How Asian are Obama's Asian-American Cabinet picks?
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U.S. President Barack Obama announced his nomination for secretary of commerce on Wednesday. If confirmed, former Washington Gov. Gary Locke, the only Chinese-American to have served as the governor of a state, will be the third Asian-American in Obama’s Cabinet. The others are Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki.
Obama has compiled one of the most diverse Cabinets ever, with five women, four blacks, three Hispanics and three Asians.
The newly nominated Locke seems to have the strongest ties to Asia. After being elected governor, Locke — whose Chinese name is Lok Gaa-Fai — traveled with his family to his ancestral village in China. In an interview, he recounted, “We were treated like returning heroes and rock stars, and I was moved to tears on many occasions.” He was even granted a meeting with former Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
Locke’s paternal grandfather immigrated to the United States as a teenager from Taishan in China’s southern province of Guangdong. He worked as a houseboy in exchange for English lessons.
Locke grew up in a low-income housing project near Seattle’s Chinatown. His parents owned a restaurant and later a small grocery. Despite his humble beginnings, Locke was apparently destined for greater things. In a documentary Locke’s father, speaking a mix of accented English and Cantonese, recounted a visit to a palm reader who told him he would have a son who would gain fame as “a big politician.”
Locke worked his way through college, earning an undergraduate degree in political science from Yale University and a law degree from Boston University. He married Mona Lee, a television news reporter, whose father hails from Shanghai and whose mother is from Hubei province in China.
Locke was elected to the Washington State House of Representatives, where he served for more than a decade before being elected governor. In that position he led several trade missions to China.
After leaving office Locke headed the China division of a Seattle-based law firm. His celebrity status in China and his knowledge of trade issues gave his clients special access to China’s emerging markets.
Locke was reportedly involved with business groups that pressured Congress to simplify U.S. visa applications for Chinese business people, and he was a key figure in organizing Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States in 2006. Such close ties to China could complicate Locke’s confirmation as commerce secretary.
Like Locke, Energy Secretary Chu is Chinese in appearance, but American in identity. He is a second-generation Chinese-American who was born in Missouri and resides with his British-American wife, Jean Fetter.
Chu received his bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Rochester in New York state and earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Chu was later co-awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.
Chu’s achievement should come as no surprise. His maternal grandfather was sent by the Chinese government to study engineering at Cornell University, his uncle was minister of education in China, and his parents left China in the 1940s to pursue their postgraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his father later received a Ph.D.
The family eventually settled in a predominantly white community with only one or two other Asian families. While Chu’s parents were active in the Asian community, he and his brothers never learned to speak Chinese. There was a brief attempt to send the children to Saturday Chinese school, but as Chu explained to AsianWeek, “By the time you’re in fourth grade, and all your friends are Americans, they try to take you to a Chinese school, you rebel.”
Still, Chu attempted to study Mandarin as an adult. He is a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has trained several prominent scientists in China. He serves as the honorary director of the Bio-X Center at Jiaotong University in Shanghai and has visited China several times.
Chinese media cheered Obama’s pick of Chu as energy secretary. His photograph has appeared on the front pages of newspapers, including the state-owned China Daily, which quoted a Chinese academic saying Chu’s ethnic background would help strengthen U.S.-China cooperation in the energy sector.
Retired Army Gen. Shinseki, who was the first Asian-American to become a four-star general in the U.S. Army and army chief of staff, appears to have stronger ties with the unique Asian-American culture found in Hawaii.
A cousin of Shinseki explained that to understand Shinseki one has to understand Hawaii and its multitude of cultures. After being unanimously confirmed as secretary of veterans affairs, Shinseki said in an interview that his birthplace, Hawaii, “is home for me and my family.”
Born and raised in Hawaii, a third-generation descendant of Japanese immigrants, Shinseki grew up with his grandparents in the Japanese section of a plantation community. He graduated from West Point and received his master’s degree in English literature from Duke University. He was awarded two Purple Hearts and three Bronze Stars for wounds sustained during two combat tours in Vietnam.
While his identity as a Japanese-American born and raised in Hawaii is visible, it is also clear that Shinseki identifies himself most of all as a military man.
In his 38-year military career, Shinseki was stationed in Hawaii and Texas as well as in various countries throughout Europe. He was finally promoted to army chief of staff in 1999. In June 2003 Shinseki retired after his candid assessment that it would take several hundred thousand soldiers to secure Iraq clashed with that of senior Department of Defense officials.
Michael E. O’Hanlon, senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, wrote in The Japan Times: “Shinseki deserved better. An extremely honorable and ethical man with a distinguished combat record, the first Japanese-American to lead a U.S. military service, and the father of the army’s plan for transformation to a lighter and more deployable force, he should have been viewed as a hero.”
Online Japanese communities complained that Shinseki was the victim of racism.
Although Shinseki did not plan on returning to government, he changed his mind when Obama reached out to him to head the Veterans Affairs Department. In an interview Shinseki said, “My passion of 38 years was serving with and serving soldiers and their families.”
The announcement of Shinseki’s nomination was strategically made on Dec. 7, the anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Still, the Japanese media noted the “forward-looking posture” of Obama, who did not mention Japan or Germany by name on that day. Despite the reference to Japan, Shinseki is clearly rooted more in the United States than in the land of his ancestors.
In an interview at an Asian-American awards night, he stated, “Be proud of your culture, be proud of who you are. This is a great country.”
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li xue said (about 1 year ago)
yes,just like Shinseki says,America is a great country- because it is the melting pot of diverse culture;be proud and surprised of different culture of human culture,be confident in ourselves and be proud of our only home ---- the earth!