Many of you probably remember the many media stories about the dubious donations made by Asian Americans during the 1990s to the Clinton presidential campaigns. 

Through intentional race-baiting, the media and some conservative elements played up a deadly hypothetical combination – communist Chinese supposedly donating moneys to the Clintons in exchange for favorable terms for the mainland Chinese government and a loosening of nuclear restrictions.  A generation of Asian Americans were scarred by the allegations of impropriety and the media witchhunt for Asian American contributions continued well into the late 1990s, thereby reducing the level of political participation among Asian Americans. 

Just recently, the conservative blogsite www.drudgereport.com has linked several articles about a Mr. Norman Hsu, Mr. Abdul Rehman Jinnah,  and a Mr. William Paw and their political contributions to the Democratic party.  According to campaign-finance records, Mr. Hsu, via a relationship with Mr. Paw, has donated $225,000 to Democratic candidates since July 21, 2004. Supposedly with Mr. Paw and his family living in a modest home in San Francisco, they question how this family could give so much.  The journalists leave it to the reader to surmise and speculate why.  Here is a post by Dave Johnson and James Boyce on the Huffington Post critiquing the ethnic smearing present in the new media frenzy.

Without ever mentioning a word about race, the tone of most of the recent articles paints a racialized portrait of Asian Americans as corrupt, behind-the-scenes, foreign-serving donors who make illegal campaign contributions.  While there are Asian Americans who do break campaign-finance laws, we don’t hear very much about other groups and individuals who do the same thing.  Nor do we hear of the many Asian Americans who through the voting process and their political contributions hope to have a very significant and legitimate voice in the political process of the United States.