I think Charles Murray has a blind spot. He does a nice job of explaining why Asian-Americans should be more receptive to the Republican Party but his explanation for why they are not is off the mark.
First of all, Mr. Murray notices that Asian-Americans have college degrees at more than double the rate of whites, but he fails to note another crucial difference. While people with bachelor’s degrees are roughly split in terms of which party they support, those with the advanced or technical degrees (basically, science and math) favored by Asian-Americans skew heavily toward the Democrats. So, for starters, Asian-Americans’ strong preference for liberal policies isn’t as big of a mystery as Murray thinks.
Having said that, Mr. Murray is correct that Asian-Americans tend to have the same profiles often seen in conservative whites. A small businessman’s aversion to government regulation really shouldn’t owe anything to race, for example.
Murray appears somewhat mystified about why Asian-Americans don’t behave politically in the same fashion as similarly situated whites. His explanation is relevant, but incomplete. He thinks the Republicans’ economic appeal is wiped out by their social conservatism.
I propose that the explanation is simple. Those are not the themes that define the Republican Party in the public mind. Republicans are seen by Asians—as they are by Latinos, blacks, and some large proportion of whites—as the party of Bible-thumping, anti-gay, anti-abortion creationists. Factually, that’s ludicrously inaccurate. In the public mind, except among Republicans, that image is taken for reality.
It’s true that the vast majority of Asian-Americans are not Bible-thumpers. But a generalized social-conservatism is not uncommon in Asian-American families. It is not uncommon in black or Latino or even Jewish families, either. What all these groups are responding to is transparent antipathy for their race and/or ethnic heritage that they sense in the Republican base.
Murray’s explanation for why Jews trend liberal is similarly blinkered.
“Many of the Jews who immigrated to America had been socialists, trade-union activists, or otherwise committed to the Left in their native lands, and those family traditions have sometimes perpetuated themselves. The great majority of non-political Jewish immigrants came from places where they had been systematically persecuted for being Jews, and it is easy to see how Jews might have an enduring propensity to side with the underdog.”
Mr. Murray seems to lack any awareness about how central social justice is to Judaism. He also seems unaware of how persecution at the hands of Christians might leave Jews suspicious of the type of Christians who want to weaken the separation of Church and State. It’s not a matter of being for the underdog. It’s a matter of being for civil rights, for themselves and for others.
There are 535 members of Congress, and Eric Cantor is the only Republican Jew in the lot. This ought to be a sign not just that Jews prefer liberal policies but that Jews don’t feel welcomed in the Republican Party. It’s the same reason that blacks and Latinos don’t feel welcomed. It’s the same reason that Asian-Americans don’t feel welcomed.
The Republican base doesn’t like these groups and doesn’t consider them “real Americans.” Bill O’Reilly, anticipating the election results, said the demography is changing and that “traditional America” lost because Blacks, Latinos, and women want free stuff. He was wrong. “Traditional America” lost because it alienated everyone who isn’t straight, male, and conservatively Christian. The main problem isn’t that Republican policies are unfriendly to the poor, although that is part of it. It isn’t that people are more liberal on social issues, although that is part of it, too. The main problem is that the Republican base despises people who aren’t just like them. It’s not just the 47% who supposedly can’t be convinced to take personal responsibility for their lives. No one goes around saying that Asian-Americans are lazy moochers looking for a handout.
Asian-Americans voted for Obama for a lot of reasons, but one of the most important reasons was that they knew that Republicans don’t like them.
