip Yun:

I agree with Ron. I am a U.S. citizen, and my wife is a permanent resident, she has been here 15 years. She still wants to keep her permanent residency; this is her decision because this is the land of freedom. My wife helped me make the big ribbons, the yellow ribbons. She helped me even though she is not a U.S. citizen. As you say, there are things that even non-American citizens can do for the country where they live to contribute to the American soldiers for their safe return. We are not supporting the war, and we’re not supporting the anti-war either. We just want to help our parents wish their children a safe return home. My wife helped me make big ribbons, about 100 of them, so she contributes to the place where she lives as I distribute the ribbons to all the families. The people have a choice whether to be a citizen, our not to be a citizen, but still live in this country.

Dr. Kim:
In capitalist society, there’s a give and take. There’s no such thing as a free ride. If you want something, you have to work for it. You complained about the exclusion act. How do you change that? Voting process. You cannot vote as a permanent resident. You have to be a citizen. What you’re going to have to do is to find a candidate who you can work with and work on the issues important to you, and try to elect him. That’s the process this country has, you have no way around it.

Let me give you an example. This is an easy example, I happened to have the opportunity to instruct ESL and civic classes for senior people back in 1996 because that time, there was the so-called Welfare Reform Act being enacted. They were scared because they were going to take away all the entitlement, so they rushed to become a citizen. We had a number of seniors that came to our class to become a citizen. During that time, we emphasized that the more sacred right as a citizen is voting. They know it. When you go to a voting booth in an election, you find the seniors rush to vote. They know how important that is to vote somebody that can protect them. You have to come to deal with “what is something I can get out of being a citizen”. You have to teach them. There are a number of things, once you’ve done that, I’m sure they will vote.

Josephine Chung:

Dr. Kim, we’ve talked a number of times in the past nine months, thanks a lot for coming to our community affairs and thanks a lot for your help. Overall perception is that Asian Americans are trying to get involved in civic participation, register to vote, and go to fundraisers and support politicians. However, there is also a perception that they are only interested in taking photo opportunities with politicians and they do not know how to ask for things back for the community. Like Professor Kim said, you are a kingmaker and you support politicians. If you conduct fundraisers for them, do you really talk to them that this is what our community needs, what you can do, if we have our community help you to get elected or reelected? I keep seeing our friends working real hard in fundraisers and at the end we elected somebody who will never come back to the community or do anything for them at all.

That is one question, if I may, also a second question. You mention the Flushing election when we have Terrance Park involved. Just last year, in the Assembly race we had several Asian Americans getting involved and we had a Jewish American getting involved. The result is that in a heavily Asian American district, a Jewish American got elected. How can community leaders help in this situation because we are going back to step one? We can never get an Asian American elected in such a situation.

Dr. Kim:

Let me answer your first question. In this country, the quid-pro-quo is illegal. You cannot ask a politician, “Look, I can help you, and you help with this.” You just can’t do that. That’s number one, but once you established a relationship with them, you know that with this guy or this lady, they could become a partnership with you. You have to establish a human relationship, so you know that when I help this particular candidate or official, we are going to get the payback. Most of the things we are looking for are actually resources back to the community. These are the people who legislate [expenditures], which we paid for. What you are looking for is make sure we get our resources back. Second thing we can do is we could imbed some of the people to work with them in their offices. They can work with them, and constantly remind them that they are in our community. That’s the first question.

The second question, I know it was going to come out. When we support a certain candidate, we don’t look at the ethnic background. It is important; in other words, if I see an Asian and a White and see that they have similar credentials, everything is the same, then obviously we vote for the Asian. However, if the White candidate, whether Jewish or Scot, is a better candidate with a better chance of bringing something back to us, then we support that candidate. Asian American doesn’t necessarily, automatically become our endorsement. That’s how I answer the question. That’s true with the city council campaign. I had a heck of a time supporting John, to tell you the truth, because people come and say “How come you Koreans support the Chinese?” Look, I don’t want to go into the detail, but we do base on the candidate himself.

Doris Ling-Cohan:

What Dr. Kim had mentioned in terms of seniors in our community realizing that unless that they became citizens, they would lose certain benefits. Our people may be interested in knowing that there is a trend stemming from the federal government to reduce, for example, Medicaid benefits to non-citizens. That’s not necessarily happening in New York yet, but it is happening across the country. That is something in terms of our community that we can educate our community on why it is important to become a citizen and what the benefits are. The benefits are that you can exercise your civic responsibility and obligation to vote, because in voting you can make a difference in your community. Because this is America, the squeaky wheel theory: The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Unless we squeak—that is unless we vote, we will never get the grease, we will never get the benefits of being fully participatory citizens. What Dr. Kim mentioned I think it’s completely accurate.

Audience Member:

To Mr. Ron Kim, the background demographic data, what year is it? Because recently I saw in the newspaper that Asian Americans in the U.S. is 4.4%, so it’s much much more than this. And then the crime statistics D, 48% of the violence against blacks, 42% against whites, and next to that 46% against American Indians…

Ron Kim:

Starting from the last point you made, those were violence reported to police. That means that there’s about, take Whites 40% to 50% of the violence were not reported. That’s what that’s indicating.

Audience Member:

My question is, there are not that many American Indians, may be South Asian? … Another comment is that Dr. Kim is very much for Asian American community and Korean Americans community. When I first become a school community board member, we didn’t know any one, we had no resources. So we depend on the Chinese Americans because they were before us. Only Dr. Kim introduced to me some American politician and activists, that really helped me very much. So I think the resource is very important. When American see us not as Koreans or Chinese, but as Asian. The Chinese community before us answered a lot of questions, politically, economically, socially, or in education. Everywhere you go, you see Chinese teachers, councilors, or even professors. When children go to school with Asian teachers or professors, they feel much more comfortable. In community too, any kind of organization, wherever you go, people who do not speak English in this country they are more much more comfortable when they see it. I think if there is a network for Asian communities to work together and help each other, we can do more in community activities.

Jae Kim:

Maybe I can inject to your comment. The perception of Asian Americans in general seems to me this way: Chinese labeled as laundryman, Korean labeled as grocery man, Filipino labeled as maid and so on. That is an old perception among the Americans in general. Now the perception seems to change in a radical fashion, that is because of you Asian American, we Asian American participate in various disciplines, academic, social, political, and so on. Now it’s a different matter.

As you suggest that now we all pull our lives together, rather than Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, look at the whole background. China is now one quarter of the population in the entire Earth. India, another huge population, Japan and so on. All Asian together, in terms of population, in terms of GNP together, no one can, even in the entire world combined, there’s no challenge at all. That notion gives us a good impetus and good strength to represent any kind of participation.

My suggestion is rather than Korean, Chinese Americans, and so on, outside of us, they look at us as Asian rather than Korean, Chinese. In the future, in order to cement our relationship, we should call Asian as a whole and then Asian American or American as a whole. I think it’s a good idea that it seems to be changing at a radical fashion now in U.S. Anywhere you go, you see Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Even department store, they hire, used to be 10 years ago no Asian was hired. Now look at the whole news media in terms of proportional population, Asian journalists are more than the proportion of the Asian population compared to other journalists. Look at the news media, a lot of Asian American anchorwomen.

I think that in my notion, I really, base on this notion, we are all united together and the Asian, rather than the Korean American, Filipino American, and so on, that the participation in activities like the socialization process, the alliance process, we all work together and not by ethnicity, that it’s Asian American.

Bill Tan:

This is a question for the whole panel. It’s very inspiring to hear the stories and actual activities that you’re taking on, for example, the research, the ribbon campaign, and Dr. Kim’s activities. In addition to all the obstacles that you have identified, I think one hindrance is just people’s availability of time and resources personally to invest in civic issues that they are concerned about. I’m just wondering if there are some external resources or best practices that you can share with everyone here if they have their own issues that they want to tackle, and whether or not there are some resources that people can easily access at the very early stage when they want to do something at the civic level and the grassroots level, then maybe eventually moving on to connecting that into the political realm. How do you get started in the very early stage when you have very limited personal resources and time availability?

Ron Kim:

Civic participation is often perceived as a luxury, that a lot of people don’t have the time to do it. However, I know plenty of middle-class friends and middle-class people that work 120 hours a week and they still manage to get out there and show there face to community board meetings and to local community council meetings every month. That is, to me, a very local way of getting involved, going to your local community board meeting and going to community council meeting. If you live in a building or a coop, go to a coop meeting. Get to know your neighbors; get to know your community. That’s as grassroots and local to me as you can get to begin with and then take the next step to get involved with your political local representatives.

Philip Yun:

I think we should raise the confidence level of our youngsters. I went to a seminar where Director S. Chun, who she is with the Department of Labor. Her son was very young, went to elementary school. He was not a good English speaker, the people were discriminating him because he was from Korea. He was crying and went to his American teacher and asked Mam, who am I? The teacher said, why are you asking that question? The young kid asked, who am I, am I American or am I Korean? The American teacher said, you have a double value than Americans, you have two dollars in your pocket and the others only have one. From that moment, that kid had the confidence to do good in school and in his activities. He had the confidence to say I have two dollars and you have one dollar. I hope you understand that concept. Then they will get involved with the community activity more actively. I said this story to my son, and he said, Oh daddy I want to do the yellow ribbon campaign. So Ihave been doing all the folding in this area with one desk and yellow ribbon. My son and daughter always come to give the ribbons to Americans. It’s like making them come out of their current situation to participate in more activities to build confidence.

Audience Member:

What’s the response to the new religious profiling against Asians who happened to be Muslim? I have two instances. In the airport there’s quite a lot of that going on. One based on so much ignorance. People with too much power, with little knowledge. One passenger was going with a book in Urdu. That book was similar to our Reader’s Digest, harmless. That was a red flag, “Oh, this is bomb making things…” It’s in a foreign language they can’t understand. And the poor guy is more than 60 years old. It took awhile before somebody who was knowledgeable who came along and said that this was not bomb making or Al-Qaeda. It’s just a Reader’s Digest, a harmless thing. So that’s one.

Another is that they hassle passengers that are Muslim looking. They checked the wallet and sometimes they’re stealing the money on them. They tell them to look that way, and most of these people, since they’re not so familiar with the street language, they tell them look that way, the third one will flip the money. When they give it back, they go before a judge or police and they ask them did you see who took it, and the poor guy has been had. These are the things going on undercover of this power that they just acquired under this Patriot Act. I mean, these civil liberties are being eroded, and it won’t be long before other Asians will also be targeted. What’s going on, what can these people do?

Dr. Kim:

I think there are two issues, in racial profiling. This is an American culture where most of the White Americans have the tendency to reject newcomers. I guess that’s true among the Whites, for example, the Irish and so on and so forth. 9/11 made it worse actually, you are simply discriminated or profiled because of the way we look. Those racial profiling is so deeply entrenched in society, it’s going to be very, very difficult to dissipate. It has to be done through education and somehow establish intimate relation with them.

The second part is the remicable [sic] one. I’m going to be more partisan. Since the Republican took over, particularly Ashcroft become Attorney General, we had problems. There’s no question about it. A lot of people agree with that. Because of 9/11 and the war in Iraq, some of the people are afraid to express their opinion otherwise you would be treated as unpatriotic, and this is a big problem. The Senate and the Congress are aware of this and are trying to address this problem now. Maybe soon, there might be some legislature that will lighten this a bit in terms of what Ashcroft is doing.

Jae Kim:

Time is up. It’s four o’clock now. I thank you very much for your attentive listening. It’s very lively and educational process. It is wonderful, give them a big hand.

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