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'Binded by blood,' split over election: Asian American family embodies generational shift in politics

'Binded by blood,' split over election: Asian American family embodies generational shift in politics

Oct 27, 2020 2 mins, 45 secs

Vital, who was born in the United States, and her grandmother Taong, who was born in the Philippines, reflect these differences — some of which can be explained by their age and where they grew up.

Sixty-six percent of Asian Americans, 18 to 34 years old, would vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, compared to 20 percent of those more than 50 years old, according to the most recent Asian American Voter Survey.

“What we find is that, where Asian Americans live doesn’t make as much of a difference in terms of which party they identify with or who they’re going to vote for, as much as age and nativity,” according to Karthick Ramakrishnan, director of the Asian American Voter Survey and founder of AAPI Data.

AAPI Data shows that Vietnamese Americans are the only Asian American subgroup that identify more as Republican at 38 percent, compared to Democratic at 27 percent and 29 percent identify as independent.

One of the main factors is how Vietnamese communities were affected in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, according to Nick Nguyen, a research lead at VietFactCheck.org, a project formed by PIVOT, a progressive Vietnamese American nonprofit social justice organization.

Many Vietnamese Americans formed political opinions following the Vietnam War, when the lives of the Vietnamese people were upended and once-stable families became refugees, Nguyen said from Palto Alto, California.

Nguyen, who is a second-generation Vietnamese American, credits his family who came to the United States as refugees and became naturalized citizens with providing him with security and enfranchisement through their sacrifices.

For elderly Vietnamese Americans, that appears to be a favorable factor in their support for the incumbent, because it harkens back to former president Ronald Reagan’s anti-communist approach, according to Dr.

Anh-Thu Bui, who is directing election strategy at PIVOT, a nonprofit working to increase voter participation among Vietnamese Americans.

Of the group, Indian Americans are among the fastest growing and have doubled in size in the recent past.

About 89 percent of Indian Americans who refer to themselves as Democratic are planning to vote for Biden compared to 80 percent of those who identify as Republican who are planning to vote for Trump, according to the Carnegie Endowment For Peace citing the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey.

population is foreign born, among Indian Americans, that number is 71 percent.

In 2019, Modi and Trump hosted a rally to address Indian American supporters in Houston.

Unlike her granddaughter, Taong said she grew up with strict parents in the Philippines whom she said she could not disagree with.

Third Andresen, a part-time lecturer at the University of Washington who teaches courses on ethnic studies and critical race theory, remembered teaching Vital as a student in his study abroad course in the Philippines and said she excelled in her studies.

Taong shared that she based her guidance from having lived in the Philippines and seeing a different view of activism that sometimes left people hurt and unsafe and being fearful of that for Vital.

It’s a sentiment echoed by her daughter Lucky Tan Tasato, 49, who said she raised Vital to be free to “decide and choose.”

And when it comes to Louie, I do encourage her to stand for what she thinks is right,” Tasato said over Zoom from Honolulu

But in the end, we’re still binded by blood,” Tasato said

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

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