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Patching 2 Holes in Our Political Maturity
Hole One:
Many Asians worship government officials - the higher the rank, the more unreasoning and unquestioning the worship. Asian Americans should not follow this Asian tradition. Unfortunately, many of us still do.
Accepting this feudal Asian tradition has hurt us in 2 ways:
(1) Many AsAm elected officials were not working hard for our rightful interests. For example, almost none of the elected AsAm state Senators and Assembly-persons in CA showed up to defend our children's equal opportunity to college admissions. They voted to allow a referendum vote on Prop. 16. Eventually, Prop.16 was defeated because 80-20 helped lead the opposition from afar, defeating Prop. 16 by a landslide - 53% to 47%.
(2) Our love & respect for elected AsAm officials should be based on their SERVICE to our community, not their ranks. Otherwise, we are encouraging these officials to focus on seeking higher offices to win my admiration rather than performing better service.
Recommended Remedy: Treat our elected AsAm officials as our public servants, not as parent-officials, which Confucian philosophy advocated millennia ago. Reward our public servants for good service. Punish them for significant deficiencies.
Hole Two:
For unknown reasons, AsAm civic organizations have consistently treated victims of our government's shameful racial profiling policy, as heroes once the victims have been acquitted. We should NOT!
The black community often treated the victims of civil right movements, whether murdered, beaten or jailed, as heroes. But these victims were normally fierce fighters, who knowingly risked imprisonment or even death for the civil rights of their community.
Our victims, be they Wenho Lee, Sherry Chen, Prof. Xiaoxing Xi, or Dr. Anming Hu are scientists who have not knowingly risked themselves for the benefit of our community, but who unfortunately were racially profiled by some incompetent FBI agents. We should help them financially, morally and legally and get them acquitted. However, if we treat our acquitted victims as heroes, then we must face the following outrageous irony: our community allows incompetent FBI agents to pick our community's heroes.
Recommended Remedy: Don't treat our race-profiled AsAm victims as heroes. They were unfortunate. They deserve our sympathy and help but not admiration.
A Request
Do you find discussions about improving our political maturity interesting & helpful? Either way please give me some feedback. Many thanks.
Boston Mayoral Primary on Sept. 14
S. B. Woo
President and a volunteer for the past 22 years
80-20 Educational Foundation, Inc, a 501 C-3 organization,
Lieutenant Governor of Delaware (1985-89)
We gratefully acknowledge all donors including a donation of $20,000 by an anonymous private foundation.
