Why I Support Barack Obama – One Philadelphia Korean American’s Hope

April 18, 2008
by Helen Gym

As the Pennsylvania primary approaches, I have been thinking a lot about what the presidential elections have meant to me as a second generation Korean American.

My parents came to the U.S. in the 1960s. My father, a refugee from the north, renamed himself “Golden” Gym in honor of his hopes to remake himself in this country. My mother’s family gave thanks for her good fortune to study and live in the U.S.

We lived most of our lives in Columbus, Ohio, where neighbors played an important part in our social life. Our neighbors might not have been informed about Korean history and culture, but they welcomed my parents and me, celebrated when my parents got their citizenship, brought my mom to church choir, and babysat my sister and I when my mom visited Korea.

As a child of immigrants, I remember how important public services meant to a family that had very little. Public schools, public libraries, public pools and recreation centers – they gave me so many of the things my parents could not.

Decades later, I am today the mother of three children, trying to raise my family with the same sense of pride, responsibility and appreciation of civic values that I relied upon growing up. But these are far different times. I send my children to Philadelphia public schools which teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, have the highest class sizes in the state, and where only half my children’s peers are likely to graduate. As a community organizer I have seen a drastic decline in public services for immigrant communities, and a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment now voiced by many of our state’s political leaders. My nieces and nephews in Korea no longer desire to come to the U.S. It is not the country of my parents’ generation.

I don’t think I am alone or special in these feelings. Many of us know what things are wrong in our world. But not many of us know what to do to make things right again.

In these times, political leadership is essential. I am not naïve about what I think a president can or can’t do for me. History has taught Asian Americans not to wait for other people to get things done for us. I’m doing a lot on my own already to change my world. But I want a leader who sees a different vision than that proffered by the traditional Democratic and Republican parties.

For me, Barack Obama offers that vision.

It heartens me that he is a scholar of constitutional theory. I need a president who respects the spirit and purpose of our constitution, and won’t fall into politically-motivated reinterpretations of whether we have the right to torture, whether immigrants are welcomed here, or whether you need proof to go to war with another nation.
I am hopeful about his experience living in Asia and a multiracial state like Hawaii. I want a president who sees Asian Americans not as a political constituency but as an integral fabric of American society.
I believe his experience as a community organizer has impressed upon him the real needs and experiences of poor and working class families as well as the complicated problems facing many of our struggling cities. Although Barack Obama moves in far different circles today, his rhetoric and perspective reflect the lasting impression of those experiences.
I believe his open and mature views on race – even in the face of a media onslaught about his preacher’s remarks – means he will not push aside our society’s difficulties around race, but embrace an increasingly racial, ethnic and linguistically diverse society here and abroad.
Then there are the issues that matter to me. Health care is paramount. My sister-in-law discovered she was pregnant, and then found out that her $600 per month health care coverage doesn’t include pre-natal care, maternity or birth. A new mother should worry about nurseries not a $10,000 hospital bill. Obama’s plan to deliver universal health care to all Americans must be one of the top issues of the next presidency. As an Asian American, Obama’s humane stand on positive immigration reform counters the anti-immigrant sentiment and actions too often played up for political points. Supporting public schools (as opposed to charters, vouchers and privatization), tax relief for middle class Americans, and his plan for higher education – all of these are also issues supportive of immigrant and Korean American communities.

But more than anything I am voting for Barack Obama because for the first time as a mature adult I feel the hope and possibility of my parent’s America – and it looks promising.

Helen Gym lives and works in Philadelphia. She was named the Philadelphia Inquirer’s 2007 Citizen of the Year for her work in immigrant communities and on behalf of the Philadelphia public schools.

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