1 week Ago By Petr Svab
As the Asian community in the Middletown, New York, area grows more successful and active, unacceptable discrimination follows, Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.
) told mostly Asian students at a local private college during an Oct. 18 meeting. He pledged to work against the prejudice and encouraged the attendees to report incidents directly to him.
“In the absence of good leadership, folks would blame and take what might feel like personal grievance and they’ll manifest it as jealousy and discrimination and hate. And we are seeing evidence of that. We’re even seeing evidence of that—which is very disappointing to me—in our media and in our press here,” he said, alluding to several media reports in recent years that went out of their way to cast the growing imprint of the Asian immigrants on the local community as nefarious.
“To take success and growth and excitement and dynamism and somehow spin that and paint that as hateful and divisive, it pits our community against each other right at the moment when we should be realizing and welcoming new community members, new energy, new investment of financial resources, and the brain power in this room alone,” he said. The school, Fei Tian College Middletown, is on a list of successful ventures started by local Chinese immigrants. The diaspora was seeded about two decades ago by adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual practice who were escaping the brutal persecution they face in China at hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
With them came the birth of a lineup of businesses, from small restaurants and shops to a department store, a tech startup, Gan Jing World, which runs a social media platform focused on family friendly content, and even the college Ryan spoke at. The lawmaker praised Middletown Mayor Joseph DeStefano for supporting the Asian community and resisting prejudice. “Mayor DeStephano has seen this—the potential and the possibility and the tangible results—and leaned into that and invested in that, supported it, and stood up,” he said.
Ryan encouraged the participants to report incidents of discrimination to him. “You all tell me where and how I can be involved to say, ‘That is unacceptable’—whether that’s a reporter who doesn’t know anything about our community dropping in and writing an unfair story, whether that’s anything you individually experience, God forbid, in a conversation or a comment that someone makes to you—please, if you’re willing and comfortable, come to us and let us know about that. Because I think the only way to stop it is to immediately and aggressively say, ‘That is not who we are,’” he said.
He also pointed out that there are state and federal laws against discrimination that can be applied. “We need to make an example of that when it happens so it’s very clear to anybody that might do it that that those are not our values here,” he said. “I grew up in this community—those are not our values.
And we need to make clear that folks who behave that way are not going to be tolerated.” Ryan, an Army veteran and West Point graduate, only entered politics in 2019, as Ulster County Executive. He then clinched the House seat in a major upset of the 2022 special election.
Ryan is up for re-election this November. The local Asian community, which appears to lack a strong party affiliation, may emerge as a crucial vote in what’s shaping up to be a competitive race for the New York’s 18th District..
