Asian American voters have given former President Donald Trump unprecedented support as he returns to the White House.
In the 2024 presidential election, approximately 39% of Asian American voters supported Trump, up from 27% in 2016. notwithstanding his history of racism and xenophobia, which included anti-Chinese sentiments during the COVID-19 outbreak and contributed to an increase in violent attacks against East and Southeast Asian Americans in general. Despite the fact that his opponent, current Vice President Kamala Harris, had the opportunity to become the first Asian American president, this change took place. Rather, like other racial groups, Asian Americans seem to have been driven mostly by economic issues, namely rising living expenses and inflation.
The Democratic Party’s resounding loss exposes a basic misperception of people of color. Their narrow-minded view that demographics determine outcomes imagined that people of color, such as Asian Americans, would be passed over only for not being Trump. The 2024 election, however, validates Asian voters’ increasing rightward shift over the previous 20 years. Asian Americans no longer identify with liberal ideas as embodied by the Democratic Party, particularly in California, where nearly one-third of the population resides.
Examining the American component of the word is necessary to comprehend why Asian Americans are becoming more and more interested in Trump and regressive politics. In her new book, UNASSIMILABLE: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century, activist and scholar Bianca Mabute-Louie explains how the term “Asian American” became a radical term during the civil rights movements, rooted in anti-imperialist sentiment and solidarity with other racialized groups. However, the mainstream politics of inclusion and representation have diminished it in the modern era.
Asian Americans are continuously perceived as a racial threat to American civilization, claims Mabute-Louie. This puts them under continual pressure to become more like white people, become a model minority that is supposedly prosperous, and benefit from being used as an ideological weapon against Black and Latino groups that are supposedly unsuccessful. Nonetheless, belonging will always be conditional and readily withdrawn, regardless of the anti-Asian racism of the epidemic or the brutal imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Asian Americans are motivated to maintain the current white racist, capitalist system and obtain any material advantages they can in this unstable political environment with no significant left alternatives. Others, both inside and outside of their communities, are being harmed by this.
Think about the struggle for admission to prestigious universities by the Asian, primarily Chinese, American right. According to Mabute-Louie, affirmative action, community education, and selective immigration laws all contributed to an exponential rise in Asian American presence in higher education. However, in ostensibly liberal universities, a large Asian student body did not result in institutional dominance but rather promoted education as a zero-sum game.
More Asian Americans felt they were being discriminated against if they or their children were unable to get into prestigious schools, rather than confronting the lack of educational opportunities. Despite the fact that most Asian Americans are in favor of affirmative action, enough of them put their own assimilation first and joined forces with white conservatives to abolish affirmative action last year. All communities of color, including Asian Americans, will suffer from this, but underrepresented Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders—who are frequently lumped together with Asians—would be particularly affected.
The Asian American right is an organizer of promise rather than merely a tool of the white conservative elite. Li points out that they actively participate in conspiring to protect their regressive ideological preferences and what they consider to be their American social privileges. Other regressive influences that Mabute-Louie highlights among Asian Americans, such conservative evangelical Asian churches that incite a wider antipathy for trans and queer rights among their members, are clear examples of this. Like their white counterparts, many Asian American conservatives have organized against police reform, local shelters for the homeless, and support for the American criminal justice system because they are worried about crime and safety.
In actuality, Asians have embraced many of Trumpism’s fascist policy stances as they have integrated into American society. Additionally, Asian American activists who wish to forge an alternative course for their communities must present an affirmative vision that contrasts with the one envisioned by the right, much like the Democratic Party. As the book’s title suggests, Mabute-Louie provides a remedy by suggesting that Asian Americans become unassimilable as Asians in the Diaspora. Asians are able to construct their own sense of belonging based on ideals like as decolonial love and revolutionary solidarity with other cultures, rejecting the pursuit of whiteness and acceptance by the US empire.
The rich history of multiracial organizing for improved working conditions that many Asian communities participated in alongside Black, Latino, and other communities in opposition to the white supremacist, capitalist system already provides historical precedence for this goal. May we all reject to belong here, as Mabute-Louie says.
Houston, Texas-based writer and freelance journalist Muizz Akhtar (they/them) has had pieces published in Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, the San Antonio Express-News, and Vox. They are enthusiastic about tackling racial justice, public health, and climate change challenges, especially from the perspective of urban planning. They have experience working with Asian American community groups.
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