Barack Obama's Celebrated "Cool" is Asian Cool!

A few days ago in Northern Virginia, I attended a press conference headlined by a hero of mine, U.S. Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA), at which Barack Obama’s “Blueprint for the Change We Need for Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders” was unveiled for local newspapers.

After the event, an Asian Pacific American reporter asked me an interesting question:

As a mixed race Asian American, do you feel an added connection to Barack Obama, who is also mixed race and has Asian roots?

I must have said something the reporter found interesting, because she asked me to expand upon it twice. I said, “Barack Obama carries himself with Asian dignity: you can see it in the debates.”

Journalists describe the quality I’m speaking of as a “steady disposition,” and praise Sen. Obama as “calm under fire” and “calm, cool, and collected.” The word that springs to mind for me is “poise.” Poise was a measure of strength that was instilled in me when I was growing up in Hawai’i (Obama’s boyhood home), by Asian male role models such as teachers and baseball coaches. My mother, who is Chinese American, pointed to “quiet confidence” as a quality she admired in her father, Donald Tom, as a quality to which I should aspire. (If you have seen my narrative films, my Asian American male characters often exhibit poise and quiet confidence.)

Journalists also marvel at the contrast between John McCain and Barack Obama during the debates. Where McCain is irritable, resentful, boastful, and disrespectful toward his opponent; Obama is poised, dignified, respectful, and gracious in responding to intense criticism.

These are all qualities that I grew up admiring in Asian male role models in Hawai’i and among my Chinese American relatives in California. I suspect Obama grew up admiring similar traits growing up a few valleys east of me in Honolulu. And, I suspect these were qualities exemplified by his Indonesian step father.

Obama’s calm disposition may mystify the media, but it’s no mystery to me. Barack Obama’s cool is Asian cool!

I also wanted to share the other point I made during the interview.

Asian Americans and mixed race Americans know how it feels to have our American identity questioned by others.
“Where are you from? No, where are you really from? No before that where did you come from? You speak very good English.”This idiotic yet all-too-familiar conversation is not unlike the various attacks that Barack Obama has endured in recent weeks from the McCain campaign and its surrogates. “He is not like us. He is an Arab. He is a Muslim. He pals around with terrorists. He’s a socialist, no he’s a communist. He is a community organizer. He does the terrorist fist bump with his wife. He won’t wear a flag pin. He was educated in a Muslim school. He won’t salute the flag.”

In the very town where I live in Virginia, the Republican party chairman sends his volunteers out to talk to voters with a speech about how Barack Obama is like a terrorist who bombs the Pentagon, to which his volunteers are known to shout, “Yeah, and we don’t even know where he was born!” (Obama was born in Honolulu).  Recently, John McCain was forced to explain to his supporters at a town hall in Minnesota that Obama is indeed a citizen of the United States! All of these lies have been designed to question Barack Obama’s right to identify himself as an American, and put fear, doubt, and hate into the minds of voters.

I told the reporter that I’m very proud of the way Obama has responded and, to this point, overcome these attacks, just the way Asian Americans and all people of color do throughout our lives.

If Barack Obama is successful this November 4th, it will be a victory for America and all it stands for. In particular, it will be a victory for those Americans who have had their identiy as Americans dismissed, derided, or challenged.  I’d rate Asian Americans at the top of the list.