Somewhere Over the Rainbow? Post-Racial & Pan-Racial Politics in the Age of Obama

Taeku Lee Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021

In his acceptance speech on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama took note that “tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this de½ning moment, change has come to America.” On the same night, Obama’s Republican challenger, Senator John McCain, responded similarly: “This is a historic election, and I recognize the signi½cance it has for African- Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight. We both realize that we have come a long way from the injustices that once stained our nation’s reputation.” The next day, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, scholar and critic Michael Eric Dyson declared: “The distance from King’s assas- sination to Obama’s inauguration is a quantum leap of racial progress whose timeline neither cyn- TAEKU LEE is Professor and Chair ics nor boosters could predict. Today is a bench- of Political Science and Professor mark that helps to ful½ll–and rescue–America’s of Law at the University of Cali- democratic reputation.”1 fornia, Berkeley. His publications Looking back through history, few would argue include Mobilizing Public Opinion: Black Insurgency and Racial Attitudes against the view that Obama’s election to the pres- in the Civil Rights Era (2002), Trans- idency represented a rupture from centuries of forming Politics, Transforming Amer- white privilege as a presumption and a reality. ica: The Civic and Political Incorpo- Since the election, a greater diversity of opinion ration of Immigrants in the United has emerged on what the presence of an individual States (with S. Karthick Ramak- of African American descent in the White House rishnan and Ricardo Ramírez, means for the future of race relations and racial 2006), and Why Americans Don’t Join the Party: Race, Immigration, politics in America. One particular view, however, and the Failure (of Political Parties) has had a curiously forceful hold on public dis- to Engage the Electorate (with course. Beside Dyson’s op-ed, Los Angeles Times Zoltan Hajnal, 2011). columnist Shelby Steele wondered aloud, “Does

© 2011 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

136 [Obama’s] victory mean that America is course in 2008 was replete with signs of Taeku Lee now of½cially beyond racism? . . . Doesn’t racial schism. It is dif½cult to reflect on a black in the Oval Of½ce put the lie to Obama’s candidacy and presidency thus both black inferiority and white racism? far without conjuring memories of the Doesn’t it imply a ‘post-racial’ Ameri- Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s controver- ca?”2 Then, in the news coverage follow- sial remarks and Obama’s subsequent ing President Obama’s ½rst State of the “A More Perfect Union” speech; the Union address, msnbc commentator McCain-Palin campaign’s thinly veiled Chris Matthews infamously remarked: allusions to race and patriotism in their “I was trying to think about who he was “America First” sloganeering; the sub- tonight. And, it’s interesting he is post- sequent and ongoing mobilization of

racial, by all appearances. You know, I “Birthers” and “Tea Party Patriots”; the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 forgot he was black tonight for an hour.” cries of “Foul!” to then-Supreme Court In this essay, I examine the continuing nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s support for (if evolving) racial undertones of politics a “wise Latina” standpoint on the bench; as a touchstone for three main points. the “beer summit” between Obama, Vice First, I challenge the emergent under- President Joe Biden, Harvard professor standing that an electoral key to Obama’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cambridge post-racialism is the debt he owes to police of½cer James Crowley; and many white independents, who presumably other instances of racial tension. Post- set aside decades of racially polarized racialism, if the pre½x post- means “coda,” voting and came to his side. Second, “transcendence,” “abnegation,” or “invis- rather than af½rming post-racial aspira- ibility,” is clearly more an aspiration (for tions, I stress the need to redouble our some) than a materially achieved fact. efforts to understand how processes of Why, then, in the face of all the vitriol racialization and “other-ing” are consti- and viperine attacks, do assertions of tuted and how they are shifting in the Obama’s post-racialism persist? My sec- dynamic political moment we now occu- ond reminder is that much of the current py. Third, I propose using the concept of discourse prevails because it is explicitly pan-racialism to think about how individ- framed as non-racial or color-blind, or uals of a shared demographic come to it is contrived in terms of patriotism, engage, politically, as a group. Careful constitutionalism, cronyism, or some consideration of how “group-ness” is other allegedly race-neutral guise. That constituted is essential to conceiving of is, much like the deployment of stereo- a pan-racial politics across the diversity types of black male hypersexuality and of racially and ethnically de½ned groups criminality through images of the fur- in the United States today. loughed felon William Horton in 1988,3 the racial character of Obama’s presiden- I should preface my discussion of the cy survives through framed messages, current discourse on Obama and post- implicit associations, and the semblance racial politics with two reminders. First, of plausible deniability. an abundance of proof suggests that ru- Not everyone will agree that race per- mors of the demise of race are, to sum- sists and that it survives behind a veil of mon Mark Twain, greatly exaggerated. color blindness and post-racialism. Nev- Even during the election campaign and ertheless, in this essay, I consider these in spite of Obama’s best efforts to con- premises to be widely acknowledged in vey a “post-racial” narrative, public dis- order to focus my discussion on a gener-

140 (2) Spring 2011 137 Post-Racial ally hidden transcript in the current Washington Times ran the story “Indepen- & Pan- dialectic of post-racialism. Political dent Voters Turn Angry.”8 A more recent Racial Politics media coverage in the ½rst years of the contribution to this common narrative in the Age Obama presidency has been saturated summarizes it thus: Barack Obama was of Obama with at least two controlling messages: “elected largely by independents and ½rst, that Obama’s policy agenda and moderates who were furious at Republi- governing legitimacy are under siege; cans [and] at the status quo and the deep- and second, that there is a groundswell ly divisive politics practiced by the two of partisan disaffection–large enough main parties”; and the seemingly ephem- to forecast an electoral tsunami in the eral currency of Tea Party activists belies off-year elections–punctuated by the “a much more profound second wave of 9

ascendancy of Tea Party activists and disaffected, independent voters.” Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 other populist uprisings against both the Democratic and Republican parties. What is instructive in these journalis- There is a third, related media message tic diagnostics on independents and the that captures a key dimension of the cur- Obama presidency is the near-total ab- rent dialectic of post-racialism. That is, sence of any consideration of race. Yet nonpartisan (read: white) voters are a when an explicit consideration of race critical segment of the electorate to is absent, an implicit presumption of whom Obama owes his 2008 victory, whiteness (and its attendant privileges) and those voters will bear decisively on often ½lls the space. As I will argue, the his reelection prospects in 2012. During current discourse on independents is no the 2008 campaign and after, the primacy different. In some accounts, the indepen- of electoral place given to independent dents to whom Obama owes his place in voters in mass media coverage could not American political history are represented have been more pronounced. As early by political scientists as ignorant, ½ckle, as January 2008, an article in The New and ideologically centrist. In other popu- York Times carried the headline, “In This lar accounts, they are mutinous, intensely Race, Independents Are the Prize.”4 In anti-government voters typi½ed by self- April, Real Clear Politics ran the article identi½ed Birthers and Tea Party activists. “Obama’s Independent Edge” with this In both cases, the presumption is that punchy subheading: “It’s electability, these voters are white. To challenge that stupid.”5 presumption, Tea Party activists often By May 2009, four months after create media spectacles to demonstrate Obama entered the White House, the that there are persons of color in their Pew Research Center published the in- midst. depth report Independents Take Center Obama’s electoral debt to white inde- Stage in Obama Era.6 As disproportionate- pendents rests on a loosely bundled as- ly white segments of nonpartisans began sociative logic, beginning with the pos- to mobilize protest against Obama, the tulate that the independent vote helped framing of that message shifted, starting usher Obama into the White House. with The Wall Street Journal’s November Attached to this hypothesis are two other 2009 pronouncement, “Obama is Losing suppositions: that independent voters Independent Voters.”7 Following Massa- are white, and that these white voters chusetts Republican Scott Brown’s dark transcended their own racial identity horse Senate victory and the passage of and self-interest because Obama repre- health care reform in April 2010, The sented a post-racial politics. From these

138 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences assumptions, it stands to reason that itly described independents as “an igno- Taeku Lee Obama’s future electoral prospects hinge rant and uninformed sector of the elec- on satisfying white independents and torate highly susceptible to influence by maintaining a resolutely post-racial factors irrelevant to the solemn perfor- political stance. mance of its civic duties.”13 This trim and tidy logic falters in the In these early surveys, presuming that face of some background facts about race, independents were whites raised few nonpartisanship, and voting behavior. eyebrows. The most visible sea change Here I borrow arguments from my forth- with respect to patterns of partisanship coming book with Zoltan Hajnal to un- for non-whites was the realignment of derscore three key points.10 First, the African Americans from belonging to

dynamics of partisanship have been shift- the “party of Lincoln” to strong attach- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 ing rapidly, and whites are no longer a ments to the Democratic Party. Further- disproportionate share of nonpartisan more, non-whites were almost nowhere constituents in America. Second, an argu- to be found in surveys of partisanship. ment can credibly be made that Obama From 1952 to 1972, more than 90 percent owes a greater electoral debt to non-white of all self-identi½ed independents re- voters (partisan and nonpartisan) than sponding to the anes survey were self- he does to white independents. Third, identi½ed whites. The authors of some these ½rst two points can sustain an op- of the most commonly cited studies of posite inference about electoral debts independents simply excluded all non- and post-racial politics: namely, that whites from the analysis. They believed there is a rare opportunity (which is still that any “increase in Independents was not lost, even after the Republican Party’s con½ned to the white population” and gains in the 2010 midterm elections) for that including African Americans would the age of Obama to be a de½ning mo- only cloud the analysis; in other words, ment not for the celebration of a post- the study held that “because blacks are racial politics, but rather for a collective the most disaffected of any major pop- struggle to build a pan-racial politics. ulation group, omitting them also On the ½rst point, in the earliest aca- avoids complications if one examines demic and media polls, independents relationships between alienation and were a relatively minor and (for the most independence.”14 part) ignored segment of the American What has changed about partisanship electorate. The ½rst Gallup polls in the since the 1940s and 1950s? For one, the 1940s show a range of 15 to 20 percent of growing trend of identifying as an inde- Americans identifying as independents, pendent is unmistakable. By the 1970s, and in the early 1950s, according to the upwards of a third of Americans (and in initial American National Election Stud- some years, upwards of 40 percent) self- ies (anes) surveys, about 20 to 25 per- identi½ed as independents, reacting to cent identi½ed as such. Studies of inde- the root question, “Generally speaking, pendents in this period were few and far do you usually think of yourself as a Re- between,11 and political scientists gen- publican, a Democrat, an Independent, erally took a dim view of these voters. or what?” This ½gure is striking not just Philip Converse, for instance, proposed by comparison to earlier ½gures, but also the idea of a “normal vote,” maintaining because it is no longer uncommon for that partisan attachments are linked to self-identi½ed independents to consti- voting behavior.12 V. O. Key more explic- tute a plurality of the electorate.

140 (2) Spring 2011 139 Post-Racial This shift toward nonpartisanship, What, then, about the speci½c postulate & Pan- more likely than not, relates to factors that a groundswell of white independents Racial Politics such as declining levels of political trust, ushered Obama into the White House? in the Age the tendency toward candidate-centered Here, it is instructive to disaggregate the of Obama elections and nonpartisan local elections, claim into two lines of inquiry. First, and the putative rise in party polariza- we can look more closely at the much- tion.15 It is also co-terminous with the vaunted new voters of 2008. According rising backlash against the civil rights to the Current Population Survey (cps) movement and urban uprisings in the Voting and Registration Supplement, 1960s on the one hand, and with the roughly ½ve million new voters were surge of migration to the United States mobilized in 2008. Of these, the cps

after passage of the Hart-Cellar Act of estimates that about two million were Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 1965 on the other. Thus, the dynamics African American, two million Latino, of race and immigration redound to the and six hundred thousand Asian Ameri- rise in nonpartisanship in three ways: can. The cps also ½nds no statistically whites are shifting their partisanship signi½cant new mobilization of whites from Democrat to independent as a re- in 2008. If one simply carries this data sult of ideological ambivalence between through the National Election Pool (nep) their racial conservatism and liberal exit poll estimates of vote share by race views on other political dimensions; –speci½cally, that 95 percent of African African Americans in growing numbers Americans, 67 percent of Latinos, 62 per- are moving to nonpartisanship as they cent of Asian Americans, and 43 percent see their political interests marginalized of whites voted for Obama–one could and their votes taken for granted; and reasonably extrapolate that Obama en- immigrants and second-generation La- joyed the support of almost 80 percent tinos and Asian Americans in surging of these new non-white voters. numbers are remaining unbeholden to Second, to examine the impact of the parties they know little about and that independent vote itself, we can compare do little to reach out to them.16 the partisan breakdown of vote patterns The growing number of Latino and in the 2004 presidential election, when Asian American non-identi½ers in the Democratic candidate John Kerry lost, electorate is part of a broader transfor- to those of 2008. The nep exit poll data mation in the American voting public. here show some basis for the claim that Some ½fty years ago, white voters made Obama owes his victory to (white) in- up 95 percent of the active electorate. By dependents. The two-way split favoring 2008, whites were less than three-quar- the Democratic candidate remained un- ters of the voting population. This con- changed between 2004 and 2008: 89 per- trast over time is even sharper with inde- cent of self-identi½ed Democrats voted pendents. I noted earlier that through for the Democratic candidate in both the early 1970s, whites made up more years. By contrast, a slightly higher pro- than 90 percent of self-identi½ed inde- portion of self-identi½ed independents pendents. According to the 2008 anes reported voting for Obama (52 per- survey, less than 60 percent of all self- cent) than reported voting for Kerry identi½ed independents were white. (49 percent). Thus, as a general feature of nonpartisan- To this contrast in vote patterns, three ship, it is simply mistaken to assume that additional facts should be added. First, independents are a “white” electorate. Obama also saw an equivalent increase

140 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences (in percentage terms) in support among According to this view, the changing Taeku Lee self-identi½ed Republicans, garnering demographic and racial landscape that 9 percent of the Republican vote, while we have observed and experienced in Kerry won only 6 percent of the crossover America since the 1960s led to success vote in 2004. A second key point is that on the national political stage. And that the 3 percent uptick in independents’ success was engendered by a pan-racial support for the Democratic candidate in coalition of African Americans, Latinos, 2008, as compared to 2004, is relatively Asian Americans, and racially sympathet- slender compared to the changes when ic whites. To others, Republican gains voters are differentiated by race rather in the 2010 midterm elections–and the than by partisanship. Support for Obama attendant rejection of Obama’s agenda

in 2008 exceeded support for Kerry in –represent a troubling counterpoint to Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 2004 by 7 percent among African Amer- Obama’s 2008 victory as well as a reprise icans, 9 percent among Latinos, and of the racial backlash that followed the 6 percent among Asian Americans. Final- legislative triumphs of the mid-1960s. As ly, while a majority of all independents we look forward, a regnant concern of reported voting for Obama, that central scholars and political observers alike tendency shifts when independents are will be whether the future is more likely differentiated by race: according to the to look like the election of 2008 or the nep data, only 47 percent of white in- election of 2010. In other words, is the dependents voted for Obama, compared multiracial coalition that was mobilized to roughly 70 percent of non-white in 2008 a harbinger of future election independents. dynamics, or will the ideal of a racially progressive coalition fracture under the These various points on race and in- weight of economic crises, partisan po- dependent voter trends invite caution larization, political distrust, and counter- in drawing conclusions about contem- mobilizing moral and racial panics? porary racial politics and the view that The aspirations we can realistically Obama and the Democrats are particu- glean from the 2008 election depend larly beholden to white independents. crucially on the meaning we attach to Speci½cally, the evidence calls for a closer, Obama’s win. Much of this essay has more careful examination of the way that been devoted to a critical stance toward racial meanings are either sewn into or one interpretation: that Obama’s elec- excised from the facts on the ground of tion signi½es the triumph of post-racial- the 2008 election (and, for that matter, ism. Proposing an alternative meaning, of the 2010 midterm elections). Perhaps of course, requires more than rejecting even more fundamental, the breakdown post-racialism. While a full considera- of voting patterns reveals a dynamic as- tion and defense of pan-racialism are pect in the evolution of democratic pol- beyond the scope of this essay, such a itics in America. The basic ingredients discussion would start by breaking away in the electoral stewpot–that is, who from the prevailing dialectic between a voters are and for whom they are vot- racial and a post-racial politics. The antip- ing–are being cooked anew, with an odes of this dialectic are a deeply par- unmistakable racial and ethnic flavor ticularistic (in some renditions, primor- to the fusion. dial) notion of zero-sum group loyalties For many, the 2008 election was a counterposed against a radically disem- long-anticipated watershed moment. bodied and ahistorical conception of

140 (2) Spring 2011 141 Post-Racial willful color blindness. Pan-racialism immigrant-based ethnic communities & Pan- proposes to overcome this bind through of color. What is unclear is whether Racial Politics a relational and historically embedded emerging groups such as Latinos and in the Age standpoint of mutual recognition, col- Asian Americans will evolve into sig- of Obama lective inclusion, and moral partiality ni½cant players on the electoral stage between all racial and ethnic groups that as Latinos and Asian Americans and, if so, constitute a society. what impact they will have. However, The dialectic between a racial and post- the impulse to deploy conventional racial politics is analogous to the opposi- categories and modes of thinking ham- tion in ethics between the standpoint of pers our ability to understand dynamic a subjective and narrowly material form changes in our conceptual tools for study-

of ethical egoism and that of an impartial ing both politics in general and racial Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 “ideal observer” (à la Kant, Rawls, or politics more narrowly. some version of agent-neutral consequen- Politically, our thinking is anchored tialism). Breaking free from the dialectic by our conventions about partisanship in ethics requires a defense of moral par- and its central place in American poli- tiality, whether it is steeped in the tradi- tics. Social scientists Donald Kinder and tion of analytic philosophy17 or in a rela- David Sears, for instance, note that “party tional “ethic of care.”18 The parallel be- identi½cation remains the single most tween race and ethics underscores why important determinant of individual post-racialism is so attractive in some voting decisions.”19 Yet as already noted quarters: there is a reigning fear that a ra- above in this essay and elsewhere, non- cial politics behind the 2008 election im- partisanship (and not just Tea Party ac- plies a president and a presidency bound tivists) is a growing force.20 Moreover, by particularism and drawn into modes this groundswell of nonpartisan discon- of political clientelism. The analogy also tent is transpiring together with (and suggests that pan-racialism might be a perhaps in response to) a full-blown normatively desirable and defensible al- political polarization at the level of ternative to racial and post-racial politics. partisan elites.21 To return to the question of what the Among emerging groups such as Lati- future of electoral politics will bring, the nos and Asian Americans, nonpartisan- extent to which race is central is especial- ship is especially widespread, and inde- ly pressing given current and future pat- pendents are not the only nonpartisan terns of demographic change. A remix of group of relevance. The relationship of electoral dynamics–who votes, whether Latinos and Asian Americans to the pre- their choices will be aligned to political dominant two-party system in the Unit- parties, and whether parties will drum ed States underscores a pivotal point: up the organizational resources and cul- the party identi½cation scale that most tural competency to mobilize new voters political scientists continue to use (rang- –most likely will continue. Most promi- ing from strong Democrats on one end nent among the reasons for this predic- to strong Republicans on the other, with tion are the enduringly high rates of in- independents at the midpoint) appears migration from Latin America, Asia, and, increasingly irrelevant to many Ameri- to lesser degrees, the Caribbean and Afri- cans. It turns out that modal Latino or ca. Moreover, increasing rates of racial Asian American survey respondents sim- exogamy and mixed race identi½cation ply do not know how to place themselves are accompanying the expansion of on such a scale. “Non-identi½ers” (those

142 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences who respond to survey measures of party research on partisanship presumes a Taeku Lee identi½cation with “I don’t know,” “no binary outcome variable whereby Lati- preference,” “none of the above,” or “I nos and Asians will either identify pre- just don’t think in terms of parties”) are dominantly with the Democratic Party more than one out of every three Latinos on the basis of group attachments, as or Asian Americans. When self-identi½ed African Americans have since the civil independents are added to this group, rights era, or split more evenly between nonpartisans comprise more than half parties on the basis of nonracial inter- of all respondents in the 2006 Latino ests and ideologies, as whites are pre- National Survey (lns) and the 2008 Na- sumed to do. Similarly, scholars of polit- tional Asian American Survey (naas).22 ical participation often imagine that La-

Thus, we limit our ability to accurately tinos and Asians will either be spurred Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 study and fully understand the electoral into action by their racial group con- changes afoot by adhering to well-worn sciousness–a dynamic found among ways of categorizing and conceptualiz- African Americans–or brought into pol- ing politics. itics through their socioeconomic posi- The same can be said of well-worn tion, civic skills, or the mobilizing force ways of categorizing and conceptualiz- of organizations–as is found to be the ing race. In the domain of racial politics, case for whites. This binary logic further a further anchor that moors our thinking extends to debates over coalition poli- is the continued predominance of what tics, with scholars seeking to discover Juan Perea termed a “Black/White bina- whether Latinos and Asians will form ry paradigm.” Here, the accuracy of the multiracial coalitions with African Amer- term paradigm–at least in the Kuhnian icans or pan-ethnic coalitions across con- sense–is debatable, and Perea’s de½ni- stituent ethnic groups, or whether racial tion of it as “the conception that race in and ethnic markers will recede in signi½- America consists, either exclusively or cance and cede to ideological, issue-spe- primarily, of only two constituent ra- ci½c, or context-speci½c determinants of cial groups, the Black and the White,” intergroup conflict and cooperation. already feels dated.23 Yet “black” and In conceiving of the future of racial “white” continue to stand in as met- politics in these familiar, if problematic, onyms for two distinct models of poli- dialectical terms, scholars and political tics. “Black” represents an archetype observers presume that demographic la- for a distinctive group politics based in bels such as “Latino” and “Asian Ameri- racial self-de½nition and solidarity.24 can” imply a prima facie basis for group “White” represents a duality: of simul- politics.27 This premise, which I refer to taneously being nowhere and everywhere, as the “identity-to-politics link,” has a de½ned in direct opposition to the experi- solid empirical foundation for African ence of African Americans and accepted Americans but is decidedly less certain without interrogation as the “null” hy- for other racially and (pan)ethnically pothesis or “normal” state of affairs.25 de½ned groups. We cannot assume that To consider the role of Latinos and Latinos and Asian Americans are func- Asian Americans in the future of racial tionally isomorphic either to African politics, we might begin with a question Americans (for whom a strong racial posed by historian Gary Okihiro: “Is group identity and corresponding politics Yellow [or Brown] Black or White?”26 are expected) or to whites (for whom the Much of the extant political science absence of such identity-based politics,

140 (2) Spring 2011 143 Post-Racial or the presence of undifferentiated pro- change and growing complexity–includ- & Pan- cesses of assimilation into “whiteness,” ing the present times–often represent Racial Politics is expected). critical junctures for rede½ning existing in the Age group boundaries and intergroup rela- of Obama Discerning whether we are headed for tions. Furthermore, Asian Americans a racial, post-racial, or pan-racial elector- represent a prima facie “most different” al future will require better theoretical case to African Americans. While both frameworks for race and racial politics. I groups share the joint experience of ex- propose, as one point of departure toward ternally perceived homogeneity, inter- such improved frameworks, an examina- nally lived heterogeneity, and a resulting tion of several speci½c and conceptually history of marginalization and struggle,

separable processes that are often bun- their racial positions are distinct. The Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 dled together when identity categories “relative valorization” of Asian Ameri- are linked to group politics. These pro- cans as “model minorities” is a relation- cesses include racial classi½cation, cate- al standpoint vis-à-vis African Ameri- gory identi½cation, and group conscious- cans: in the public imaginary, Asians are ness, as well as two aspects of collective praised for exhibiting putatively model action: venue selection and coordinat- behavior relative to other racial minori- ing choice. ties, who are supposedly less norm-con- In what follows, I describe each of these forming and virtuous in their behavior. processes and illustrate their potential Classi½cation. To determine whether a utility by examining their speci½city to coherent and politically signi½cant con- one emerging group: Asian Americans. ception of pan-ethnic “group-ness” exists For most informed observers, the idea for Asians in the United States, we must of a politics of Asian Americans as Asian ½rst more fully understand how a society Americans may seem like a nonstarter. de½nes, categorizes, and counts its popu- While Asians in America may commonly lation by identity categories. Our current be de½ned under a single, “pan-ethnic” pentachromatic classi½cation system– rubric, beneath that thin fascia of social per the 1977 Of½ce of Management and convention lies a remarkable “heteroge- Budget (omb) “Directive 15” and, before neity, hybridity, and multiplicity” that that, the 1965 Equal Employment Oppor- de½es simple categorization.28 Further- tunity Commission (eeoc) “eeo-1” form more, while the sheer growth in numbers –is generally adopted and replicated in of Asian Americans is dramatic and un- surveys and other modes of data collec- likely to plateau, a disproportionately tion without much question or consterna- low number (slightly more than one in tion. Yet even a cursory glance over time three Asian adults in the United States) reveals the often contested and radically are active voters. As mentioned above, unstable nature of the identity categories nonpartisanship is pervasive among we use to de½ne a population in racial Asian Americans as well. and ethnic terms. In short, those catego- Yet precisely because the idea of a ries are not foreordained but wrought group-based politics for Asian Amer- through a combination of social, eco- icans qua Asian Americans seems in- nomic, legal, and political processes.29 choate, and perhaps even untenable, Americans of Asian origin never ½t Asian Americans represent an especially comfortably into the country’s initial important test case for theories of racial racial categorization of Caucasian/white, group identity. For one, periods of rapid Negro/black, and American Indian.

144 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences Consequently, the racial classi½cations grounded in science than any other pop- Taeku Lee assigned to them are variable and often ulation characteristic measured by the arbitrary. Here, two pivotal legal deci- nation’s statistical agencies.”30 sions are instructive. In the 1922 case Category Identi½cation. The second pro- Takao Ozawa v. United States, the U.S. cess that links demographic identity cat- Supreme Court ruled that a person could egories to a group-based politics is the not be deemed white by virtue of light degree to which individuals identify with complexion because individuals of Jap- the racial classi½cations assigned to them. anese origin belonged to an “unassimil- The mere contrivance of racial categories able race.” Three months later, in an is no guarantee that the individuals to apparent reversal of its decision, the whom the categories are meant to apply

Court ruled in United States v. Bhagat will accept them. The intrinsic distinction Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 Singh Thind that, despite the anthropo- between how individuals think of them- logical consensus of the day, persons selves (identi½cation) and how those from the Indian subcontinent were to individuals might be de½ned by others be classi½ed as Caucasian; a person of (ascription) may seem like a mere theo- Asian-Indian origin, however, could not retical possibility, but that possibility be deemed white because such a classi- is likely to be quite palpable for certain ½cation violated “the understanding groups, such as new immigrants who of the common man.” come with no priors on the grammar Our present system of racial classi½- of race in the United States. cation is no less mired in contradictions. The non-automaticity of category iden- The most recent decennial census forms, ti½cation is visible in the responses that for instance, imply that some populations Asian Americans give in opinion surveys. de½ned by national or territorial origin– Consider the category “Asian American,” Asian-Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japa- the pan-ethnic rubric that is commonly nese, Korean, and Vietnamese–are sep- ascribed to U.S. residents of Asian ori- arate races (categorically equivalent to gin. Respondents to the 2008 naas were “white” and “black, African American or given the prompt, “[P]eople of Asian Negro”), while others–Mexican, Puerto descent in the U.S. use different terms Rican, and Cuban, for example–share a to describe themselves,” and then asked single “ethnicity.” Moreover, in 1997, the how they thought of themselves.31 Only omb revised its Directive 15, drawing the about one in eight respondents self-iden- boundaries of Asia (for the purposes of ti½ed primarily as “Asian American,” racial classi½cation) between the Asian with roughly 70 percent preferring their subcontinent and the Middle East; ac- ethnic/national origin group (for exam- cordingly, individuals with “origins in ple, either “Filipino” or “Filipino-Amer- any of the original peoples of Europe, ican”). By contrast, in the 2006 lns, the Middle East, or North Africa” are the proportion of respondents who self- de½ned as white. As former director of identi½ed as “Hispanic” and “Latino” the U.S. Census Bureau Kenneth Prewitt was roughly equal to self-identi½cation laments, “[T]he racial measurement sys- with national origin descriptors (at just tem is now vastly more complicated and below 40 percent).32 multidimensional than anything preced- Group Consciousness. A third key com- ing it, and there is currently no prospect ponent of a racial group-based politics is of returning to something simpler.” a shared sense of commonality and col- He adds that this system is “less well lective interests. This process potential-

140 (2) Spring 2011 145 Post-Racial ly is decisive because not all individuals and ideologues, to be politically active, & Pan- and groups who accept an identity label and to perceive political commonalities Racial Politics ascribed to them will agree about what with Latinos, African Americans, and in the Age that label means to their subjective sense other non-whites. of Obama of self. These categories may, on the one Group-Based Coordination. A ½nal pre- hand, represent nothing more than ana- condition to group politics is coordinat- lytic truths or linguistic conventions. Yet ing collective action itself. The road from on the other hand, they may embody an af½nity to action is often winding and intimate connectivity among individu- bumpy, if connected at all. Collective als. Here again, it is instructive to con- action does not materialize spontaneous- sider immigrants and their offspring as ly, even in the presence of agreement

newcomers to American society. An im- about the applicability of group labels Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 migrant from El Salvador may choose to and solidarity among those to whom the self-identify as “Latino” as a learned re- labels are attached. Moreover, there are sponse, taking cues from his or her rela- multiple aspects of choice that require tives, friends, coworkers, or neighbors. coordination. Ab initio, those who intend Yet it hardly follows that the individual to act together in the best interests of the would feel a sense of solidarity or com- group must ½rst decide (or at least accept mon destiny with others who have also as a premise) that politics is a meaning- learned to self-identify as Latino. ful venue for the pursuit of the group’s We have seen that few Asian Ameri- interests. Despite clear and strong civic cans identify primarily with the prevail- norms of participation and the historical ing pan-ethnic descriptor. But do they memory of empowerment through col- share a greater sense of common pur- lective movements, it is still far from ob- pose or collective consciousness, not- vious that racialized groups–especially withstanding their attachment to labels? when social stigma and material priva- naas respondents were asked about tion factor into that racialization–are their sense of “linked fate” or, more inclined to pursue recognition and reme- speci½cally, whether “what happens dy through politics rather than the collec- generally to other groups of Asians in tive pursuit of economic advancement, this country affects what happens in cultural maintenance, bonding social [their] life.”33 In this sense of “group- capital, community self-determination, ness,” the picture is mixed: while close or some other mode of group-based en- to 40 percent of respondents agreed that gagement. For immigrant-based groups their personal lot was at least somewhat such as Latinos and Asian Americans, connected to the fate of other Asians, the question of where to direct collective only 9 percent reported a strong connec- efforts is likely to be especially pressing. tion. By contrast, nearly three out of For Asian Americans, survey data sug- every four African Americans surveyed in gest that the pursuit of common in-group the 1996 National Black Election Study interests does not necessarily take place reported at least a “somewhat strong” in the political arena. Respondents to the sense of linked fate; close to 37 percent 2008 naas were asked, “what, if any- felt a “strong” connection. At the same thing, do Asians in the United States time, Asian Americans who feel a strong share with one another?” Of four pos- sense of collective consciousness are sible bases for commonality given–“a politically distinct from those who do common race,” “a common culture,” not: they are more likely to be partisans “common economic interests,” and

146 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences “common political interests”– the high- given election, 80 to 90 percent of indi- Taeku Lee est proportion of respondents believed viduals within this demographic identify that Asian Americans shared a common with the Democratic Party and vote, often culture (almost two-thirds) while the in lockstep, with the party’s political lowest proportion (under 40 percent) candidates. believed that politics was a unifying di- For Asian Americans, by contrast, mension of the Asian American expe- there are several interrelated and unfold- rience. At the same time, respondents ing narratives of choice. One recurring with a strong linked-fate orientation theme is the relatively high proportion were also signi½cantly more likely to who are unattached to either of the two believe that Asians shared all four foun- major parties that de½ne U.S. politics;

dations: more than half of Asian Amer- yet there is a discernible trend toward Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 icans with a strong linked-fate orienta- forming partisan ties the longer one is tion were likely to view Asians as sharing in the United States. Further, there has collective political interests, while only been a trend over the last several presi- one in three who rejected the linked- dential elections toward Asian American fate hypothesis viewed Asian Americans voters crystallizing as a strongly Demo- as having common political interests. cratic segment of the electorate. A sec- Beyond the choice of politics as the ond theme is the still relatively low pro- proper venue for collective pursuits, portions that vote; however, the 2008 group-based coordination requires election shows (as with Latinos and agreement over what to do. That is, a African Americans) the capacity for a given group of individuals originating sizable and decisive mobilization. A from various countries in Asia may be third, related theme is the continuing given the common label “Asian Ameri- reluctance (for the most part) of the can,” may self-identify with that descrip- majority of candidates and party elites tor, may feel a sense of solidarity with to view Asian Americans as a segment their sisters and brothers in that identity of the electorate that can be mobilized; category, and may even agree that poli- nevertheless, those Asian Americans tics is the proper place for their racial who report being contacted by a party projects. Nonetheless, there are many or candidate are signi½cantly more likely aspects of collective choice, such as to be voters. On the last point, the 2008 whether to focus one’s politics at the naas data show that respondents who federal, state and local, or transnational were mobilized by a party or candidate level; whether to form a partisan bloc were more than twice as apt to be a “like- vote or a less partisan swing vote; or ly voter” than those who were not. More- whether to influence policy agendas by over, the campaign effort to contact po- engaging in the electoral arena, gaining tential voters had a clear substitution ef- access through campaign contributions, fect: it increased support for Obama and or building a strong “civil society” of decreased the proportion of undecided community-based organizations, volun- voters. tary associations, and advocacy groups. These key steps in collective choice are This essay is somewhat of a two-step often presumed to materialize in the with two left feet. One foot is tapping case of African American politics, where out the rhythm of the commonly held the modes and levels of political partic- view that the 2008 election heralded the ipation are multiple and where, for a inception of a post-racial era of electoral

140 (2) Spring 2011 147 Post-Racial politics and that Obama owes a primary pursuit of common goals as well as on & Pan- political debt to white independent vot- the collective choice itself (to be swing Racial Politics ers who abandoned their racial loyalties voters, bloc voters, or non-voters; to in the Age to make history. Against this narrative, engage in elections, community activism, of Obama I have suggested that Obama’s electoral or some other mode of engagement; and success is also the result of the mobiliza- so on). To animate these steps, I have tion of partisan and nonpartisan voters sampled some beats from the politics of of color. Moreover, the current political Asian Americans to see how they jive (or moment might just as well be the har- fail to jive) with this identity-to-politics binger to a more pan-racial, not post- link. In doing so, I hope not only to have racial, era of politics. Along the way, I illuminated why the politics of a group

have also highlighted several ways in such as Asian Americans remains distinct Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 which nonpartisanship is increasingly from that of both African Americans and multiracial, multifaceted, and politi- whites, but also to have uncovered the cally consequential. processes that must be activated to solid- Meanwhile, the other foot is tapping to ify a more (or less) group-based politics. the rhythm of an important background Ultimately, both feet in this polyrhyth- question: that is, will demographically mic dance come together on two simple de½ned populations come to do politics yet crucial points. First, prevailing beliefs together–and if so, when and how? about post-racialism, nonpartisanship, Here, one must be careful of a disruptive and their de½ning effects on the political counter tempo: the tendency to look at moment are aspirations and assumptions emerging, immigrant-based groups such as often as they are established facts. To as Latinos and Asian Americans through accept them is to permit tacitly an act of the lens of African American or white collective obscurantism. Second, what politics. A group basis to politics is con- many have called the “age of Obama” tingent, not on other groups’ political is neither a predestined outcome nor a narratives, but on the convergence of material fact. It is a public construction multiple processes: namely, the contes- whose form will depend on how we in- tation and construction of racial and terpret ongoing events and determine ethnic descriptors that align with how which future (racial, post-racial, or pan- a population thinks of itself; a shared racial) we struggle for. Barack Obama, sense of common destiny and collective irrespective of his preferences on the solidarity within a given population, matter, stands as a metonym for race de½ned in ethnic and racial terms; and relations in the twenty-½rst century. coordination on the ½tting venue for the

endnotes 1 Michael Eric Dyson, “Race, Post Race,” Los Angeles Times, November 5, 2008. 2 Shelby Steele, “America’s Post-Racial Promise,” Los Angeles Times, November 5, 2008. 3 See, for example, Tali Mendelberg, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001). 4 Jeff Zeleny, “In This Race, Independents Are the Prize,” The New York Times, January 6, 2008. 5 John Avlon, “Obama’s Independent Edge,” Real Clear Politics, April 29, 2008.

148 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences 6 The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Independents Take Center Stage in Taeku Lee Obama Era: Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987–2009 (Pew Research Center, Survey Reports, May 21, 2009). 7 Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen, “Obama is Losing Independent Voters,” The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2009. 8 Jennifer Haberkorn, “Independent Voters Turn Angry,” The Washington Times, April 2, 2010. 9 Tom Foreman, “The Sweep: Vikings, Voters, and the Charge of the Militant Middle,” cnn.com, September 29, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/09/29/foreman .militant.middle/index.html (accessed October 3, 2010). 10 Zoltan Hajnal and Taeku Lee, Why Americans Don’t Join the Party: Race, Immigration, and the Failure (of Political Parties) to Engage the Electorate (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 2011). Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 11 See, for example, Samuel Eldersveld, “The Independent Vote: Measurement, Charac- teristics, and Implications for Party Strategy,” American Political Science Review 46 (3) (1952): 732–753. 12 Philip E. Converse, “The Concept of a Normal Vote,” in Elections and the Political Order, ed. Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes (New York: Wiley, 1966). 13 V. O. Key, The Responsible Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting, 1936–1960 (New York: Vintage, 1966), 92. 14 Bruce E. Keith, David B. Magleby, Candice J. Nelson, Elizabeth Orr, Mark C. Westlye, and Raymond E. Wol½nger, The Myth of the Independent Voter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 32. 15 Morris Fiorina with Samuel Abrams and Jeremy Pope, Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America (New York: Pearson Longman, 2005); Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 2006). 16 Hajnal and Lee, Why Americans Don’t Join the Party. 17 See, for example, Samuel Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions (Oxford: Claren- don Press, 1982); and Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 18 See, for example, Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982); Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 19 Donald Kinder and David Sears, “Public Opinion and Political Action,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. 2, ed. Gardner Lindzey and Eliot Aronson (New York: Random House, 1985), 686. 20 Hajnal and Lee, Why Americans Don’t Join the Party. 21 Fiorina with Abrams and Pope, Culture War?; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal, Polarized America. 22 Luis Fraga, John A. Garcia, Rodney E. Hero, Michael Jones-Correa, Valerie Martinez- Ebers, and Gary M. Segura, Latino Lives in America: Making it Home (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010); Janelle Wong, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, Taeku Lee, and Jane Junn, “Race-Based Considerations and the 2008 National Asian American Survey,” Du Bois Review 6 (2009): 219–238. 23 Juan F. Perea, “The Black and White Binary Paradigm of Race: Exploring the ‘Normal Science’ of American Racial Thought,” California Law Review 85 (1997): 1219.

140 (2) Spring 2011 149 Post-Racial 24 See, for example, Richard D. Shingles, “Black Consciousness and Political Participation: & Pan- The Missing Link,” American Political Science Review 75 (1981): 76–91; Lawrence Bobo and Racial Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., “Race, Sociopolitical Participation, and Black Empowerment,” Politics in the Age American Political Science Review 84 (1990): 377–393; Michael C. Dawson, Behind the Mule: of Obama Race and Class in African-American Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); Tommie Shelby, We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Cam- bridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005). 25 See, for example, Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); Ian Haney López, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996). 26 Gary Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/140/2/136/1829999/daed_a_00083.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 University of Washington Press, 1994). David Hollinger takes a novel approach to such questions by proposing that we shift the referent from the experience of African Ameri- cans vis-à-vis the “one-drop rule” to the experience of white domination vis-à-vis the “one-hate rule”; David Hollinger, “The One Drop Rule and the One Hate Rule,” Dædalus 134 (Winter 2005): 18–28. 27 Taeku Lee, “From Shared Demographic Categories to Common Political Destinies? Im- migration and the Link from Racial Identity to Group Politics,” Du Bois Review 4 (2008): 433–456. 28 Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities (Philadel- phia: Temple University Press, 1992); Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cul- tural Politics (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996). 29 See, for example, Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000); Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). 30 Kenneth Prewitt, “Race in the 2000 Census: A Turning Point,” in The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals, ed. Joel Perlmann and Mary Waters (New York: Russell Sage, 2003), 357, 360. 31 For this and in remaining sections, the survey data are from the 2008 naas, the ½rst nationally representative sample survey of the political behavior and attitudes of Asian Americans. It includes 5,159 interviews conducted between August 18, 2008, and October 29, 2008. The primary sample consisted of the six largest Asian national-origin groups (Asian-Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese), and respondents were interviewed in English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Japa- nese, and Hindi. See Wong, Ramakrishnan, Lee, and Junn, “Race-Based Considerations.” 32 Some of this difference is due to the relative proportion in the two samples of foreign- born respondents; 88 percent of the weighted sample of the naas is foreign-born, compared to 67 percent of the lns. 33 Dawson, Behind the Mule.

150 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences