TEXAS, USA — State Representative Gene Wu says it’s time for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community to defend itself and speak out against attacks coming from the outside.
“I think it’s time the community stood up and said you don’t get a pass on this. You don’t get to mock us and denigrate us and call us traitors and all these things because it benefits you and because you think it’s funny. We’re going to stand up,” Rep. Wu said on Inside Texas Politics.
One of the latest controversies involves Texas Congressman Lance Gooden.
The Republican recently questioned Congresswoman Judy Chu’s loyalty to the United States. Rep. Chu is the nation’s first Chinese American Congresswoman, a Californian who was first elected in 2009.
Even the GOP chair of the new House Committee on China condemned the comments, calling them out of bound and beyond the pale.
Rep. Wu agrees.
“For him to take this kind of very charged, racially motivated type of attack against a senior member of the U.S. House is just, it’s surprising and, frankly, very shocking. It’s offensive,” the Democrat told us.
“We’ve had these same types of accusations, these same stereotypes since the Japanese internment. And that’s a final result of that kind of attitude and that kind of thought.”
Even now in Texas, Wu says the AAPI community is having to stand up and speak out against proposed legislation that would ban governments, businesses and citizens from China and three other countries from buying land in Texas
Since the initial outrage, SB 147’s author, State Sen. Louis Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, made changes so the prohibition would not apply to individuals looking to buy homes. And it now exempts those who are already U.S. citizens or have dual citizenship.
And in another controversy, it took the Department of Public Safety months to notify victims that their information had been stolen, after at least 3,000 Texas driver’s licenses were sent to a Chinese organized crime group.
All of the victims are of Asian descent.
“The fact that they found out about this at the end of last year and did not agree to inform the victims of this crime until they were pressed on it this week, that is shocking. That is far, far below grade,” Rep. Wu complained. “If Governor Abbott wants this type of incompetence to represent him, then so be it. But we are wholly unsatisfied with both Director McCraw’s performance and just how this entire situation is handled.”