Political reductionism a trap for API community

By Ador Pereda Yano

Political reductionism is an unfortunate burden that we all bear in our troubled times. It is practiced across the whole range of partisan pronouncements, from the extreme left, through even the supposedly moderate center, and on to the extreme right. 

We all fall for this human tendency to simplify in order to justify our analyses, judgements, actions, and votes. But we all fail when we do not consider with grace, generosity, and intellectual modesty other complex reasons for how others who do not agree with us arrive at their own political views.  

So how should a voter in the API community respond when confronted with a condescending advice that one “doesn’t need to vote our race or ethnicity in local elections”?  

I am dismayed to read such presumption in a recent political opinion piece in a local newspaper. The article framed a perfectly reasonable personal perspective with an offensive community characterization based on simplistic reduction of the political motives of those who may not agree with the writer’s expressed preference for two local candidates in the November election.

The opinion piece would have been a reasonable and respectful statement of personal support for the writer’s preferred candidates (specifically for the King County Council District 8 and for the Seattle City Council District 2). The writer certainly has extensive experience in local and state politics.  

What is troubling is the title and the preface to the writer’s candidate recommendations. This framing  assumes a light-headedness and political naïveté to many of us in the API community who might not support or vote for the writer’s preferences. 

Does the title “Why We Don’t Need to Vote Our Race/Ethnicity in Local Elections” give our diverse Asian American community any complex political, moral, and intellectual agency? No, it assumes a reductive and binary political equation. At best, it is condescending, and…