The invisible success story.

As businessmen, professionals, and scientists, Asian-Americans do very well indeed,as an attention-getting minority group, they're underachievers.

There's an enormous untapped reservoir of energy and money here for whichever political party notices them first

ASK MOST AMERICANS to name a half-dozen famous Asian-Americans, and you'll probably come up with a list that includes television news personality Connie Chung and fictional detective Charlie Chan. The young tennis star Michael Chang was briefiy famous this spring; readers of the business pages would add An Wang to the list, while arts and architecture types would mention 1. M. Pei, 'Yo Yo Ma, and Seiji Ozawa. A handful of politically active Californians might mention the state's Secretary of State, March Fong Eu, onetime United States Senator S. I. Hayakawa, and Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Woo. But in any case, the lists will be short.

That may change in the next few years as demographers and political analysts focus on the increased importance of Americans of Asian descent. Whether they have been involved in raising money for their favorite candidates or lobbying for particular pieces of legislation, Asian-Americans have demonstrated an ability to operate within the political system. The question is whether their political clout will ever reach its potential, as differences within the community and a surprisingly low level of electoral activity limit their impact.

Americans of Asian descent constituted only about 1.6 per cent of the nation's total population in 1980, but they are the fastest-growing minority in the country. Numbering 3.5 million when the decade began, they are projected to number 6.5 million in next year's census. Like Jews, Asian-Americans are concentrated in a few areas-particularly the West Coast and Hawaii, but also large cities like New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. They are emerging as a potentially crucial electoral force in part because of their growing political importance in California, the nation's most populous state and the possessor of 47 Electoral College votes.

The 1980 census identified more than a dozen Asian groups in the United States, ranging ftom Chinese and Japanese to Hmong and Cambodian. Americans of Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino ancestry, however, accounted for about two-thirds of all Asian-Americans. Taken as a group, America's Asian population is relatively prosperous and well-educated. Three-quarters are highschool graduates, more than one-third have four or more years of college (double the national average), and almost 30 per cent are in managerial and professional occupations. The Asian-American median family income of $23,095 in 1980 was $3,000 more than the national figure.

But aggregate figures hide a great diversity. The Japanese, one of the first Asian groups to come to this country, are older and have both more schooling and a higher median income than other Asian-Americans. In fact, they exceed the national average in virtually every category. This, no doubt, has given rise to the stereotype of AsianAmericans as well-to-do, Ivy League professionals. Recent immigrant groups are not so fortunate. The median age of Vietnamese-Americans (21.5 years) is far below the national average (30.0 years), and more than a third of Vietnamese families in the United States live in poverty.

It is not surprising that there is a certain uncomfortable relationship between successful Asians and those of little schooling and wealth, as well as among various traditionally antipathetic nationalities. Well-to-do, assimilated AsianAmericans fear that California's Asian gangs reflect poorly on them, and some Chinese and Koreans have not completely overcome the dislike their families have held for the Japanese.

Last year, for example, the Los Angeles Commission on Human Relations was called in to investigate heightened tensions at Gardena High School. Gardena traditionally has bcen a heavily Japanese area, but recently there has been an influx of Koreans. A number of fights had broken out between the two ethnic groups, and, according to one commission staffer, "the Korean students told the Japanese that they deserved to be beaten up because of what Japan had done to Korea." For their part, the Japanese students, most of whom were born in this country, appeared to look down on the Koreans because of their difficulty with English and lack of familiarity with American culture.

Besides being a heterogeneous group, Asian-Americans are very different ftom other American minorities. Their voting preferences resemble the white (Anglo) electorate's, even if their rate of participation is far lower. In addition, there are issues, such as anti-Asian violence, educational quotas, and redress and reparations for those interned during World War II that unite them. And there is the most obvious common denominator: race. "When I walk into a Chinese laundry or speak before a Filipino group and look out at the faces, there is a sense of immediate identification," says Grant Ujifusa, a third-generation Japanese-American and co-author of The Almanac of A merican Politics.

IT IS VERY DIFFICULT to get entirely satisfactory data on Asian-American political behavior, primarily because polls of the electorate include so few Asian-Americans. The data that exist, however, strongly suggest that this group is Democratic on paper but Republican in practice.

A 1988 NBC News/ Wall Street Journal election-day exit poll found the Democratic Party with an eight-percentagepoint advantage in registration among Asian-Americans, but found the Democrats and Republicans evenly split in party identification. Self-identification is a far better measure of a voter's true preferences, since registration is usually the last thing people change. In both registration and self-idcntification, Asian-Americans are far closer to white nonHispanic than to black or Hispanic political preferences.

Furthermore, Asian-Americans' support for Republican presidential candidates exceeds their level of GOP identification. ABC News's election-nigbt exit poll showed George Bush beating Michael Dukakis 54 per cent to 44 per cent among Asian-Americans. In contrast, two out of three Hispanics and nine out of ten blacks voted for Dukakis.

Part of Bush's electoral success among Asian-Americans was tied to the group's general satisfaction with the direction of the country during the Reagan Administration. A substantial 55 per cent of Asian-Americans told NBC/Wall Street Journal exit-pollsters that they approved of the President's performance, while only 29 per cent disapproved. In addition, 53 per cent of Asian-Americans said the country was moving in the right direction, while only 39 per cent said it was on the wrong track. The electorate overall bad a markedly different view, with a plurality, 48 per cent, saying the country was on the wrong track.

Of course, the Asian-American preference for Republican candidates did not begin last November. The Los Angeles Times found Ronald Reagan winning over 70 per cent of the Asian-American vote in 1984, compared with 58 per cent of the vote overall. And combined responses from surveys conducted in California throughout 1988 by the Houston-based Tarrance & Associates found that the incumbent Republican Senator Pete Wilson, who was seeking re-election, had a ten-percentage-point margin over the Democratic challenger, Lieutenant Governor Leo McCarthy, among Americans of Asian ancestry. Wilson apparently made points with the state's Asians by his support for redress and the appointment of a Chinese-American to the federal bench.

Other California surveys offer further evidence of the Republican trend among Asian-Americans. ABC News's exit poll in the state showed the Bush-Quayle ticket carrying 61 per cent of Asian-Americans, almost ten points better than the ticket did among all state voters. According to a 1984 survey of California minorities by California Institute of Technology professors Bruce Cain and Roderick Kiewiet, two-thirds of the state's Asians voted for Ronald Reagan against Walter Mondale in 1984. Only 6 per cent ofthe state's blacks and 36 per cent of the state's Hispanics also voted for another four years of Reaganism (the President carried the state with 58 per cent).

These results are particularly important because AsianAmericans constitute about 7 per cent of California's total population, and the 1990 census is expected to show them as the state's second largest minority (behind Hispanics but ahead of blacks). That is surely why the state parties are looking for innovative ways to attract Asians. "We've had enormous success at going to citizenship swearing-in ceremonies and registering voters," says John Hoy, executive director of the California Republican Party. "We have been particularly successful with new Vietnamese citizens."

There are, to be sure, political differences among AsianAmericans. The Chinese appear to be more Republican, while the Filipinos are more Democratic. But as a group, when Asian-Americans vote in this country, they behave much more like white non-Hispanic voters than like blacks or Hispanics. If that trend continues, they could help offset Democratic electoral gains in California among more traditional "minority" groups.

WHILE ASIAN-AMERiCAN preferences are much closer to those of the country as a whole than to those of other minorities, their extent of participation is far below the national average. In their 1987 California study "Political Participation of Ethnic Minorities in the 1980s," Carole Unlaner, Bruce Cain, and Rodney Kiewiet found that Asian-Americans and Hispanics trailed white non-Hispanics and blacks noticeably both in registration and in actual voting. Americans of Asian descent were also far less willing than other minorities to display a poster or sticker on their cars, a frequently used measure of political involvement.

Two other recent studies-one of Asian-Americans in selected areas in Los Angeles and another of Japanese and Chinese in selected areas in San Francisco-found registration of Asian-Americans to be only a fraction of registration of all Americans. The Los Angeles study, conducted by the UCLA Pacific American Voters Project, found about 43 per cent of Japanese and 35.5 per cent of Chinese registered, with other groups like Samoans (28.5 per cent), Koreans (13.0 per cent), and Vietnamese (4.1 per cent) trailing. The San Francisco study found even lower rates of registration for Japanese-Americans and Chinese-Americans.

Normally, thc rate of voting increases with increased amounts of education and income, but Uhlaner, Cain, and Kiewiet found no such trend among Asian-Americans. In the Los Angeles/UCLA study, South Pasadena's AsianAmericans had a much higher mean family .income ($32,000, compared to $27,000), a higher proportion of collegeeducated, and a greater percentage of professionals and managers than the overall population of South Pasadena, but their registration rate was only slightly more than onehalf the total population's rate. In other words, increased income, education, and status among Asian-Americans has not led to dramatically increased electoral participation, probably because many Asian-American immigrants have limited facility with English, an incomplete understanding of the American political system, and relatively little political socialization in mass democracy. "Some Asians ignore politics because it doesn't fit with the Confucian view of what is important. To others, it's simply a matter of someone's mother saying, 'Don't waste your time in politics. Go to dental school,'" says Grant Ujifusa.

But while Asian-Americans have low registration rates, it would be a mistake to assume that they are invisible politically. "If you look just at voting, you'd say Asian-Americans don't care about politics. That simply isn't true. Look at the newspapers they read and at their organizations, and you'll see exceptional interest," says Don Nakanishi, associate director of UCLA's Asian-American Studies Center.

Asian-American political activism has so far focused on a small number of issues of great importance to the community. Last year, for example, the Japanese-American community lobbied extensively to ensure that Congress would pass and the President would sign redress and reparations legislation, Beyond that, Asian-Americans have been involved in the debate over international trade, U.S.-Taiwan relations, and bilingual education.

The financial success of some Asian-Americans is also thrusting them into politics. A Democratic fundraiser in California last September reportedly raised over $200,000 from forty Chinese-Americans, and S.B. Woo, the Delaware lieutenant governor who ran for the Senate (unsuccessfully) as a Democrat, raised a majority of his funds among Chinese-Americans. Other candidates on both sides of the political aisle also raised campaign funds ftom Americans of Asian descent,

One congressman, Stephen Solarz (D., N.Y.), has made particular headway among Filipinos. "The Filipino community really loves him for what he has done in the preand post-Marcos era," says Democratic political consultant Peter Fenn of Fenn & King Communications. Solarz has a national direct-mail program to all sorts of groups, of which Filipinos are one. "The Filipino response has exceeded our wildest expectations in terms of number of respondents and amount of money coming in," notes Fenn.

Since Asian-Americans are contributing to campaigns, it's not surprising that some of them have become top fundraisers. Democrat Maria L. Hsia, for example, who immigrated ftom Taiwan less than two decades ago, was described by the Los Angeles Times magazine as "at the center of a predominantly Asian group of fundraisers rapidly emerging as a major force in the hotly competitive Los Angeles political-money scene."

RECENT SURVEYS suggest that Asian-Americans are no different from other voters when it comes to issues: they respond to particular questions depending on how they are phrased and how the issues have been framed in public debate. In NBC's 1988 exit poll, AsianAmerican voters did seem more interested in foreign policy than other voters, but they differed very little when asked whether they would support increased taxes to protect the nation's environment or to provide better health care. And Asian responses on defense spending were virtually identical with the general electorate's. Over 80 per cent of those Asian-Americans polled in 1988 by the Field Institute said they opposed affirmative action in the workplace and in college admissions for Asians, further proof that they don't see themselves as an embattled minority.

There are, of course, some tricky issues which pose problems and offer potential for the two parties. A Republican Party which drags its feet in providing compensation to those sent to detention camps during the war would be seen as insensitive. On the other hand, the GOP would benefit from a continued emphasis on cultural issues, and from a perception that the Democrats still don't understand the values of Middle America. Black-Asian animosity, which has cropped up from time to time, surely would also drive Asians to the GOP, just as anti-Asian discrimination by whites could cause Asians to think of themselves more as a minority, and hence more Democratic.

As younger Americanized (and American-born) Asians enter their adult years, they are likely to become more involved in politics. And some Asian activists, like Robin Wu, civil-rights-program developer for Chinese for Affirmative Action, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, argue that any increase in the number of Asian candidates will produce increased political involvement in the AsianAmerican community. Developments in tbe domestic economy or the countries they left-such as those that took place recently in China-could also alter Asians' political consciousness.

But the future partisan attachment of Asian-Americans may ultimately come down to sheer hard work through grassroots organizing. The increased "courting" of Asians by candidates and parties could motivate and mobilize potential voters, thereby changing California's and the nation's political environment. As Otto Bos, Pete Wilson's campaign manager, says, "Ethnic politics is alive and well in California." And maybe across the country too.

Advance Australia Fair

IT USED TO BE that when the Aussies sang "Advance Australia Fair" they meant it literally: fair-skinned Australians, that is. But in the relatively brief period since the Second World War the country has become something of an antipodal melting pot, to the point where Australia today has a third as many Maltese as live in Malta, Melbourne is the largest Greek city after Athens, and pasta has a good shot at replacing the foul vegemite as the national dish. The prob)em-or so many Australians see itis that, over the last decade or so, instead of names like Lorenzo and Theodoracopulos, new immigrants have names like Kwok, Chan, and Ngo.

The feeling among some elements here is that this non-European wave of immigration threatens the (undefined) "Australian way of life." Yet the current ruckus dates from last year, Australia's bicentenary, when, in answer to a question, the leader of the opposition, the Liberal John Howard, stated that "it would be in our immediate-term interests and supportive of social cohesion if it [Asian immigration] were slowed down a little." After that, his National Party coalition partners went even further in their calls to curb the Asian intake; several of Mr. Howard's Liberal colleagues crossed the floor to vote against him. Although it fortunately did nothing to change Australia's immigration policy, the affair was not without its costs: according to the government, the anxiety the controversy aroused among would-be immigrants could cost the country as much as $304.5 million in lost business investment.

Given the local tensions that changes in immigration patterns always cause in the short term, it's not surprising that someone tried to capitalize on white resentment. What is surprising is that the effort issued ftom the Liberal benches of Parliament. It was the Liberals under Malcolm Fraser a decade ago who initiated the major shift in policy from a rigid assimilationism to multiculturalism, and until Mr. Howard opened his mouth his party continued to enjoy the virtually unqualified support of the people whose entry he proposed to curb. For despite Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke's evident willingness to ladle out as many multicultural dollars as it takes to buy the ethnic vote, Labor's history as the party of "white Australia" is still vividly remembered.

True enough, Australia under Labor dominance was traditionally a land of opportunity: it didn't matter whether you had pinched the master's silver back in England or taken a potshot at a member of Her Majesty's local constabulary during one of Ireland's not infrequent rebellions. But you had to be of the right hue. This was the workingman's liberality expressed by the gold-diggers of New South Wales in the 1860s, when they invited "all men, except Chinamen, to enroll themselves" in the newly formed miners' protection league. At the turn of the century the first national Labor platform would make this even more explicit by calling for "the total exclusion of colored and other undesirables." But it was left to a Labor minister for immigration, Arthur Calwell, to put it most memorably when, in a 1947 parliamentary debate, he opined that "two Wongs don't make a white."

In the rush to atone for Australia's past, multiculturalism, like our affirmative action, unfortunately zoomed past the ideal of treating people the same regardless of race to a policy in which differences are encouraged at taxpayer expense. The result has been a staggering range of subsidies, everything from grants to the "Association of Turks from Bulgaria in Australia" to the establishment of a multicultural TV channel that nobody watches except when it is broadcasting dirty French films. Although many legitimate proponents of multiculturalism (generally on the Right) insist on the primacy of the rule of law and the English language, to the average Aussie out by his barbie it probably seems that the only culture not being promoted is his. Indeed there is a tendency among the Left's multiculturalists to treat the landing of Captain Arthur Phillip, RN, in 1788 as though it were somehow a giant setback for the continent. This tendency in turn is fed by guilt over the treatment of the aborigines.

Yet it is astounding that these same intellectuals never point out that Australia is one of the world's oldest democracies, and that it is without a doubt the most liberal and least racist country in the Orient. This is evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Vietnamese, and other Asians who have gone there and the even larger number who would like to. Nor does anyone note that the previous waves of immigrants, those ftom southern and Eastern Europe, were not particularly welcomed, yet were nonetheless absorbed peacefully without any subsidized multiculturalism. Furthermore, the failure to define multiculturalism has meant that the scams it has spawned have become inextricably linked with immigration itself. That's a pity, because it has happened at the moment when Australia is benefiting most from the moral and economic dynamism the Asians bring with them. It is hardly fair, moreover, to blame these immigrants for policies they didn't pass and don't much seem to want.

IN HIS BOOK The Australians Ross Terrill observed that "it is a widespread view that all values and traditions are of equal validity and that Australia, like a customer in a supermarket of World Culture, should shop around for a snazzy new collection." This confusion of pluralism with relativism permeates the political policies of multiculturalism and is more pernicious than even the out-and-out racism among a tiny percentage of Australians. The great irony is that the Australians themselves appear to be the only ones in the entire East who don't realize that it is Australia's Westernness that makes it so attractive to the people all over the world who each year apply to get in.