A friend of mine in Medill, a senior from Singapore, is trying to get back into the swing of things. After spending the past couple of years abroad, he’s trying to reacquaint himself with school in America and land a job.

In between classes and refining his interviewing skills, my friend said he probably won’t vote.

But the tired excuse of not finding enough time to get politically involved is not the culprit. Rather, my friend — whose dual citizenship allows him to vote in America — feels he doesn’t have a stake in this election. He says neither candidate has given him reason to cast a ballot.

He is one of many Asian Americans casting their lot in the job market and not in the political scene.

Like many Asian Americans — if the many Asian ethnic groups eve n can be lumped into one demographic unit at all — my friend has loose political allegiances to both the Democratic and Republican parties.

And as much as I’d like to wag my finger at the Asian-American community for having the the lowest voting turnout per eligible voter, there are bigger and badder factors at play.

Instead, America’s misperceptions of Asian-American identities and its preoccupation with Iraq have marginalized this community.

Firstly, Asian Americans have been stripped of their minority status — an identity necessary to viewing their people as having unique social and political issues.

With such prevalent stereotypes of Asian Americans as over-achievers, math and science and business whizzes, they’ve become honorary whites. Consequently, they don’t receive the attention that should be paid to minority groups with histories of oppression and marginalization in America.

Unlike African Americans and Latinos whose stereotypes help bring issues of poverty and racism to the forefront, Asian-American stereotypes create a skewed view of the quality of life in their communities.

Truth be told, thousands of Asian immigrants scrap bellow the poverty line while many of their sons and daughters are victims of a slow-to-crack glass ceiling.

Issues such as affirmative action and welfare continue to be used synonymously with the black and Latino communities. But a huge wealth gap exists within the Asian community, where the wealthy few obscure the real struggle of Asians living in urban poverty.

Many people perceive Chinatowns as proof of Asian American entrepreneurial success; in reality, these communities hardly provide a middle-class lifestyle.

Just last year new census data reported grave levels of poverty among Asian-American children living in New York City — with one in four of them living in poverty.

But as evidenced by the recent presidential debates, the war in Iraq has preoccupied our public discourse at the expense of pressing socioeconomic challenges — especially for the Democrats, the poor’s traditional advocate.

The problem goes beyond troubles with the rhetoric of poverty. With all Iraq all the time, we have lost sight of other foreign policy issues dear to Asian-American communities, namely the nuclear standoff in the Korean peninsula and the always tenuous relations between China and Taiwan.

We need to give Asian Americans an incentive to get involved in the political process, so that policy that impacts their lives accurately meets their needs.

Malena Amusa is a Medill junior. She can be reached at [email protected].