About 9 years ago I started getting spam emails from 80-20 and this guy named SB Woo. I found them intriguing, trying to get a bloc vote organized of Asian Americans. The more I read on them the more wary I became of them, and requested that I stop getting their emails, which grew more and more bizarre as time went on.
I eventually became plain ambivalent about them after getting in a discussion with my dad about them. He was also getting their spam. I expressed my wariness of 80-20 to him, about how I didn't like how they seemed to be trying to be the representative of all 11 million+ Asian Americans in the U.S, and about how I didn't like how the group seemed to be all about assimilation and being like American Jews and Cuban Americans ("good minorities" blending in with the system, not challenging the system), rather than about institutional change for social justice and human rights. My dad argued that he was impressed that at least a group was reaching out to Asian immigrant communities to be politically active. Of course his gauge for this was that his circle of Chinese American immigrant friends were starting to be convinced of the importance of voting. I could agree that this was a good thing. I could also agree that it was a good thing that suddenly my parents' friends all voted for Gore in 2000. Because of this, I remained ambivalent about 80-20.
In recent years I heard friends and colleagues talk about SB Woo, 80-20's founder, and share bizarre stories of their interactions with him. In one interaction, Woo was upset that he was not consulted on a report that was done about the increasing numbers of Asian Americans voting, as if he was the king or emperor of all voting Asian Americans. Very weird, but since it wasn't an interaction I had with him personally, I continued my ambivalence.
When my co-author on an article this past year wanted to use a quote by Woo, I was ok with it, not entirely comfortable with it knowing how odd he seemed to be, but ok with it. Then... yesterday happened, and now... I'm NOT ok with it, and I'm no longer ambivalent. In fact I'm trying to contact the publisher/editors to change the quote before it goes to print. I don't want anything to do with this man.
Even though Woo is no longer President of 80-20, he's clearly still the driving force, and I'm convinced that he is losing his sanity. Or maybe he lost it long ago.
I was on facebook yesterday checking out what kinds of Asian American facebook groups were out there connected to Obama. I joined one, and noticed that there was one called "Vote for Asian Americans & against Barack Obama" with one member. Curious to see what it was all about I checked it out and found that this one guy, repping 80-20 was calling on all Asian Americans to vote against Obama because he didn't complete 80-20's questionnaire, which was only distributed to Democrats and not Republicans. Because Obama didn't complete the questionnaire, 80-20 has engaged in an anti-Obama campaign. I called out 80-20 on their inconsistency in not forcing Republicans to fill out the questionnaire. I also said that the facebook group was wack because it says that Obama says he won't fill out the questionnaire because he's Black. OK, I wasn't terribly nice about it, and asked if 80-20 was racist. But Woo's response was beyond bizarre: "Obama's victory in primary eliminate the other Dem
candidates who has replies with all yeses. Whoever wins the Republican primary doesn't have such an effect. Got it? Thanks. Oneday when you are older, you may be embarrassed by thus email that you sent."
HUH!? Gee... thanks for being condescending and patronizing, and completely incomprehensible.
The inside story on Obama not completing the questionnaire:
80-20 let Edwards and Clinton change wording on the questionnaire before answering "yes" to all the questions. For some reason they wouldn't let Obama do the same. See the Asian Americans for Obama site response to 80-20. Key to highlight is: He is the only major candidate with an official AAPI campaign website linked off the main campaign homepage. He's also always included Asian American outreach in all his work.
Personally I was looking for a candidate who was actively engaging AAPI's, and was torn between candidates until recently. And one of the things that finally swayed me was the very active AAPI's for Obama organizing.
