Some communities are effectively in a political blind spot, where not only their speech, but the very existence of their voice, is obscured and marginalized. They have difficulty finding an audience, not only because audience preferences are dominated by mainstream perspectives, but also because any potentially receptive listeners won't know of the communities' perspectives or even think to look for them. Such communities cannot benefit from the Web's low entry barriers and search costs. If no one knows you're speaking, no one will look you up on Google, and certainly no one is going to link to your site, even if many people might actually be inclined to do so.

For the most part, Asian Americans exist in a political blind spot. Widely misperceived as perpetual foreigners, Asian Americans are rarely recognized as active and legitimate participants in the American political process and contributors to American political discourse. As a result, politicians courting the Asian American community don't seem to engage in any kind of research or reflection on Asian American perspectives, as they invariably would when speaking to other interest groups.

The recent incident in which Sen. George Allen referred to a Virginia-born, Indian American campaign worker as "Macaca" and welcomed him to America might have provided an opportunity for Asian Americans to raise public awareness of the perpetual foreigner stereotype. Allen's subsequent letter of apology, however, shows just how deeply voiceless Asian Americans are on this and other political issues.

In the days following the incident, the Allen campaign's damage-control operation went into overdrive, and Allen was fully motivated to engage and learn from the Indian American community. To Allen's credit, he scheduled meetings with community leaders and offered an unreserved apology, instead of the more common non-apology: "We're sorry if anyone was offended, because that was not our intention." He clearly understood the seriousness of the political problem he had created for himself.

But Allen's apology letter, issued Monday, shows that he learned little from those meetings about why his comments were problematic. Surely any meeting with Indian American leaders to address the "Macaca" and "Welcome to America" comments should have focused on the racialized misperception of Indian Americans as perpetual foreigners, and the broader public policy problems this raises for Indian Americans who seek full and equal participation in American society. Despite this, Allen's letter specifically cites only one issue that he understands to be of interest to the Indian American community: America's foreign relations with India:

I was very touched last week when many of the outstanding leaders in the Indian-American community, who I have known and worked with for years, took time to meet with me and to offer their thoughts and concerns. I pledged to them that I would continue working with them in the future just as I have in the past for strengthening U.S.-India relations.

In conflating the concerns of the Indian American community with the state of U.S. foreign policy toward the nation of India, Allen repeats the very same error for which he is attempting to apologize.

This is a common error, and a bipartisan one. John Kerry's 2004 campaign Web site had a page ostensibly devoted to courting the Asian American community, but which focused almost entirely on the senator's leadership on U.S. foreign policy toward Asia.