Op-Ed: Identity politics far from dead, fill out those census forms

By Emil Amok Guillermo

As we approach the final days of AAPI Heritage month, most of my time has been spent thinking about what I am.

Asian? Filipino? Aspanic?

My deadline to fill out the latest Census form, the American Community Survey (ACS) came up, and while I love identity politics, I hate filling out the forms.

I hated it so much I procrastinated by  binge watching Awkwafina’s “Nora from Queens” with my mixed race Asian daughter, about Awkwafina’s age, who’d never seen the show before.

And she convinced me to just fill out the damn form.

It was while watching the show with my daughter I realized this: If you think diversity and identity politics is dead under Trump’s assault on DEI, think again.

It’s very much alive.

Yes, the landscape is bleak with the attacks and rollbacks on DEI in public and corporate settings.

And, yes, on the 5th anniversary of George Floyd’s death, we are watching rollbacks of police reform initiatives at the Department of Justice level, where a conservative Asian American, Harmeet Dhillon of the Bay Area, is playing a major role in all the undoing.

What lives matter? No one wants to be so specific anymore during Trump 2.0.

However, we’re also seeing President Trump playing identity politics just the same.

Who was spreading lies about a “South African Genocide” that doesn’t exist, but Trump from the Oval Office last week with propaganda about genocidal murders in South Africa. The official stats say the actual numbers of deaths in South African farms is in single digits. That does not a genocide make.

And yet claims of genocide are being used to justify refugee status for White Afrikaners, some self-proclaimed racists and anti-Semites.

I thought Trump was fighting anti-semitism?

Maybe he should put them on that plane he got from Qatar and send them all back to South Africa?

Meanwhile Trump is deporting legitimate refugees like the Asian Americans he’s cruelly relocated to the Sudan. And then there’s the more than 9,000 Afghans  who worked with U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Department of Homeland Security terminated their temporary protected status this month.

That’s a far cry from Trump’s treatment of the 54 Afrikaners who are welcomed with open arms so they can procreate with the full endorsement of the 14th Amendment’s birth right citizenship.

What else can a MAGA Trump do? With a drop in white population, Trump has to get those white numbers up. He’s embarked on an unprecedented identity politics strategy—the importing of white racists to America.

THE CENSUS

And therein lies the value of th importance of the Census. Numbers matter. We need to make sure the country maintains the trend in the 2020 Census–where Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians are growing at an unprecedented pace.

And while this is not the big Census year, it is the year for the American Community Survey (ACS). I have relied on the survey a great deal over the years as a reporter to find out where all the Asian Americans are in any given metro area.

So even the ACS is important. It’s also the law. You must fill it out.

However, as I did so, I even realized how some of us have more than a little reluctance.

The form is noisier than I recalled. It’s not anonymous, and it asks for your name, your address, your employer, their address.

If I were undocumented (I am not), I’d hesitate for sure.

I never hesitated in the past. But I did now.

If you look at what Trump–with DOGE and Musk–have done to undermine trust in this country, I could feel how every question posed before me on the ACS form elicited a “NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS” response in my head.

I don’t mind questions about plumbing and electricity, or the kind of dwelling I live in. But the details on work and income made me see how some people would rip up the form and say “pass.”

I never had a concern before. But we’ve never had an invasive tool like DOGE trying to gain access to all our private information within the government.

And then you get to the part on the ACS form where they tell you if you don’t fill it out, they’ll send the Census taker to your house.

But again, under Trump, will it be a Census-taker or an ICE person in Department of Commerce drag.

This ill-feeling about the government is what the Trump administration purposefully hath wrought.

Trump’s strategy is to do the unlawful, exceeding the reach of DOGE and its ilk, breaking the law first, then letting the courts decide. But it creates a real distrust of government, in democracy, and America.

And not just among undocumented Asian Americans, but native-born American citizens like me.

WHAT TO DO?

We need to be counted. So of course, I filled out the form.

But who knows what forms will be deleted or discarded officially by the counters. I’d rather we flood them with the truth.

It means we have to maintain faith that honesty and integrity are still part of government, despite all the lies from the Trump administration on everything from the South African genocide to the coverup of the mistaken deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

We keep the faith. It’s not easy.

I admit to preferring the old “hard part.”

That’s where we agonize over expressing who we are.

We no longer have to simply check off a box.

It’s practically an essay question.

What do we call ourselves?

Am I Filipino American? Yeah, but…. The Hispanic name raises questions. A red-herring, or a brown one? Does Hispanic by colonization count? Is that a thing? Do I define myself by the geography of my parents? But I’ve only been there once.

Essentially, you are who you say you are. No one will check. For the sake of our coalition, I’m AAPI. 

Or do we divide up and diminish our size so that each by ethnicity can be seen with our unique needs? Sure, but then it’s easier for opponents to divide and conquer.

And then we have the mixed Asians like my kids—the fastest growing among us. They prove that diversity is about love.

But it complicates an identity politics that’s far from dead and still evolving in America, 2025.

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. His “Amok” column on Asian American issues has run weekly since 1995. See his microtalk show “Emil Amok’s Takeout” on YouTube.com/@emilamok1