Today, President-select George W. Bush nominated longtime Republican activist Elaine Chao to serve as Secretary of Labor.  Chao, who personally raised $26,450 for the Bush campaign and is the wife of conservative Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Congress's leading opponent of campaign finance reform legislation, joins Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of Transportation-nominee Norman Mineta as the second Asian American to be named to a Cabinet post.

Following a presidential campaign and transition strategy that has made every effort to exploit the "model minority" myth to its maximum extent -- showcasing exceptional successes by individual persons of color (Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Linda Chavez) to shame and silence those who testify to the ordinary experience of racism in America -- it was only a matter of time before the Bush team played the Asian card.  With most Asian Americans having immigrated to the U.S. after 1965 under selective standards, our socioeconomic status provides useful but misleading statistical ammunition for those who celebrate Asian success without acknowledging that Asian Americans face pervasive workplace discrimination and receive lower incomes than whites at every level of education and experience.

At the conservative Heritage Foundation, Chao has made a career out of attacking affirmative action programs and other race-conscious remedies to historical and continuing racial discrimination. She sympathizes with whites who would prefer to see themselves as raceless Americans, if only government quotas and regulations would get out of the way. (An inconvenient fact is that African Americans, Latino/as, Arab Americans -- and, yes, Asian Americans -- do not have that option.)

Update
Secretary Chao Places Workers, Minorities At Risk

By Eric Tang and Carol DeLeon
CAAAV:  Organizing Asian Communities
February 1, 2001

Elaine Chao, the new labor secretary, poses as great a risk to the lives of working immigrants and people of color as Linda Chavez, President Bush's first labor nominee. 

As Asian-Americans who seek to advance the movement for justice, dignity and true democracy -- not only among those formally recognized as laborers, but among the millions who work under low-wage and no-wage conditions -- we vehemently regret her confirmation. 

Chao staunchly opposes the idea that racism limits some people's opportunities. She argues that the conservative values of hard work and individualism will result in success regardless of color or ethnicity. Thus, she dismisses the long history of African-American, Asian-American, Latino and American Indian communities that have struggled to improve their lives.

An advocate of the flat tax, Chao believes rich and poor should pay the same taxes. Her reason? With the money they save, rich people will give more to charity.

Chao has dedicated her life to implementing the conservative agenda. She held several high-level positions within the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations. Her political world view can be summed up by the mission statement of the Heritage Foundation, where she chaired the Asian Studies Center Advisory Council: ``To formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values and a strong national defense.'' 

The Heritage Foundation has been at the vanguard of advancing some of the most damaging policies against poor women, such as eliminating their income supports, all in the name of advancing a culturally conservative agenda: promoting nuclear families, policing sexuality and denying ``privileges'' to the historically oppressed.

In other words, Chao's priority as labor secretary will be to further U.S. business interests while scaling back government protections for workers. This is frightening for all poor communities, not the least of which is the Asian immigrant poor. 

As with the Linda Chavez nomination, Chao provides the appearance of ``advancement for communities of color'' -- in the form of an Asian-American woman in the president's Cabinet. In reality, her appointment spells disaster for those who already are the most vulnerable of the working poor. 

Take the Chinese immigrant who labors in a garment sweatshop for more than 12 hours a day for less than the minimum wage. Under the leadership of Chao, this worker's hopes at a minimum wage (or better) have been dashed. Chao has made no commitment to raising it. In fact, she wants to give states the right to opt out of any minimum wage hike, stressing that such a hike would discourage job growth in economically depressed areas. Here, laborers are given one of two choices: Continue in working poverty or languish in jobless poverty. 

Chao has not committed to leaving in place occupational safety regulations passed by the previous administration. For instance, regulations that seek to reduce repetitive stress injuries -- very often a condition suffered by immigrant workers in assembly-line and garment sweat shops -- are being targeted by Republicans for the legislative scrap pile. Chao has not sought to defend these regulations. 

Neither is Chao a champion of the most vulnerable workers in the country: those living in poverty. During her tenure as president of the United Way, she focused primarily on the advancement of the high-tech job sector. 

Asian-American communities have a particular responsibility to speak out against Chao. Far from being a model of Asian-American ``empowerment,'' Chao's selection is a dark day for Asian-Americans. Far from being the embodiment of the American dream -- as her paternalistic colleagues like to suggest -- she is a nightmare for the working poor. In the aftermath of the Chavez controversy, it seems as if mainstream unions and progressive groups have either given Chao their approval or been silent. Their silence will come back to haunt us.

Dishing Up the American Dream

Embracing Chao merely because she is an Asian American woman is like enjoying the 2000 Republican convention with the sound off.

Chao Time

By Chisun Lee
The Village Voice
January 30, 2001

Elaine Chao believes deeply in the American dream because she has lived it. Her successful life gives eloquent testimony to the virtues of hard work and perseverance and to the unending promise of this great country. —George W. Bush

Strengthened by faith in God and family, we knew in our hearts that with hard work, perseverance, and the help of newly found neighbors and friends, we could indeed achieve the American dream. —Elaine Chao

Senators from both parties at the Education, Health, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing hailed Ms. Chao, who immigrated from Taiwan when she was 8, as the incarnation of the American dream. —The New York Times

It's enough to make you gag. But more nauseating than the rhetoric itself is the fact that it actually worked. It stymied everyone—unions, minority and women's groups, Democrats—who should have challenged the appointment of Elaine Chao to the labor secretary post. The Chinese American's smooth confirmation has been hailed as a sign of social progress, but all it really proves is that the retro model-minority myth still works.

How the myth functions: Those in power invoke—in this case, enlist—the story of a successful minority, usually a docile and diligent Asian, in order to deflate claims of injustice from other minority groups. She flourished, so the problem must lie with you and not the system, the logic goes. Invented by nervous establishment types during the civil rights movement to get minority groups to hate each other, it's a slippery, deliberately confusing spiel, which results in someone getting played. In this case, the unions, minority groups, and the media got played; they, in turn, played the people. The real dupes in the end will be the working poor, for whom the anti-affirmative-action, anti-feminist, pro-business labor secretary will make the most difference.

It was dismaying to watch the same news outlets that knowingly reported the Linda Chavez scandal to be more than she said it was turn around two days later and regurgitate the touching tales they were told about Chao. The ones about coming to New York on a freighter as a little girl, speaking not a word of English, but managing against all odds eventually to get a business degree from Harvard. Also, the ones about her being good, decent (she headed the Peace Corps under George Sr. and moved on to the United Way), and so, well, nice. The universal pronouncement: pleasant. Easy. Anyone for demure?

The Bush camp wasn't going to screw up twice. They invoked the myth early, and Chao's by-the-bootstraps background became untouchable. No matter that she runs with the same crowd—the proudly conservative Heritage Foundation folks, the sexual-harassment-is-a-state-of-mind Independent Women's Forum gals—as Chavez and most of the other cabinet picks, including the reviled John Ashcroft. The coalition of civil rights and labor groups against Linda Chavez was strong; at least six organizations were on line to testify against her at her confirmation hearings. Opponents at Chao's proceeding? None.

The insidiousness and strength of the myth lies in its appeal to those who most wish that reality were anything but. National Organization for Women president Patricia Ireland sidestepped political questions and instead gave the Bush administration credit for at least recognizing that women can be competent. So what if Chao is a longtime advisory board member of the Independent Women's Forum, an organization that aggressively counters the notion that sexual harassment, glass ceilings, and wage disparities are real problems for women and chalks these concerns up to "gender correctness."

Similarly, Organization of Chinese Americans executive director Daphne Kwok declares, "[Chao's nomination] really is a recognition that we are full participating Americans. It shows to the world that America fully embraces its diversity." Never mind that Chao has actually equated Asians with whites, arguing that affirmative action hurts both. Never mind that she opposed putting Bill Lann Lee, an Asian American, in charge of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, because he sought to use existing laws to counter racial discrimination. (Trent Lott floated Chao's name as an improvement on the liberal Lee.) For some Asian Americans, Chao is the antidote to Wen Ho Lee, the man whose troubles reminded us that as long as you look funny, they'll treat you funny.

Of course, embracing Chao merely because she is an Asian American woman is like enjoying the 2000 Republican convention with the sound off. "Far from being a model of Asian American empowerment, Chao's selection is a dark day in the history of Asian America," warns Eric Tang of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities. She's not only a false symbol of progress, argues Diane Chin of Chinese for Affirmative Action, she's a dissembler. "The way she uses her Chineseness to undermine affirmative action is particularly offensive to us," Chin says. Aunt Elaine, meet Uncle Tom.

But hardly a concerned word was heard during Chao's confirmation proceeding. That's largely because the big boys, the ones who can get senators to listen, bowed out. The Bush camp spoon-fed the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney with a buttery call from Chao before going public with the news, and he ate it right up. His counterparts followed suit. What a pleasant lady, the general sentiment went. Much nicer than that abrasive, outspoken Chavez.

The office of Edward Kennedy, who presided over Chao's hearing, didn't receive so much as a phone call of protest from any union, according to the senator's spokesperson. Mainstream labor denounced Chavez because of the danger she posed to the minimum wage, affirmative action, and other government protections. Like anyone vying to take over an agency overseeing 125 million workers, Chavez protested that she would fully and fairly enforce existing labor laws. Bullshit, the unions said. They planned to orchestrate a filibuster to block her nomination. But Chao, who pussyfooted around questions about minimum wage, affirmative action, workplace protection, and health care during her hearing, got the benefit of the doubt.

What doubt? True, Chao, unlike Chavez, has almost no labor background (a fact that worries nobody), nor has she been as forthcoming with her views. Therefore, some argue, there's not enough to judge her on. But her opposition to affirmative action—with her own success as the primary example of why it's not necessary—is well documented; the federal government, which she would represent, is the biggest affirmative action employer in the nation. She sits on four corporate boards: Northwest Airlines, Clorox, C.R. Bard, Columbia/HCA Healthcare. As a member of the staunchly conservative Heritage Foundation, she has argued that the greatest regulator of the free market is the free market itself. To her, the instability experienced by globalization-era workers is not a burden, it's "autonomy." In one interview a couple of years back, she declared, "Levi Strauss is going bankrupt, basically, because they pride themselves on being the most worker-enlightened corporation in America."

In a way, it really doesn't matter who the labor secretary is. Anyone would ultimately be a mouthpiece and mule for the Bush agenda, the project of privileging profit over the poor. But in another sense, it does. It matters that Linda Chavez was such a despicable figure, a common enemy for the disunited left. The many-faceted myth of Chao, on the other hand, has bewitched potential critics—minorities, women, unions—and caused them to roll over. With Chao as its spokesperson, the new administration is selling the American dream. The final price may be higher than buyers realize.

Remarks on the President's Initiative on Race

By Elaine Chao
April 29, 1998

The President has called for a national dialogue. And he has asked us all to "become one America in the 21st Century." Unfortunately, the President's words do not match his actions.

The President's panel on race and his policies on race are not bringing us together, but are in fact, driving us apart. The President's race panel has strategically and systematically excluded all persons who share a viewpoint different from the President's.

The very President and the very panel that claims to believe in diversity as the ultimate goal has, ironically, established a panel which has absolutely no diversity of viewpoint.

I'd like to focus for a moment on one viewpoint, in particular, that has been ignored. That is the viewpoint of Asian Americans who are discriminated against by government mandated quotas and preferences. This state-sanctioned discrimination is particularly harsh in education.

Let me share with you this morning the story of Charlene Loen. Ms. Loen is a Chinese American and a mother. Like all moms, she encourages her young son, Patrick, to work hard in school and to make good grades. In the end, of course, she hopes that her son's initiative and accomplishments will be rewarded.

All seemed to work as planned for Charlene and her son Patrick. Patrick worked hard, made good grades and applied to a top San Francisco high school. Unfortunately, hard work and good grades weren't enough. You see, Patrick was the wrong race. He was Chinese American and the school had already met the Chinese American quota.

So, the school rejected one student who was the wrong race while admitting other students who had lower scores, but were of the right race.

To the vast majority of Americans, these kind of policies are just plain wrong. As Ms. Loen has explained, "There's got to be some way of resolving these racial difficulties short of preferring one racial group over another." The overwhelming number of Americans would agree.

But, you won't hear any such viewpoint from the President or his panel. In fact, in a 1995 interview with the Sacramento Bee, the President argued for continuing these kind of unfair and discriminatory preferences pointing out that, without preferences, and I quote: "there are universities that could fill their entire freshman classes with nothing but Asian Americans."¹ With all due respect, I don't think the President's concerns provide much comfort to Charlene Loen and her son Patrick.

In fact, the President's prediction of an all-Asian freshman class did not happen in California this past year. Overall minority enrollment in California held fairly steady this past year and only experienced a slight drop -- even at the prestigious University of California at Berkeley where minority enrollment went from 57% to 49% -- that's only an 8% drop at one of the most prestigious public universities in the country.

If you are wondering why you may have never heard these numbers before, it's because the proponents of preferences conveniently exclude Asian Americans from the minority category -- whenever it suits their purposes. For example, if the topic is hate crimes, then Asian Americans are included as a minority. But, if the topic is education, and Asian Americans skew the numbers in the wrong direction, then our minority status is simply ignored -- even though we make up less than 5% of the population. This tactic is, at best, less than honest.

The President has called for an open dialogue. Ward Connerly has explained that the panel has conducted a mere monologue. I'd like to take it one step further and point out that the President's panel has actually engaged in nothing more than a soliloquy -- talking without anyone listening.

Let me quote for you the Courier-Journal, the largest -- and I might add, the most liberal -- newspaper in my now home state of Kentucky. A newspaper that wholeheartedly supports racial preferences, but also supports a genuine dialogue. The Courier-Journal recently explained:

the fact of the matter is that a substantial number of Americans agree with Mr. Connerly -- that's why Proposition 209 passed. And you can't promote a frank exchange of views on race if you aren't willing to listen to those who are unhappy about what they see as racial quotas and reverse discrimination. . . . [M]aybe they have ideas about how to promote diversity without resorting to means that they believe are unfair and unconstitutional. But, Mr. Franklin [the chairman of the President's Panel] won't know if he doesn't listen to them. And the same goes for Mr. Clinton.

¹ See Charles Krauthammer, "The President and the Burden of Race," The Washington Post, June 20, 1997.