My Published Articles for ViewsHound: October is Filipino American History Month

Monday, October 28, 2019

October is Filipino American History Month

Fifteen Memorable Facts About Filipino-American History by Kevin Nadal

To celebrate Filipino-American heritage in honor of AAPI Heritage Month, I asked Fil-Ams from all over the country to share what they want the world to know about Filipino-Americans — what makes them memorable rather than forgotten. This article reminded me of my recent article on Carlos Bulosan.

https://davidbkatague.blogspot.com/2019/10/an-update-have-you-heard-of-carlos.html

I am listing # 15 first, since I could identify with it during my employment with Food and Drug Administration from 1990 to 2002. I also added my own #16 at bottom of page.

15. And while May is Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, October is Filipino-American History Month!

Me pointing at my photo during Asian-American Week Celebration in FDA, 1998

Because of the unique experiences of the Filipino-Americans, Fred and Dorothy Cordova of the Filipino American National Historical Society declared October as Filipino-American History Month in 1988.

In 2009, both the U.S. Senate and Congress declared October as Filipino-American History Month. In 2015, President Obama recognized the month at a celebration at the White House.

1. Filipino-Americans are the second largest Asian-American group in the United States.

2. Filipino-Americans are the largest Asian-American group in 11 out of the 50 states.

3. Filipino-Americans are one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the United States.

Filipino-Americans are one of the largest foreign-born groups in the U.S. — about 5% of all immigrants in the country.

4. Filipinos were the first documented Asian people to arrive in the United States.

The first Filipinos landed in Morro Bay, California, in 1587, three decades before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. These Filipino men escaped Spanish galleon ships en route to Spain. Some Filipinos migrated in similar ways and settled in the bayous of Louisiana in 1763, giving Filipinos deep roots in the U.S.

5. The Philippines is the only country in Asia to have been fully colonized by the United States.

After the Philippines gained independence from Spain on June 12, 1898, it was then colonized by the United States. The country did not regain its independence until July 4, 1946. As a result, American English is the second national language of the Philippines, and the U.S. has since maintained a military presence in the country.

6. A quarter of a million Filipino-Americans are veterans of World War II.

More than 250,000 Filipino soldiers fought under the American flag in World War II. They agreed to fight in the U.S. military on the promise that the government would grant these soldiers American citizenship and full veteran benefits. However, these promises were not granted until President Obama took office in 2009, and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos did not receive the benefits they were promised.
Today, activists are working for Filipino-American veterans to be recognized with the Congressional Medal, as they are the only ethnic group who served in World War II yet to receive this honor.

7. Filipino-Americans contributed significantly to the American labor movement, particularly with the United Farm Workers movement in the 1960s.

While Cesar Chavez and Mexican farmworkers are often credited with leading the Delano grape strike of 1965, Filipino-American farmworkers were the first to strike. Filipino-American leaders Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz reached out to Cesar Chavez to fortify the union.

While internal power struggles resulted in Filipino-Americans distancing themselves from the United Farm Workers, many historians and activists like Dolores Huerta credit Filipinos with being the first to strike.

8. Filipino-Americans have been a part of many advocacy movements throughout U.S. history.

In the late ’60s, Filipino-Americans were at the forefront of the fight for ethnic studies in San Francisco. In 2015, Filipino-Americans fought for the Alvarado Middle School to be renamed the Itliong-Veracruz Middle School after the Filipino-American labor leaders. The school was the first school in the country to be named after a Filipino-American. In 2016, Filipino-Americans successfully attained historical recognition for the South of Market (SoMa) district of San Francisco to be renamed SoMa Pilipinas.

9. Filipino-Americans have a significant presence in the arts and in hip-hop culture.

Lea Salonga was the first Filipina to win a Tony Award. Filipino-American musicians include Bruno Mars, Vanessa Hudgens, and Apl.de.ap of the Black Eyed Peas. In hip-hop, many Filipino-Americans have excelled as DJs and beatmakers, like DJ Neil Armstrong, DJ Q-Bert, DJ Icy Ice, as well as b-boys and dance crews — including members of groups featured on America’s Best Dance Crew like the Jabbawockeez, Super CR3W, and Quest Crew.

10. Filipino-Americans are more likely than other Asian-American groups to marry outside of their race.

Contemporary studies find that racial identity may influence Filipino-Americans who are in interracial and interethnic romantic relationships, in that those who are married to non-Filipino Asian-Americans tend to identify more as Asian-American, whereas those who are married to black Americans or Latinos are more likely to view Filipino-Americans as a distinct ethnic group and feel more connected with black and Latino communities.

11. One-fifth of the Filipino-American population is multiracial.

Nearly 22% of Filipino-Americans identify as biracial or multiracial — much higher than the 8% of the entire Asian-American population who are multiracial. This phenomenon, scholars have argued, may be due to shared histories of colonialism, experiences with colorism and racial discrimination shared with black Americans, and shared American values, customs, and language with white Americans.

12. Filipino-Americans identify as members of many different religions.

About 90% of people in the Philippines identify as Catholic, thanks to Spanish colonialism. Four to five percent practice another form of Christianity, and another 4–5% percent identify as Muslim.

13. Many Filipino-Americans also choose not to identify as Asian or Asian-American, often due to a history of exclusion.

Research supports the idea that many Filipino-Americans do not identify as Asian or Asian-American. Potential reasons for this include having a darker skin color (or identifying as “brown”), having similar experiences with racism, or feeling excluded or marginalized in the larger Asian-American community.

Scholars have described how Filipino-Americans have historically felt marginalized in pan-ethnic Asian-American organizations, particularly given their lack of representation or leadership opportunities in these groups. Other researchers have found that many Filipinos identify more with Latinos than with East Asian-Americans.

14. Filipino-Americans have unique experiences with racism.

Studies have revealed that Filipino-Americans experience a range of racial microaggressions, including that they are misperceived to be members of other racial groups like Latino, multiracial, black, or Pacific Islander. Further, many Filipinos report being told that they are not “Asian enough” — by both Asian-Americans and non-Asian people.

Discrimination from other Asian-Americans results in a unique racial and ethnic Filipino identity: Filipino-Americans might reject a pan-ethnic Asian-American identity and develop a strong, ethnocentric, purely Filipino-American identity.

Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevinnadal/fil-am-history-facts
Meanwhile here's a short video summarizing Filipino-American history for your information:
https://youtu.be/7JlbyP3irNY

Allow me to add my #16:

16. Filipino Americans are involved in Science, Education, Health, Public Service and Politics: (See my Pinoy Pride List)

https://hubpages.com/business/caste-system-in-the-philippines

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Guest Article from Susan Creamer Joy

In The Silence, by Susan Creamer Joy.

Today's guest article is from Susan Creamer Joy. Susan is one of my favorite authors in the ViewsHound community. Susan writes, draws, paints and cobbles together art from found objects making a variety of creations from jewelry to religious shrines. She frequently sports burns on her fingers from her soldering iron, paint on her palms and ink under her fingernails, but her hair is usually combed. When she is not losing time in the creative vortex of her studio, she is likely to be putting her knowledge of metaphysics and esoteric principles including Tarot, numerology, astrology and graphology to good use in consultations. Her children are grown, her husband still works and her four dogs believe she needs serious help. The title of her article is "A Matter Of Love And Death". Thank you Susan.

By the time they reached my bedroom door, I was already sitting up – my stomach ratcheted in the tense grip of an unnamed anxiety; my pillow, unburdened of my drowsy head.

To this day I cannot explain how I heard them coming up those stairs in their bare feet or how I knew that my father struggled to hold his composure as my mother unnaturally clutched at the folds of her dressing gown and followed him through the dark just a little too closely.

As the wooden groan of those old stairs tore into my bones that morning like a hacksaw, all I could see between the predawn shadows was the letter I’d written just hours earlier to my boyfriend, Chris, propped against the lamp on my desk across the room awaiting an envelope.

I had not slept well. It was late November and there had been so many changes since the middle of August when he left for the Air Force in Texas to begin basic training and I began my third new school in as many years.

The conspiracy between fate and the last surge of the Vietnam draft had broken apart the every-waking-minutes of our two-year union with unceremonious indifference. All that night my sleep had been infested by difficult dreams and by the illogical fear that truth and reality were merging into a darkness only a martyr could grasp; and at sixteen, martyrdom seemed reasonable only for the nuns among the poor in Bangladesh

I tried to remind myself that he would be home on leave for Thanksgiving in another few days. It was the only tether to calm I could find, but reviewing the facts offered little relief from my baseless fears.

Chris had been girding his pacifist sensibilities preparing to fight in an unpopular war that had not yet slaughtered its last innocent. I was hovering just over the line of inclusion at an exclusive girl’s school – missing him – and finding myself at odds with these young women and their attachment to propriety and with the prep-school veneer that blinded them to the fact that they were no better than anyone else.

Neither one of us was coping well with the worlds into which we were respectively summoned, and although we both knew that the best hope for any future together depended upon our individual successes apart, it was far from comforting most days.

But in spite of our discomfort, we each did our best; and, of course, there were the letters: Thin, plain-paper sheets with row after row after row of inky blue words penned with the intensity and awkward locutions of a love learned too soon. It had come down to just that little, but without them, I would have had nothing.

Chris was learning to fly. I was learning to drive, and both of us were aching to transport our souls to an earlier time through the hallowed intercourse of memories and dreams. Of course, as with all progress, there was the positive element: We were both clean and drug-free for the first time in years.

Now, without pretense, both healthy cognition and sincere motivation surfaced regularly in my psychology and prompted me to care about myself and to arbitrate against all temptation for a better standing in the world, in school and in my own eyes. I even did my homework.

No longer was I escaping today but, instead, living for my day of escape. Lying still in the dark of my room, I listened to the slow, padded footfall of my parents approaching and looked to the floor and to my history book half hidden beneath the nightstand where I’d tossed it the night before. Even in this early morning dark I could make out the swirls and stars in colored marker and the bubble-formed letters that spelled C H R I S in soft, juvenile curves on the torn book cover I’d fashioned out of a brown paper grocery bag.

I vaguely remembered throwing it there somewhat hastily. I had been doing my homework when a sense of urgency struck and I realized I had not written him as I promised I would and glancing at the clock, I noted it was nine-twenty-three. Why that mattered I had no way of knowing in that strange moment, but within hours, it would be one I would never forget; and although I was becoming drowsy and still needed to finish my work, I felt beyond reason that my letter to him could not wait.

So, I wrote. I would always write. I would always be there. He would always be there.“Suzi."It was my name spoken in the smooth and familiar voice of my mother, although weighted and slow, her head bowed to her chest almost as though she were speaking only to herself.

"Suzi.” She said it again, this time with sharp gravity, like a chisel against stone.

As if on cue, I leaned forward, flanked now by my parents who were sitting on either side of my bed.

I had been waiting for them. I don’t know how. I didn’t know why. The lights in my room remained off, but it seemed that the darkness clung more to them than to me, as though they were holding it there – away from me to give me enough light to see through the next moment. They were crying. My father was crying. My father. “Suzi. We have something very, very bad to tell you." Chris has been in a car accident." And he was killed."

If the world moved forward from that moment, I could not know it. f there were air around me worth breathing, I could not take it in. And if there were another sound beyond the leaden bellow of my own raw grief, I could not hear it.

"Who am I going to talk to? Who am I going to love?” I wailed. Who will love me? In that sodden moment violated by the intrusion of a predawn light that had no business rising, everything I ever believed about happiness, hoped for in life, trusted in or held as my own was annihilated.

After that – there was no after that. After that came months of hollow redundancies that would inform my way of being in the world for years to come. A serial commitment to waking up each morning, remembering he was gone and dedicating the remaining hours to forgetting. To that end I would try anything, drink anything, ingest anything, inject anything. It was a slow and arbitrary suicide by indifference.

Many years later, at 25 years-old and in the midst of a pharmaceutical free-fall leaning dangerously close to terminal, I discovered that I was expecting a child, and after a decade of forgetting, I remembered. I named him Griffin after the legendary winged lion, a symbol of the divine because what he inspired and the miracle that he was, were nothing less. I remembered and I loved again, and I went on to marry and to the gift of two beautiful daughters.

Today my son is struggling not to drown in the same well of drug abuse and apathy that almost swallowed me – his great, divine wings clipped by his own hand; and while it is up to him to restore his place in the sky, I will do my best to help provide an open runway.

In the meantime, I will continue soaring for both of us; bequeathed as I have been, with a determination to fly from a boy whose ragged fate precluded that dream.

Death took one young man from me once upon a dark time. If it has any intention of coming for this one, it will have to go through me. And trust me, it will be in for one hell of a fight.

Note: If you enjoy this article, please let me know.