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杨安泽日前在纽约的一场选民集会上发布政见，其中谈到亚裔在美国社会的成功和提高社区政治参与的意义。在去年的美国华人大会上，他曾经设问，如果你想象一个华裔美国总统候选人，你希望从议员、州长这样的方式逐级升上去？这个体系对于亚裔来说是机会同等的吗？这篇演说里，他提出了几个有些难堪的事实，但也提出亚裔是沉睡的巨人，期待能够醒来发挥力量。

我对这次竞选有一些设想。一个是我要进入辩论阶段，我心想，亚裔美国人社区看到一个亚裔美国人在辩论台上不是很好吗？因为我记得在这个国家长大，想着自己对自己的看法，所以我想象我是一个少年的自己，打开电视，看到一个亚裔面孔站在那个舞台上，然后对自己说：亚裔出来竞选总统，这是完全正常的。我很高兴地说，我们已经达到了这个目标五次，可能会第六次站上辩论台。像移民的好孩子一样，从不满足，而是越来越“贪婪”。我们站上了辩论台，但目标并不只是能多站几回，目标是赢到最后。我清楚地看到了这一天，我看到了爱荷华州、新罕布什尔州、内华达州和南卡罗来纳州的人们在眼前的道路。我们能赢。

闯入辩论阶段，是其中一个愿景。我在这个选举战役中看到了许许多多的愿景目标，我们每次都做到了。然后，愿景就变得越来越大。但是我要与大家分享的一件事是，这个故事我时常跟别人讲过，是我14岁左右的事。

当时我父亲在IBM做物理研究员，做了一些发明。当我大概弄清楚了专利是什么，我发现父亲正在申请专利，我就说，老爸，你申请一个专利能得到多少钱？你们猜猜看——他说，大概是200到250美元。然后我觉得，这好像不算什么嘛。然后他说，我也挣工资啊，所以我可以供你们兄弟俩的住宿、食物和衣服。但是有一次他回到家，样子很生气。当时14岁的我想，哇，好像很糟糕，就问什么惹你生气？他说了一句我永远不会忘记的话：他说，在IBM，当您再也无法发明任何东西时，你就成了经理。他说，实验室里有一群亚洲人（在做事），然后是一群白人做管理。

我当时听到这些，反应就是，哇（难以置信）。我也不知道他说的是否正确，当时才14岁。但是我记得内化了这种感觉，那就是亚裔被允许在这个国家取得一定成功，但是我们不被允许取得更高一点的成功。我为这项选战制定的目标之一是，向我们的孩子们表明，我们在这个国家可以完成的事业是无限的，我们与其他任何人一样好、和其他任何人一样是同等的美国人。我们一样爱国，我们同样爱我们的家人，我们拥有正义、清晰的愿景和为这个国家的未来作贡献的权利，就像任何其他人一样。 

但是数字说话，我想坦率指出我们（亚裔）社区的现实。在这个国家，我们在政治上属于不被重视的，这里有一些相当实质的原因。

第一，我们的投票比其他团体少。第二，我们的政治捐款远少于其他群体。在座有多少人是在这次选举中才做出了自己第一次的政治捐款？（第三，）我们竞选公职的人数要少于其他团体。还有（第四，）我们倾向于生活在非常蓝或非常红的州，我们并不是摇摆票仓。

因此，有实实在在的原因，使得我们在政治上不够重要。一位很高级别的民主党官员对我的一个朋友说，亚裔美国人被认为是一台低端取款机。我们可以有所作为。第一，成为一台“高端取款机”（玩笑）。但第二说真的，我们可以开始在我们信任的候选人身上投入精力和支持，我们可以让人知道，我们不会满足于仅仅看着美国的政治在我们不在场的情况下被塑造，我们将争取在那张桌子上占有一席之地。你们说呢？……亚裔美国人，是一个沉睡的巨人。我的目标是使该竞选运动成为惊醒剂，让人们觉醒起来。

I had a couple of visions for this campaign. One was that I was going to make to the debate stage and I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great for the Asian-American community to have an Asian-American on the stage? Because I remember growing up in this country and thinking about what we saw of ourselves, and I imagined being a younger version of myself and turning on the TV and seeing an Asian man standing on that stage and saying, this is totally normal: Asians run for president. And I’m happy to say we’ve hit that mark five times or go going for number six. Like a good child of immigrants, I am never content, to just get greedier and greedier. So The goal is to win this whole thing. And I see it clear as day, I see the path ahead of us in the numbers and in the eyes, the people in Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina. We can win.

So the vision I had, making to the debate stage, was one. There have been many, many things that I visualized in this campaign that we’ve knocked out each and every time. And then the vision just gets bigger and bigger. But one thing I’m going to share with you all is a story that I tell sometimes where when I was 14 or so.

My dad was a physicist at IBM, so he invented stuff. And when I was about 13 or 14, I figured out what a pattern was. And I figured out that my dad was generating patents. And so then I said, Hey, dad, how much do you get when you generate a pad? And he was like, 200 to 250 dollars. And then I was like, that doesn’t seem like a whole lot. And then he said, I also get paid a salary so I can house, feed and clothe you and your brother. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I see. But there was one time when he came back home and he was really angry. And I was like, wow, that seems bad. Are you mad? And he said something I’ll never forget. He said, at IBM, when you can’t invent anything anymore, they make you a manager. And so he said there were a bunch of Asians in the lab and then a bunch of white managers management. 

And I heard this and I was 14 years old and I was like, wow. And I don’t know if he was right. But I remember internalizing this sense then that Asians are allowed to become this successful in this country, but we’re not allowed to become this successful. And one of the goals I had for this campaign was to show our children that there is no limit to what we can accomplish in this country, that we are just as good and just as American as anyone else. We are just as patriotic. We love our families just as much and we have the justice, clear vision and a right to contribute to the future of this country as anyone else. 

But as a numbers guy, I also want to be frank about our community. We are a political afterthought in this country. We’re a political afterthought for a number of fairly substantive reasons. Number one, we vote less than other groups. Number two, we donate less money less than other groups. So thank you. But raise your hand if it is the first political contribution our poll has put campaign over and down. And we run for office less than other groups. We tend to live in states that are either very blue or very red. So we’re not like swing votes……

So there are legitimate reasons why we’re something of a political afterthought. And there was a very high level Democratic official who said to a friend of mine that Asian-Americans are regarded as a low level ATM. So there a number of things we can do about this. Number one, we can become a high level ATM (joking). But number two, we can start investing our energies and our support in the candidates that we believe in. We can let people know that we are not going to be content to just watch the politics of America take shape without us on the table. We’re going to fight for a place at that table. What do you think? …… The Asian-Americans are sleeping giant. And my goal is for this campaign to be the smelling salts, we are going to wake people up.

来源：https://youtu.be/vQ270VZFINI

此文仅供参阅，不代表UCA官方观点。