By Suzanne Sprague, KERA 90.1 reporter
Dallas, TX – Suzanne Sprague, Reporter: Philip Shinoda insists he is not a candidate for the Dallas City Council.
Philip Shinoda, Community Leader: I'm not running for city council.
Sprague: You sure?
Shinoda: I'm not. Read my lips (laughs).
Sprague: Still, Shinoda's name is frequently tossed about by local Asian American leaders as someone they'd support. He's lived in Dallas nearly his entire life and has served on a number of local corporate and non-profit boards. So most of his community work has taken place behind the scenes. That's been a typical model of leadership in Asian communities across the country for many decades. But Lisa Tsai of Galveston, who studied Asian political leadership for an article in the Asian American Policy Review, says that's changing.
Lisa Tsai, Attorney and Scholar: I do think one big difference in the last decade is that you've seen a real upsurge in the Asian Americans who are willing to put their names on the ballots and run as candidates. And it's interesting because it's kind of a chicken-and-egg story. Is it having candidates out there that promotes voting or is it having voters our there that promotes the candidates? And there's no clear answer on that, but what we definitely see it that at least we have one of these. We either have the chicken or we have the egg.
Photographer (taking Joe Chow's picture): We'll try to make this quick.
Sprague: Joe Chow isn't sure if he's the egg or the chicken. But he's enjoying the attention his recent election to the Addison Town Council has garnered. Chow, who was raised in Taiwan, is the first Asian immigrant to sit on a local city council. On this day, he's posing for a photo op. But sitting in the restaurant he owns on Belt Line Road, Chow reflected on the meaning of his election for other Asian Americans.
Joe Chow, Addison Town Council: Most of the time, Asians are more shy and like to stay in their own ethnic group. I'd like to be the first person to give them some coach and influence and encourage other people from different Asian ethnic groups to get involved.
Sprague: Chow ran a grassroots campaign that promoted business growth and family entertainment in Addison. His ethnic background was almost a footnote to his election. But his success has been widely celebrated throughout the Asian American community. Again, Philip Shinoda.
Shinoda: I would not be surprised if there was an Asian American running for school board up in Plano or Richardson based in part on the groundbreaking work that Joe Chow has done.
Sprague: Shinoda says the Asian American community is experiencing a watershed moment. And it's not just Joe Chow. Shinoda also credits the Asian American communities for organizing to get counted during the 2000 Census.
Shinoda: They were pulled together to do something and they said oh my gosh there are a lot of us and we can get together and we can work together, isn't that great
Sprague: This is significant because, according to Lisa Tsai, Asian Americans have had trouble building coalitions and establishing a group consciousness.
Tsai: You see a lot of fragmentation because the plight of the Chinese Americans as opposed to your Cambodian and Laotian immigrants as opposed to your South Asian is very disparate. Not only are those countries of origin very disparate, but so are their goals and interests when they come over to the U.S. as well as their socio-economic status in this country.
Sprague: The Census revealed that the Asian American population in North Texas more than doubled in the 1990s, making it the fastest-growing minority group in the region. The Census numbers have given rise to several new Asian leadership efforts. For example, Angie Chen Button, who organized the Census count, has since helped start the Asian American Citizens Council. A takeoff of the Dallas Citizens Council, the group's goal is to encourage political involvement in the Asian American communities
Angie Chen Button, DFW Asian American Citizens Council: and go out to vote, to register to vote and do whatever it takes just like regular old American citizens. And then people will recognize that Asian Americans are part of the community and a very critical part of the community. When we go out, people will not think we are foreigners, so that's the bottom line.
Sprague: Philip Shinoda launched a related effort last year to teach leadership skills. The Asian American Forum is a yearly workshop that combines traditional Asian values with American political know-how.
Shinoda: Asians are getting very Americanized, but we still carry some of the values of don't make so much noise, keep your head down, work hard, you'll be rewarded and in the United States if you don't blow your own horn, no one else will do it for you.
Sprague: Interviews with two dozen Asian leaders in greater Dallas revealed good schools, a good business climate and equality of opportunity as the issues most important to them as voters. But they also want politicians who take them seriously.
A.K. Mago, Indo-American Chamber of Commerce: I think Indians are realizing that so far they have been generous to contribute but not demanding. And now they are starting to ask questions like OK, will you support these things if we support you.
Sprague: A.K. Mago is a member of the DFW Airport Board and chairman of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce. While he praises fellow Asian Americans for contributing to campaigns, he's also calling on them to engage more in the political process.
Mago: If that's all you do is write a check and have a picture smiling then it doesn't, in my opinion, give you anything more than being a banker for somebody's campaign.
Sprague: But not all Asians agree. In fact, many in the younger generation are still politically disengaged. When Wayne Mei, a 28-year-old public relations executive, asked members of PA2, the Asian American young professionals group, about their political interests, he found a real lack of interest.
Wayne Mei, PA2: And I just wanted to see, I was interested to see among our members and among our leadership, how many were actually able to vote. And it was a really small percentage. I would say less than 5% of the 120 people I looked into. I was really surprised that not a lot of members were active politically.
Sprague: These are disappointing words to some leaders like Jennifer Nguyen, who fled Saigon in 1975. Nguyen runs the Vietnamese Community Center in Garland. She's preached civic involvement to her children, and now she's considering a bid for city council.
Jennifer Nguyen, Vietnamese Community: If the time is right, I might. Anything is possible. I'm strongly believing in public service. I always teach my children from the day that my sponsor takes us in, I say, you eat the bowl of rice today, you remember to pay back 100 bowls of rice later.
Sprague: Nguyen says civic involvement among young Asian Americans is vital to preserving Asian cultural and political identity in Dallas. But many young people have very different ideas on what they want from their community and their families. So tomorrow on Morning Edition, we'll explore the growing generation gap among Asian Americans. For KERA 90.1, I'm Suzanne Sprague.
To contact Suzanne Sprague, please send emails to ssprague@kera.org.