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Sunday, November 20, 2005
Sun.Star Essay: Bias isn’t quite gone
By Erma M. Cuizon
FILIPINO immigrants in the US do not always tell all. It hasn’t been a glorious life all the way in the rich country, at least to most, unless they think only of peso equivalents to the dollars that they send home. There’s the nostalgic connection to the old home country that is hard to cut and so, there’s the pain, too, of missing family, relatives, neighbors.
And this, Pinoys would rather not talk about to anyone in the family on the phone or in letters.
When they come home for a visit, they tell the good news--–acquiring the American twang, driving a Mercedes across the scenic countryside, eating too much food at very low prices, getting the chance to spend and save at the same time. So you’ve never heard of racism against Filipinos, or Asians, in schools.
A recent AP story carried by Sun.Star Cebu narrates how an 18-year-old Chinese high school student in New York, who was waiting on a Brooklyn subway platform, was attacked by his own classmates for no reason at all. No apparent reason, that is.
And then the AP story says, “He was scared and injured--–bruised and swollen for several days--–but hardly surprised.”
Racial bias was even worse during the early years when Filipinos, in more number for the first time, were in America in the 1900s in search of a future. In his book about Filipinos in the US, Carlos Bulosan writes the story of a Filipino laborer in California who lived in an atmosphere of violence and bitter racism.
Most of them went into farm work in Hawaii and California, doing something Americans would never catch themselves doing---picking grapes, asparagus, lettuce as lowly jobs, working in sugar farms, willing to get even small pay. This was a shell for racism, for Americans in the area felt as though the new guys were affecting the labor costs and, what was more, the cavaliers with sleek, pomaded hair dated their women.
When the Great Depression came, the Americans scoured the community for jobs and, you guess it, took away from Filipino farm hands the hitherto lowly work.
That was in the 1900s. But even in recent years, a Filipina who works in Washington D.C. said there was a time when it wasn’t very safe for Filipinos to live and work in Washington because the American Blacks in the area couldn’t measure up to the Pinoys’ reputation as good and earnest workers. They saw Pinoys as taking their jobs away from them.
Of course, it’s different now. At work and the community.
But perhaps not much different in schools where Asians are discriminated on by their American classmates, as in the case of the AP story.
As melting pots, American cities are where people from all over the globe congest, like in New York. In schools, American children probably don’t quite understand why they have to deal with people who can’t speak much English or speak it with a queer accent, or are different in color, even in habits. Asians in school are usually quiet, American bullies would find a good target for fun.
One wonders when the conditions would blow up. Perhaps there will come a time when America will not play a big role in the world so it could cope with trouble under its nose —racism rearing its ugly head again. Imagine, the US as hot pot in the world, not needing to go to Iraq for trouble.
And there are also Asians who are watching. There’s such a group as Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA).
Take one case of protest from the group---Lucy Liu’s character in Charlie’s Angels (Alex). Lucy is Asian, according to MANAA, not half. But the film makes her half American, her father pure American and her mother Chinese who doesn’t speak a single word in the movie. And yet the group found out that the original script called for the “father” as also Chinese, the role intended for an Asian actor.
In making the Lucy character half Asian, the movie “belittles the pleasure and relief Asian Americans and fair-minded audiences had when they saw an Asian woman standing up for justice and overcoming great obstacles.
(November 20, 2005 issue)
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