The Asian American vote is routinely taken for granted by both the media & Hillary Clinton. Although Asian American voters were a core part of the Obama Coalition, coming only second to Black voters in their support for Obama, the 2016 presidential candidates and political media seemingly can’t be bothered to consider the perspectives & concerns of Asian American voters in their public discourse. Every political issue is discussed through the lens of Hispanic & Black voters, with Asian voters (the fastest growing minority group in the United States) being an afterthought.
Asian Americans are increasingly identifying as Democrats due to, in part, the Republicans’ anti-immigrant message of exclusion. Concurrent with Asian Americans' growing support for the Democratic Party is their growing influence in swing states. For instance, consider Virginia where Asian Americans represent 5% of the electorate, and have increased by about 60,000 since 2012 (which is nearly half of Obama’s margin of victory). In Nevada, Asian Americans comprise 9% of the electorate, and have increased by about 22,000 since 2012 (which is a third of Obama’s margin of victory). On the Congressional level, Asian Americans comprise 10% or more of the electorate in 93 districts across the country. Moreover, Asian Americans agree with Democrats more than Republicans on key issues: health care, gun control, immigration reform, income inequality, social security, education, climate change, racial profiling, and they are more negatively affected by Republican voter ID laws in Presidential Elections than Black voters.
In short, there is clear incentive for Hillary Clinton to reach out to Asian American voters in her national interviews, speeches, & remarks the same way she (and her campaign and surrogates) routinely reaches out to Hispanic & Black voters… but is Asian American outreach a priority for her? We sought to answer this question by linguistically analyzing a sample of her major speeches for the 2016 presidential campaign.
Linguistic Analyses
After collecting a sample of transcripts of Clinton's major speeches, we ran them through a linguistic software called the Language Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). This program generates the percentage of words that represent different linguistic categories (e.g., parts of speech, social concerns, emotions, etc.) that are present in any corpora of text. In order to capture any references to Asian American voters in the speech transcripts, we created our own dictionary that contained words associated with Asian American voters, like “Asian”, “Asia”, “Chinese”, “Korean”, etc. We also created a dictionary containing words associated with non-Asian voters, like “Black”, “Hispanic”, “Latino”, etc. for a comparison. In the end, we included 13 transcripts in the analyses.
What did we find?
On average, Clinton referenced non-Asian American voters more so than Asian American voters. That’s not surprising, nor is that the big issue here. When we analyzed her speeches closer, her references to Asian Americans were not related to reaching out to Asian Americans voters at all. In fact, these references were unanimously about China—with a negative tone.
For instance, in her speech after she won the primary in Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina, Clinton said: “We're going to stand up for American workers, and make sure no one takes advantage of us, not China, not Wall Street…”
In another example, Clinton said in her campaign rally speech last June: “No other country is better equipped to meet traditional threats from countries like Russia, North Korea, and Iran – and to deal with the rise of new powers like China.”
Sure, Clinton may have Asian American voters’ best interests at heart, but what kind of message is she sending if her speeches never mention Asian American voters? And, when she does mention anything remotely related to Asian American voters, it’s a negatively-toned comment about China?
There is one simple fix that Clinton & the Democratic Party can take to address this linguistic bias going forward:
Include the word ‘Asian’ whenever the words Black and Hispanic are used in a political context.
For example, the sentence “We think it’s important to connect with our Hispanic & Black communities” should be changed to “We think it’s important to connect with our Hispanic, Black, and Asian communities.”
It’s important that this word is applied in public (i.e., televised or otherwise broadcasted) interactions. Although Clinton's speech launching her AAPI program in January was indeed supportive, it has to be followed up with the same daily outreach afforded to Black & Hispanic voters. Consistency is key in building trust.
During the #WhiteWashedOut Twitter protest, Margaret Cho remarked:
Similarly, the Democratic Party has treated the Asian American vote as invisible for so long that they may not realize what a little acknowledgement could mean for winning a blue Senate and, potentially, a blue House. We hope that this friendly criticism leads to more inclusion, linguistically speaking.
Jarryd Willis was a co-author on this article.
1Dictionary word list includes: Asian, Asia, Asians, Japan, Japanese, China, Chinese, Pacific Islander, Pacific Islands, Vietnam, Vietnamese, Korea, Korean, Thailand, Thai, Laos, Laotian, Cambodia
2Dictionary word list includes: Hispanic, Latino, Latinos, Latina, Latinas, Mexican, Mexicans, Mexico, Black, African American, African Americans
3Speeches include Clinton’s Campaign Rally speech in June 2015, and speeches after the primaries on February 1, February 9, February 20, March 1, March 8, March 15, March 22, April 19, April 26, May 17, June 7, and the Nevada caucus on February 20.
Data for the analyses are stored here.