Are Asian-Australians moving towards voting Liberal?

Interesting story last week here on ABC News about the Asian vote leading up to the New South Wales election, in which the Labor Party was resoundingly defeated. There is a sense that Asian-Australian voters are no longer a lock for Labor, as the Coalition have belatedly realised that it is an important constituency which they ignore at their peril.

NSW state Liberal candidate Dai Le

Dai Le, the Vietnamese refugee turned Liberal Party candidate, needed a record 29% swing to win the heavily Asian working-class seat of Cabramatta and beat Labor incumbent Nick Lalich. She fell short with a swing 26%, but that in itself is a remarkable shift.

In the last Federal Election, the Liberal Party fielded a number of Asian candidates - Wayne Tseng, John Nguyen and Fazal Cader in the Victorian seats of Calwell, Chisholm and Hotham respectively, and Thomas Dang, Ken Nam and Jaymes Diaz in the NSW seats of Fowler, Watson and Greenway. (Labor had only one Federal candidate of Asian descent, Joy Banerji in the Melbourne seat of Menzies). All of them lost, mind you.

Of course, if it seems like the Liberals are a sudden champion of Asian-Australians in politics, it's worth noting that all those candidates were running in Labor strongholds, and despite a large nationwide swing against the Gillard government, none of them managed to wrest their seat from Labor. So I get the impression that the Liberals might see Asian-Australian candidates as possible wild-cards in working-class seats with large numbers of migrants (which the Libs don't expect to win anyway), yet won't risk them in the more marginal seats in which there are less Asian voters.

It was only in 2006 that Asian-Australians were touted as a significant asset for Labor, due in large part to Kevin Rudd's apparent affinity for China and his ability to convincingly recite a few phrases of Mandarin. Previous PM John Howard even lost his own seat of Bennelong in Sydney due in large part to the large numbers of Asian residents who plumped for Rudd. But with Rudd usurped by Julia Gillard, I wonder how much of that voting bloc dropped off.

It is worth noting that despite having long favoured Labor, Asian-Australians are not necessarily a natural fit for a Left-leaning party. (Yes I know, Labor haven't been Left-wing for years, but in the traditional dichotomous view of Australian politics they are the Left to the Liberal Party's Right.) The Liberals are the party of business, of the "haves", and of the social conservatives. Many Asians fit into these categories, or are moving more and more into them. Communities such as the Chinese and Indians are increasingly strongly represented in high-income professional spheres which lean more to Liberal. Interestingly, the other party that has fielded a significant number of Asian candidates has been Family First, which draws substantially from a large Chinese contingent in the Assembly of God movement.

So why have Asian-Australians traditionally been such staunch Labor supporters? Because despite the former Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser being a key figure in Australia accepting Indo-Chinese boat people in the late 70s and early 80s, something went horribly wrong after that. John Howard, in his first stint as Liberal Opposition Leader, publicly called for a reduction in Asian immigration. This alienated much of the Asian electorate, and Labor, under pro-multicultural Bob Hawke and then Paul Keating, cemented their identity as the champions of migrant Australians. Years later Howard would retreat from that stance, but it shouldn't be ignored that Pauline "Australia is being swamped by Asians" Hanson started her political career as a Liberal candidate. And it was Howard's stealthy co-opting of her xenophobic attitude towards refugees that spelled the demise of Hanson and her One Nation Party; the Liberals somehow got away with labelling One Nation as extremists while standing for virtually the same things.

Today, I'm not sure if Asian voters recall that Howard didn't want them here in the first place. Maybe it no longer matters. Despite the Liberals' recent hardline stance towards asylum seekers, many Asian voters (even those who were former refugees themselves) seem to have little empathy for the recent waves of South Asian and Middle Eastern refugees. It's a classic "get in and shut the door behind you" mentality.

The Vietnamese community is an interesting example of a voting bloc that may be in transition. Compared to the Chinese, it is more strongly working-class, rooted in Labor strongholds like Cabramatta and the Melbourne suburbs of Springvale and Footscray. Howard's racism in the 80s certainly left an opportunity which Labor seized with both hands, and as a result the Vietnamese vote was virtually guaranteed for Labor. Yet as people who fled from a Communist regime, there are many Vietnamese-Australians who are naturally suspicious of Labor's occasionally left-leaning tendencies. And as a very aspirational community which is increasingly moving into the middle class, the Liberal Party is quickly making up lost ground.

Indian film stars vs regular Indians

In a recent discussion in the comments section of this blog, it was mentioned that "... Indian actors and actresses don't look like Indians... they might as well be another race."
It was also pointed out that while a Tamil like Kema Rajandran might have some difficulties finding modelling work in Australia, it wouldn't necessarily be easy in India either, given that country's overwhelming preference for light skin.

Coincidentally, this story ran in the UK's Daily Mail this week as well:

'You never see dark-skinned girls in TV ads': India's top models on how the country's fashion industry STILL champions fair skin

Two top Indian models have spoken out against what they believe is racism against darker-skinned women in the country's fashion industry.
Dipannita Sharma and Carol Gracias say they are losing out on top jobs because an increasing amount of Indian designers are casting lighter-skinned models.
Ms Sharma said that the whole country was so 'obsessed' with fair skin, that a shift in attitude would take years.
The 35-year-old, who is also a television star, told The Telegraph: 'It's not just the fashion industry, India per se is obsessed with white skin. We will take another hundred years to completely get over it.'
She continued: 'The industry doesn't openly agree that preferring foreign models over Indian models just for the skin tone is racism. It has some kind of fairness obsession. One could have understood, if it was about getting supermodels of international fame or to work in India but that's not happening, it's just they want fairer skin on the Indian ramps.'
Ms Gracias echoed her fellow model in an interview with the Hindustan Times. She revealed that she makes just $1,000 per runway show compared to top international models like Kate Moss and Adriana Lima, who can command between $20,000 and $150,000.
She explained: 'The major reason for this wide gap is that Indian models are not valued so much when it comes to commercial projects. You never see a dark-skinned girl on TV ads and that's where the lucrative work is. Everyone uses fair-skinned girls, people use skin-lighteners like Fair and Lovely. I don't - maybe I would have been fair and lovely by now.'
Pranab Awasti, of Delhi's Glitz Modelling agency, attributed the controversial issue to the country's 200-year history under British colonial rule. He told the Hindustan Times: 'Indians in general have that inferiority complex, we have had a hangover about fair skin, since the British left India. The idea of fairness is an Indian concept and it needs to change. It is an inherent thing in Indians to see white as beautiful and black as ugly... we have this concept in our minds that only fair-skinned people can be models.'
Others argue in an industry that worships size-zero, skin colour is not an issue and most local models are simply too curvy to make the cut.
Runway choreographer Tanya Lefebvre said: 'The girls are not tall enough and have varying body shapes.'
Skin lightening controversy is not new for the Indian fashion industry. Editors of Elle India were accused digitally lightening the skin colour of Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for the magazine's December 2010 issue, reigniting the decades-long debate.

Ok, so for context, here are photos of Sharma and Gracias. Given your knowledge of what Indians look like, would you class them as "dark", as Indians go?

Because in the Indian context, they are considered dark. Too dark.

A couple of points about the article. I disagree that the obsession with fair skin is related to British colonialism to any great degree. Preference for "lightness" does not equate to preference for "whiteness". It's far older than British rule and has its basis in the caste system. The conquerors of India have historically come from the north (Indo-Europeans, Muslim Moghuls), and the darker tones of the Southern Indians have acquired a negative association, enshrined by caste. It is probably overlain with an element of the same colour prejudice that occurs in East Asia, which is related to social class and occupation (dark skin = tan from working out in the sun = being a commoner).

Realistically, the likes of Sharma, Gracias and Rajandran are not really dark, when one considers the diversity of phenotypes across India. They are probably in the middle of the skin tone range. The ideal look for Indian celebrities is at the pale end of the spectrum. Male actors can to some extent get away with a degree of swarthiness that females can't. Still, in a country with significant prejudices against its Muslim minority and hatred towards its Muslim neighbour Pakistan, some of the biggest male stars of Bollywood are Muslims (Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan), and I wonder how much that is related to their "Aryan"-ness.

I thought it'd be a nice experiment to compare Indian actresses with regular Indians. To show the contrast most clearly, I've focused on Tamils, who are from South India (and Sri Lanka) and are one of the darker-skinned ethnic groups in India. Yet if you looked at Tamil actresses, you might think differently. These images are from http://www.tamilactresses.net/:

By contrast, these are the first 15 images I found from googling "Tamil people". This is obviously not any kind of rigorous scientific study, but the contrast is obvious.

But these swarthy average Tamils need not fear. Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan is here to help.

Those ads made me want to vomit. I prefer this one (a spoof of the second ad):

I've written more about this issue in this earlier post:

Make yourself whiter on Facebook

"Konichiwa, bitches"

To my American friends: I know that y'all are good people. You are a pretty cool country, in general. I know that most of you guys are decent and upstanding folk with good values.

But if you're ever wondering why some people around the world consider you to be a nation of obnoxious dicks, this video is as good a starting point as any.


Seriously, somebody choke that guy with an oversized twinkie.
Props to the US and Argentinian players and the vast majority of the American crowd at that game, who know how not to be complete assholes.

See also:
What douchebags on social media think about Japan's earthquake 

Melbourne International Comedy Festival: Hannibal Buress and Moshe Kasher

So 

(I'm the guy who appears to made of pure energy)

I had one of those random evenings that turns out completely and randomly different than I first thought it would be. At 4:45pm I was seated at my computer and thinking how I was going to cook some Korean food and chill in the crib the rest of the night... then somehow at 6:30pm I was lining up outside Soft Belly to watch some random comics I wasn't that familiar with, simply because it was only $12 and since I'm a tightass it seemed like too good a deal to refuse. And 4 hours later it was over and it was quite amazing, and included me getting pulled up on stage at one point by Adam Hills in the name of audience participation (pictured right).

 We were treated to short sets by host Karl Chandler (good and occasionally brilliant), Adam Hills (justifying why he's probably Australia's favourite comic right now), Charlie Pickering (hit-and-miss on this occasion but still interesting), Lawrence Leung (underwhelming, his TV shows are far better than his standup), Canadian Deanne Smith (good without being amazing), and a lengthy set from headliner Brendon Burns (edgy, offensive, poignant and hilarious). Impressing me most were two US comics who I'd previously never heard of, Moshe Kasher and Hannibal Buress, who offered 15-minute tasters of their upcoming acts at the Comedy Festival.



Buress, who has worked as a writer on both SNL and 30 Rock, in particular has shot straight onto the shortlist of my favourite comedians.


Check out their acts and more at the 25th Melbourne International Comedy Festival, from 30th March until 24th April.

Australian soldiers in Facebook racism scandal

I wonder when people with offensive opinions are going to figure out that posting shit on social media brings more trouble than its worth.

There's been a furore this week when it was revealed that a number of Australian soldiers serving in Afghanistan had posted racial slurs about the locals on Facebook. According to various reports, there were references to "smelly locals", "ragheads", "dune coons" and "sand niggaz".

A few things. Firstly, it is completely unsurprising that this type of thinking goes on, and no one should delude themselves into thinking that Australian soldiers are much worse than any other country's soldiers in this respect. Military culture is macho and aggressive, some would say out of necessity, and they also are exposed to some of the worst aspects of the Afghani people. They are in highly stressful situations and need to vent.

But unsurprising or not, it's the sort of attitude and behaviour that the armed forces desperately needs to stamp out. And it's nothing to do with such airy-fairy notions as "political correctness" or racial slurs just not being nice. It's extremely practical, because this is one instance that illustrates how potentially harmful racism can be, rather than just some unfashionable thoughts.

Firstly, the troops are not just trying to wipe out an enemy. They are trying to win the hearts and minds of the Afghani people, and creating situations that turn civilians into potential adversaries is severely detrimental to the cause. As Air Marshall Angus Houston, head of the Armed Forces, stated recently: "The problem is that it will be used against Australian soldier and against the Afghan government," he said. "This sort of disrespectful behaviour will endanger the lives of others."

But not only that. Racism, where it is allowed to flourish, leads to greater dehumanisation of the Aghani people. The more they are dehumanised by soldiers, the greater likelihood that atrocities will be committed. Atrocities are a sad inevitability of any war, to some extent. But it's much harder to commit atrocities when you recognise the common humanity in the people whose territory you are occupying. And it's a lot easier to commit atrocities against people you see merely as a bunch of smelly ragheads, dune coons and sand niggaz.

"Akira" to be remade with white people

Did any of you ever find it weird that Arnold Schwarzenegger, with his unmistakably thick Austrian accent, used to play characters with such Anglo names as Harry Tasker, Douglas Quaid, Ben Richards and The Terminator?

If you answered yes, then how will you feel about watching a movie filled with white guys with such distinctively Japanese names as Akira, Tetsuo and Kaneda?

If your first thought is "Hmmm, that sounds kinda f*cked up", then welcome to the club.



How white will Akira be? This white.



But that's precisely what's likely to happen as Warner Brothers prepare to make their live-action version of the landmark 1988 Japanese anime Akira, about teenage bikers with psionic powers in futuristic Neo-Tokyo. For the two lead roles, the script has been sent to the sort of actors you'd expect to play people with Japanese names: Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield, James McAvoy, Garrett Hedlund, Michael Fassbender, Chris Pine, Justin Timberlake and Joaquin Phoenix.

Obviously someone at Warner Brothers watched Akira and loved it, except for the fact that it's just too, well, Japanese.

Now preferably, they would have just left it well alone to begin with. But obviously Hollywood simply can't resist taking every awesome foreign film ever made and making their own lifeless facsimile to appeal to the kind of audience who won't watch the original because it's in another language and it doesn't have any actors they've ever heard of. And if it becomes a success then audiences will exclaim, "Oh, The Departed was so awesome! Scorsese, what a genius!"

This version of Akira is apparently going to be set in Neo-Manhattan rather than Neo-Tokyo, yet they are keeping the Japanese names. You'd think then, that it would be a perfect opportunity to use some Asian-American talent. Or even Asian-Asian talent (ie. Korean star Rain). Wrong.

Of course, the obvious defence of Hollywood is this: "Where are the Asian male leads who could carry these roles? There are simply none with the profile of Pattinson and so on."

Which makes sense... except that it begs the question: "Why not?"

If there are no Asian-American male actors famous enough to carry this movie, it's because Hollywood has not given them the chance. Was Pattinson a star before Twilight? No. And the other names on the list, with the exceptions of Phoenix and Timberlake, are hardly household names anyway.

But as you probably well know, it's just Hollywood doing as Hollywood does, continuing a tradition that includes 21, The Last Airbender, and Dragonball Z.

(Hat tip: Racebending, via BigWOWO)

UPDATE (27th March):
Thai-American playwright and performer Prince Gomolvilas has this video up that captures this issue quite brilliantly. Check it:

RIP Loleatta Holloway (1946 - 2011)

This week we lost another of the great voices of soul music, disco diva Loleatta Holloway, who died on 21 March at the age of 64. Beginning as a gospel singer in the 60s, Holloway had a career as a soul artist that never really got going until 1980, when she struck gold with the epic disco track Love Sensation. Disco as a genre has frequently (and often rightly) criticised for being vacuous, but Love Sensation in no way fits that description. Its elaborate arrangement is filled with enough hooks to fill several songs; which explains why so many artists have sampled it in songs that sound nothing like each other. (Personally I could listen and dance to the section between 0:45 and 1:03 on loop all day.) And of course at its centre is Holloway's massive and unmistakable vocal performance.
Many of you won't have heard this song, which I consider to be the single greatest disco tune of all, but you'll probably recognise bits of it from Black Box's 1989 UK #1 hit Ride on Time, which sampled Holloway's vocal extensively. (The Italo-house outfit were subsequently sued by Holloway and writer Dan Hartman for royalties.)