They still talk as if we’re not here, which is probably how they talk most of the time anyway.

Diversity deficit in Iowa and New Hampshire

By Emil Guillermo

I’ve always thought it strange that the two bellwether states that really begin the political season are Iowa and New Hampshire.

Bellwether for what? Certainly not diversity.

In Iowa and New Hampshire, it may as well be America in the 1950s, impregnable to immigration and minorities. It is  America as it used to be.

Look at the numbers. Iowa is 91.3 percent white (a slightly more modest 88.7 percent when you apply the “white Hispanic” discount).  Compare that to the rest of the country overall white non-Hispanics  at 63.7 percent .

New Hampshire is at 92.3 percent, and that’s with the “white Hispanic” discount. 

Meanwhile Blacks are at just 2.9 percent in Iowa, 1.1 percent in New Hampshire.  Compare that to 12.6 percent nationwide.

Hispanics don’t fare much better, with 5 percent in Iowa, and 2.8 percent in New Hampshire.

But the nation is 16.3 percent Hispanic.

Asian Americans, oddly, do better than all groups as a percentage. Iowa is 1.7 percent Asian American, and New Hampshire 2.2 percent. Both are closer to the five percent national Asian American population.

And when you consider our Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander group, Iowa has .1 percent vs. the national total of .2percent.  Progress!

Different story in New Hampshire, where you’d be hard-pressed to find one Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

So you see why it’s hard to get really excited about the big official kick-off to Election 2012.  None of the candidates are really talking to us, even though if any of these candidates win, they sure will be leading us. 

What’s more revealing is that they still talk as if we’re not here, which is probably how they talk most of the time anyway.  It all makes Iowa and New Hampshire so comforting for a candidate wanting to speak past us to “just the right folks.”

Most ethnic groups do tend to vote Democratic, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t Republicans and Independents among us interested in the winnowing process. They’re likely more moderate, or certainly to the left, say of Rick Santorum, who has just seen a rise in polls to third-place, eclipsing Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich is another matter, altogether. The Newt appears to be too flamboyant for Iowans. And just nasty and irrelevant for New Hampshire regulars.  If you heard his recent Pearl Harbor remark, where he compared his failure to qualify for the Virginia primary to the “Day of Infamy,” you’ve got to be at least slightly bothered.

His deployment of the Pearl Harbor metaphor for his campaign’s failure deserves some analysis. Sure, it may just be the megalomaniac putting his snafu on a grand level. But he’s also using an event that strikes different chords within different groups.

To all Americans, Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack that engendered patriotic fervor.  But it was also an attack by the Japanese that brings up the kind of xenophobic feelings that led to outlandish public racism and the internment of Japanese Americans.

To Asian Americans in general, Pearl Harbor ushered in the beginning of the worst period of anti-Asian American racism ever, most of it perpetrated by our government. 

When you’re behind in the polls and sinking like Gingrich, you need to use hot button language in your communication to rile up the electorate.  That’s much easier to do if your universe of voters is all-white.  A little harder if you have to think about the rest of us.

We’ll see if there are surprises this week and in South Carolina, where the governor is an Asian American republican who has bucked her Tea Party supporters and shacked up with Romney.

Diversity really doesn’t come into play until late in the season and by then Romney could have it locked up, making votes in California somewhat irrelevant. 

Still, it’s a horse race, so we watch as the GOP candidates take their best shots at each other. What are we left with?  A fairly battered GOP nominee versus a fresh and confident President Obama.
 

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