5 Office Politics Tips for Asian American Men
By Tom Kagy | 12 Nov, 2025

America's stereotyping of Asian men adds wrinkles to the usual nuisance of office politics.

Office politics is an inescapable fact of life for everyone.  Asian men, however, get treated to a couple of extra twists flowing from expectations dictated by stereotypes.  Understanding those expectations, no matter how silly, can help mitigate their potentially harmful impact.

I've been working since my first full-time summer job at the age of 15.  My most significant experiences as an employee come from years as an associate at two law firms, one small, one big.  I also have additional insights from the other side as an employer of the dozens who have worked in my law offices, and in my publishing and advertising businesses.

Without getting too deeply into the broader issues of American societal attitudes toward Asian men (a fascinating topic for a future article), it's worth noting that even today no segment of the population provokes deeper kneejerk reactions from America's working population.  The impact of those reactions is even greater if you, like I, refuse to honor those silly stereotypes.

Here are 5 rules to help minimize the problems they can create for us.

1.  Be Attentive to Support Staff.

It's only common sense and decency to be nice to all colleagues, low or high.  But the combination of those ages-old American stereotype of Asian males as sexists with disrespectful attitudes toward women pressures us to be extra mindful of how we treat support staff and other subordinates.

My first memorable experience in this regard was while I was summer clerking at a Century City entertainment litigation firm affectionately known as KBFT during the summer between my second and third years at Cal Law.  

In those analog days we would dictate a draft into our hand-held tape recorders and hand over miniature cassette tapes for transcribing by secretaries using Dictaphones with a foot pedal to control starts, stops and rewinds, leaving hands free for rapid typing.

As a summer associate many of my assignments were to produce legal research memos.  I don't recall the issues with which I had been tasked on that particular occasion, but I do recall that the tape I produced was destined, in my mind, to be a masterwork, a magnum opus, that had taken me several days to produce.  

About an hour after I gave the tape to Bonnie, one of the firm's seasoned word processor operators, she came into my office and apologized for having accidentally erased the tape before it had been transcribed.  As the color drained from my face she explained how the disaster had occurred.

Her explanation wasn't impossible, just highly improbable, especially for a secretary who had been transcribing tapes for years.  But I had no choice but to accept it and set about the agonizingly tedious task of recreating the tape before the deadline.  

About two weeks later, the same thing happened again.  Livid, I vented my disbelief and rage with hard words at Bonnie.  Then I stormed over to the office of Dale who was managing partner at the time.  He had been Editor in Chief of UCLA Law Review and a respected, charismatic Gibson Dunn sixth-year associate before leaving with three other stars of his associate class to found KBFT.  

I can still picture his grin as he explained, "Good support staff is so hard to find, Tom, if she came into my office every morning at nine and shat on my desk, I would smile, thank her and give her a pat on the back."  

Dale explained that Bonnie was temperamental and needed to be acknowledged.  He wondered aloud if she saw me as aloof and maybe a bit arrogant — charges I denied but which in retrospect I admit could have been based on a crumb or two of truth, not because of any sense of sexism or superiority but because I had simply never felt it necessary to make a deliberate effort to ingratiate myself with support staff.  It had always been my way just to stay focusd on the task at hand.  

"If it happens again, I will fire her, as much as I don't want to," said Dale, rolling his eyes and shaking his head as he continued grinning.  "But if you just give her some of that Kagy charm now and then, you might save us the trouble."

I know now that this narrow focus on my work and not the atmospherics is a tendency shared by many Asian American men, making it even more important for us to remain conscious of the stereotype imposed on us of cold, sexist superiority, especially among subordinates for whom acknowledgement provides an important sense of respect and security.

I eventually saw my way to warming up to Bonnie and the other secretaries and never suffered further sabotage.  I also came to understand what most seasoned lawyers know well: the scariest person to piss off at the courthouse isn't the judge but the army of clerks who can screw up your paperwork so bad it can take months of motions to untangle the mess.

2.  Pick Your Battles.

Office conflicts drain goodwill whether you're boss or file clerk.  Conflicts generally arise more from perspective than substantive issues.  Fixation on scorekeeping is a major threat to goodwill, especially for Asian American men conditioned from an early age to be on the lookout for hints of racial bias. 

My own store of goodwill at KBFT was sorely tested about halfway through my first year as a permanent associate after the bar.

I saw the partners at KBFT, both the original founders and the two who had joined later, as role models for their polished yet collegial personal styles.  For a young man raised mostly in military culture they seemed the ultimate embodiment of charm and sophistication.  And they loved me back to the extent busy partners can love a young associate who had started as a summer clerk, was given a permanent offer, then talked himself into spending the final semester of third year of law school as a paid clinical clerk. 

My job at KBFT was ideal in every way.  Knowing that making a living as a novelist was far from certain, lawyering at KBFT seemed an ideal way to use my verbal and analytical talents without having to brave daily drives into downtown LA traffic.

Yet by the middle of my first year as a permanent associate I had quit KBFT.  Why?  KBFT's new letterhead, hot off the press, had my name appearing below that of a fellow first-year associate who had taken a shorter break after the bar exam.  To my mind I was entitled to have my name above his because my employment at the firm had begun a year earlier as a summer and clinical clerk.  Silly?  I now agree.  But at the time it seemed like a deliberate slight even though the letterhead had been ordered by our office manager Becky based strictly on our start dates as permanent associates.