Issue 37 • OCTOBER 24, 2022
👋 Good morning, and welcome to The Yappie’s AAPI politics briefing — your guide to the policy news and activism affecting Asian Americans + Pacific Islanders. S
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— Edited by Shawna Chen and Mary Yang
THE BIG STORY
Photo courtesy of Erik Hersman via Flickr.
Election preview: The top issues driving Asian American voters to the polls
More than two-thirds of registered Asian American voters are planning to vote in this year's midterm elections, and projected high voter turnout could swing close races in several battleground districts.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
🗳️ According to the 2022 Asian American Voter Survey
released in July by three nonprofits, health care ranked the highest among issues important to Asian American voters. About 43% of Asian Americans said they “very often” or “somewhat often” worry about not having Medicare to cover their health care costs in retirement. Affordable health care and abortion access are also influencing how Asian Americans intend to vote.
Policy barriers make it difficult for AAPIs and immigrants to access public health insurance, and AAPI immigrants are uninsured at lower rates than non-Hispanic white people.
Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders disproportionately lack health insurance—9.1% of NHPIs are uninsured compared to 6.3% of non-Hispanic whites, per the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health.
86% of respondents said jobs and the economy will play a critical role factoring into how they decide to vote.
In September, unemployment rates ticked down across all racial groups, with Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders at 3.7% and Asians at 2.5% compared to 3.5% for all Americans.
Don’t forget: AAPI women make $0.75 to every dollar a non-Hispanic white man makes, meaning AAPI women—who are overrepresented in frontline and low-wage jobs—lose thousands of dollars of potential income over their lifetimes.
🚨 Crime remains a top issue: 73% of Asian American registered voters worry about experiencing hate crimes, harassment, and discrimination at least “sometimes.” 24% said they worry about it “very often.”
About a third of Asian Americans have changed their daily routine as a result of threat of violence, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey.
Notably, 69% of Asian American registered voters said they favor affirmative action programs designed to help Black people, women, and other minority groups get better access to higher education.
📈 DATA POINT
🔥 About 13.3 million Asian Americans are projected eligible voters this year, up by 9% from 2018, per a Pew Research Center survey released earlier this month. Asian American voters make up 5.5% of all eligible voters in the U.S.
Despite evidence of the power of the Asian American vote as the margin of victory, the two dominant political parties still fail to meaningfully engage voters. The 2022 Asian American Voter Survey found that about 52% of Asian Americans said they hadn’t been contacted by the Democratic Party in the past year, while 60% said they haven’t been contacted by the Republican Party.
🗣️ VOTER VOICES
Diversity in the electorate: In interviews conducted by FiveThirtyEight, five Asian American voters all agreed political parties must do a better job recognizing the range of experiences, values, and beliefs among Asian American communities.
“As a Pakistani American and practicing Muslim, my concerns are probably very different from those of, say, people of Eastern Asian descent ... I wish there was a little bit more recognition of our differences versus just lumping us all under one ‘Asian American’ category,” said Syed Fahim, a Pennsylvania voter who said he plans to support GOP candidates this November.
— By
Wendy Ying Lau
+
Katrina Pham
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AAPI NATION
🔎 CITY SPOTLIGHT
Our round-up of headlines from metro areas across the U.S.
LOS ANGELES — Asian American leaders in Los Angeles are warning political candidates against using their communities to score points, LAist’s Josie Huang reports.
In their words: “Too often, it has been the AAPI community that's been that racial buffer, or that racial scapegoat to inflame and agitate the masses and to get more votes,” John Kim, who leads racial justice advocacy group Catalyst California, told LAist.
SAN FRANCISCO
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NEW YORK CITY — Starting next year, Diwali will be a public school holiday in New York City, CNN’s Zoe Sottile writes. Diwali, a celebration known as the Festival of Lights, is observed by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists and starts on Oct. 24 this year. The move was made possible through legislation by state Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar (D). NYC Mayor Eric Adams called the decision “long overdue.”
ATLANTA
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🎓 NUMBER OF THE WEEK
89.4
That’s the percentage of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander college students who have student debt, according to the nonprofit Student Borrower Protection Center. Last week, the Biden administration formally launched its federal student loan forgiveness application, though an appeals court temporarily halted the broader debt relief plan on Friday.
President Joe Biden speaks about his student debt relief plan alongside Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Oct. 17, 2022. Photo courtesy of the White House.
CATCH UP
Here's what else is happening across America...
A Sikh family from central California was found dead in a rural area of Merced County after they were kidnapped at gunpoint, the Associated Press’ Olga R. Rodriguez and Stefanie Dazio report. Friends and relatives say the American Dream and promise of security in the U.S. were driving forces behind the family’s emigration from India in 2004, writes NBC News’ Sakshi Venkatraman.
Worth noting: Sikh Americans report some of the highest numbers of hate crimes per capita among minority groups in the U.S.
Asian Americans are Texas’ fastest-growing demographic, but 80% of AAPI Texans feel their interests are inadequately represented by the government, Texas Tribune’s Alex Nguyen reports. Asian American Texans say the issues they care about are too often overlooked by Texas lawmakers and political candidates.
Native Hawaiian students and professors at Yale worked to send iwi kūpuna—the human remains of their ancestors—back to Hawai‘i after finding them in the school’s Peabody museum, KITV’s 'A'ali'i Dukelow writes.
Making headlines: Actress Anna May Wong, known as the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, has become the first Asian American featured on U.S. currency.
— By
Preston Lieu
+
Rachel Lee
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