An original version posted on 6/7/2010 as "Graff Board: Share Your First Experience(s) with Race @ AMMMO
I really really really like reading more of what people think and have experienced. It's why I spend hours reading message boards from sports to politics to science. It's why I'm going to study how people think.
Whenever I read what people think, I'm not really judging the intelligence or the quality of what people have to say, I'm just wondering about the worlds they've went to and through to arrive at their viewpoints.
When I was in college and organizing kids, my favorite activity was taking a piece of butcher paper and having kids write about a topic. I saw it as getting people to give their 2 cents and helping them get engaged in a way that couldn't be explained primarily through lecture or verbal conversation.
When I wasn't in college and organizing kids, my other favorite activity during that time was mural and graff touring friends through LA even though I knew absolutely nothing and pretended like I was doing something innovative when it was little more than walking through Boyle and Lincoln Heights.
When I ran the LA Marathon in 2007 and 2008, I ran with T-shirts signed by people who just wrote whatever responding to the prompts of "struggle is..." and "what do you hope for".
So between getting people to write on butcher paper, (loosely) following murals and graffiti, and getting people to write on my marathon shirts, I was just really interested in what people expressed or were willing to express in public.
And being in cyberspace, the interest remains the same. The online message board or comments section on a piece of news or item of interest serves as that metaphorical piece of butcher paper.
However, the impersonal nature of that kind of communication doesn't leave much room for people you actually know to talk about their first-hand experiences on big topics. On message boards and comments, unless there's a developed community, there aren't too many people sharing focused first-hand experiences on big topics like racism, politics, religion.
I want to change that!
I want to know more about those first-hand experiences and memories. I think people form a lot of their world views early on in childhood and adolescence and it would be interesting to unpack some of our early childhood memories.
So now I'm using part of this website's real estate to do something collaborative with the very few people who read my blog: A collaborative Graffiti Board, full of original thought, first-hand experiences and early childhood memories.
Here's how it will work:
I'll start with a post about a topic.
Then, whoever else reads can join in. In the comments section of my blog or this facebook note, you can either theorize about my experience or share your own experience and memories (most important) or linking their answer in my comments to their own blog.
So for the first "Graff Board", I'm asking people to share their first ever experiences with race as many important points as you could remember.
So here are my first ever experience(s) with race straight from childhood and adolescence. These aren't in any particular order, feel free to point out stuff.
1) Singing U.N.I.T.Y's hook ("who you callin' a bitch") at the Lucky's supermarket at random as a 9-year old. A middle-aged black dude was staring at me like "WTF are you doing", either because he was shocked that a young kid was using profane language in public or because I was a whitish type kid.
Whatever it was, that disapproving stare was the first time I remember I felt like I didn't belong doing a certain activity. That was the first time I felt that hip-hop or rap, which I felt "belonged" to black people, wasn't an activity I felt I could "belong" to.
2) I remember thinking while in Daycare in the 2nd grade, there was no such thing as ugly black women. I was like "wow, they're all so beautiful." This was at a Catholic school where the population was a mix of Filipino, Latino, white, but not so many black people. I don't know why or how, it was just something I thought.
3) The dude I considered my best friend in my early elementary school years was the one black kid in our class, Erik Wade and this other kid named Christian who had the coolest Ninja Turtles kick ball.
Erik invited me to his house for his 7th or 8th birthday. Our elementary school was located in Los Feliz, but for some reason Erik lived really far away, which I didn't "understand" was South LA.
I was wondering why no one else from school was there at his party.
I remember accidentally running into some other family's house by mistake and thinking "oh, they're black too...OK!"
In retrospect, knowing my dad as he is now, the political views he apparently holds steadfast too, and the racism that some Filipinos do hold, I am really surprised that he would go out of his way to take me to South LA like it was anyone else's birthday and how he and my mom would both welcome Erik and his mom to my birthday parties.
4) In Kindergarten at Commonwealth Elementary where initially I was bused to Pico Elementary because I wasn't prone to speaking and had a Spanish last name, I was taken to an ESL class.
5) In high school, the prestigious Loyola High School, I felt almost obligated to hang out primarily with the other Filipinos. I knew coming into the school that it was the "white school", pretty much the only school I knew in LA (which in my personal childhood geography didn't include West or East LA).
That said, I also became privy to the racially-segregated geographic differences. All the Filipinos were from Eagle Rock or Glendale. Some Latinos came from the actual neighborhood. The white kids came from either the Palisades or Pasadena, neither of which were part of my personal childhood geography. Far as I was concerned as a non-driving 9th, 10th, 11th grader those places were each at least an hour away.
6) When I was about 11 years old, I had just decided that I was going to be like my godsister, Cheryl and become part of the "cool teenager" category. I was going to like rap and hip-hop. My official entrance into rap and hip-hop started with Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise, and I started listening to Power 106 and 92.3 the Beat.
When I went to Disneyland for my little sister's birthday and I was standing in line waiting for a ride, somehow I got into conversation with a white person named "Doug." Him being a white guy, I assumed he was into rock and roll.
For the next 10 minutes, I went on to bash KROQ.
I sincerely thought I was "educating" him.
/First time I was really discriminating against someone.
7) After I had officially declared myself "into" rap and hip-hop, I decided I liked all kinds of TV shows with black people too, whether it was In the House with LL Cool J, Wayans Bros, Fresh Prince, to Malcolm and Eddie, to Sparks, to Homeboys in Outer Space.
I remember someone actually brought up those shows in class.
The teacher said she wasn't familiar with any of those shows.
8) "Goody two shoes" was a marker of "whiteness" for me.
I marked the few white kids in elementary school as "goody two shoes." I wasn't that, least in elementary school, but I had a strange affinity for drawing people with collared shirts and imagining what it was like to live in the suburbs.
So there you have it, my first experiences with race as a kid and as an adult.
Now either say something back about my experiences, your first memories, episodes on race.
Showing posts with label Personal Memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personal Memories. Show all posts
Speedy Gonzales and How He Influenced My Childhood Views of Latinos
An original version posted on 5/12/2010 as "Influence of Speedy Gonzales on my Perception of Latinos as a Kid" @ AMMMO
Looney Tunes was a fixture of 1990s Nickelodeon and my TV-watching experience as a kid.
I didn't particularly aim to watch Looney Tunes, but when it was on, I guess it was alright, it was something to keep me occupied.
Speedy Gonzales was a pretty prominent recurring character whose sole purpose was to make Sylvester the cat look stupid. I hated that, I really wanted the cat to finally catch that little mouse.
Speedy was just one in a line of physically little, quick-moving, thinking characters that included Jerry from Tom and Jerry, Tweety bird, the Roadrunner, and the kids who actually got the Trix in those commercials. These little, quick-moving characters were always elusive, and I couldn't help but be annoyed at each one of them.
I wonder if the 1950s narrative for these cartoon characters was structured so that we would dislike these nimble little characters. The storylines were constructed in a way in which you wondered if those physically little, quick-moving and thinking characters would get caught.
It was always a narrative of evasion (which probably fit in with the time). So while the characters looked physically defenseless, you knew they would always get away with something, almost like criminals.
The narratives never centered around the Speedy's, Tweety's, Roadrunners and a question of when they would overcome these big predatorial characters. It was about when the big predatory characters, the Sylvesters, the Trix Bunny, the Coyote, devising all kinds of plans, would finally win.
Speedy arguably had the most personality of all those little evasive characters. His personality was marked by his ethnicity, which was emphasized way beyond belief: he was undeniably, thoroughly Mexican, from the sombrero to the accent to the use of Spanish.
Arriba, arriba, andale, andale.
I remember going to Spanish class the first day of my freshman year in high school thinking, "I'm finally going to learn what those words mean!"
The video above of Speedy Gonzales is quite relevant to today's debate over immigration.
You've got the immigration boundary, the all-male "border crossers" trying to get cheese (i.e. "stealing our jobs"), and this ineffective "border defense", the cruder older stereotypes of the Latino lover, and immigrants as these opportunistic rats.
Based on current socially accepted rhetoric of "catching illegal immigrants", "breeders", and border patrol video games, I wonder how people might've been influenced in their thinking by mere "entertainment."
People say Looney Tunes was "just" a cartoon, entertainment, as if thoughts can be neatly packaged away into separate compartments of our brains, not ever influencing things like our political beliefs or views on race.
I think things in general would be much easier if our brains actually were structured that way. But our brains are not computers and as was pointed out by Gary Marcus in his book Kluge, our brains are imperfect. This means we are not always rational, controlled, and we don't always act the way we intend to. So we may not always have the most perfectly formed opinions.
Our opinions on politics and race today might've originated from something we don't remember or don't really like to admit. We often don't remember the sources of these beliefs, but we cling to them because they are convenient and our lifestyles have been built around them. I think very few people if any are convinced to change beliefs based on hard, cold factual or statistical arguments. If anything, for both sides of any argument, tools like statistics are just rhetorical weapons wielded from high-minded individuals to convince everyone of their personal extreme rationality.
I tend to think that most opinions on politics, race, even sports originate in early motivations developed from emotional reactions. Our emotional reactions develop from social environments and communities.
I don't think people in general realize how irrationally formed some of their beliefs and perceptions are, particularly those involving race, ethnicity, and politics. I think most people, particularly those who aren't made conscious of their race and ethnicity, latch on to certain beliefs and stereotypes of other races and ethnicities early on in their lives.
As a kid, Speedy stirred up a sentiment of annoyance in me. He was so annoyingly evasive. So I disliked him. By association, I ended up not liking some of his traits, like the fact that he was dirty brown or spoke "broken" English.
I knew that not every Mexican actually talked or acted like Speedy or his friends, but I felt like some of the way they speak was what I observed the way some Latinos in real life spoke and were generally dirty-looking, especially the jornalero types. The stereotype had a grain of truth, I thought.
And so in grade school, when I went to a neighborhood friend's house who was Guatemalan, I saw that he was brown and lived pretty dirtily, unconsciously confirming a stereotype. The friends he brought over from public school were also dirty, especially when one time they played on my makeshift kiddy basketball court, and my finger accidentally touched on dude's tongue. I sniffed my finger and it smelled foul.
Later in grade school for a school project, I had to go to a Mexican's house. I was almost pleasantly surprised to find out how clean he was because he was sort of a big dude and always kinda smelled foul.
I wasn't out there pointing this out to either one of my friends; these were just things running in my head --- caricatures of little dirty brown Speedy Gonzales juxtaposed with confirmed stereotypes of real life people.
It's not like I had anything else in my streaming experience of television, school, or real life experience (in LA no less) to dispel these wholly irrational caricatures of Mexicans/Latinos.
All I knew is that it was wrong to discriminate against any of them or any people or say bad things about them (or any other people of color, much like myself).
All I learned was not to intentionally do bad things around them or anyone else, and everything would be alright.
I didn't learn exactly how to be cool with them, what good food they had, how clean most of them were, you know stuff that we could actually connect on. All I learned was how to joke about their different stereotypes and not take those too seriously.
The problem with the widespread public idea that Speedy Gonzales is "just entertainment" or was about "jokes" is that I'm not sure there is much out there to make a better attempt at representing Mexicans for other people. It's as if their non-White racial and ethnic categories are only out there to be punchlines and caricatures. I could probably tell you more about how annoying Speedy G. than how great Cesar A was.
Looney Tunes was a fixture of 1990s Nickelodeon and my TV-watching experience as a kid.
I didn't particularly aim to watch Looney Tunes, but when it was on, I guess it was alright, it was something to keep me occupied.
Speedy Gonzales was a pretty prominent recurring character whose sole purpose was to make Sylvester the cat look stupid. I hated that, I really wanted the cat to finally catch that little mouse.
Speedy was just one in a line of physically little, quick-moving, thinking characters that included Jerry from Tom and Jerry, Tweety bird, the Roadrunner, and the kids who actually got the Trix in those commercials. These little, quick-moving characters were always elusive, and I couldn't help but be annoyed at each one of them.
I wonder if the 1950s narrative for these cartoon characters was structured so that we would dislike these nimble little characters. The storylines were constructed in a way in which you wondered if those physically little, quick-moving and thinking characters would get caught.
It was always a narrative of evasion (which probably fit in with the time). So while the characters looked physically defenseless, you knew they would always get away with something, almost like criminals.
The narratives never centered around the Speedy's, Tweety's, Roadrunners and a question of when they would overcome these big predatorial characters. It was about when the big predatory characters, the Sylvesters, the Trix Bunny, the Coyote, devising all kinds of plans, would finally win.
Speedy arguably had the most personality of all those little evasive characters. His personality was marked by his ethnicity, which was emphasized way beyond belief: he was undeniably, thoroughly Mexican, from the sombrero to the accent to the use of Spanish.
Arriba, arriba, andale, andale.
I remember going to Spanish class the first day of my freshman year in high school thinking, "I'm finally going to learn what those words mean!"
The video above of Speedy Gonzales is quite relevant to today's debate over immigration.
You've got the immigration boundary, the all-male "border crossers" trying to get cheese (i.e. "stealing our jobs"), and this ineffective "border defense", the cruder older stereotypes of the Latino lover, and immigrants as these opportunistic rats.
Based on current socially accepted rhetoric of "catching illegal immigrants", "breeders", and border patrol video games, I wonder how people might've been influenced in their thinking by mere "entertainment."
People say Looney Tunes was "just" a cartoon, entertainment, as if thoughts can be neatly packaged away into separate compartments of our brains, not ever influencing things like our political beliefs or views on race.
I think things in general would be much easier if our brains actually were structured that way. But our brains are not computers and as was pointed out by Gary Marcus in his book Kluge, our brains are imperfect. This means we are not always rational, controlled, and we don't always act the way we intend to. So we may not always have the most perfectly formed opinions.
Our opinions on politics and race today might've originated from something we don't remember or don't really like to admit. We often don't remember the sources of these beliefs, but we cling to them because they are convenient and our lifestyles have been built around them. I think very few people if any are convinced to change beliefs based on hard, cold factual or statistical arguments. If anything, for both sides of any argument, tools like statistics are just rhetorical weapons wielded from high-minded individuals to convince everyone of their personal extreme rationality.
I tend to think that most opinions on politics, race, even sports originate in early motivations developed from emotional reactions. Our emotional reactions develop from social environments and communities.
I don't think people in general realize how irrationally formed some of their beliefs and perceptions are, particularly those involving race, ethnicity, and politics. I think most people, particularly those who aren't made conscious of their race and ethnicity, latch on to certain beliefs and stereotypes of other races and ethnicities early on in their lives.
As a kid, Speedy stirred up a sentiment of annoyance in me. He was so annoyingly evasive. So I disliked him. By association, I ended up not liking some of his traits, like the fact that he was dirty brown or spoke "broken" English.
I knew that not every Mexican actually talked or acted like Speedy or his friends, but I felt like some of the way they speak was what I observed the way some Latinos in real life spoke and were generally dirty-looking, especially the jornalero types. The stereotype had a grain of truth, I thought.
And so in grade school, when I went to a neighborhood friend's house who was Guatemalan, I saw that he was brown and lived pretty dirtily, unconsciously confirming a stereotype. The friends he brought over from public school were also dirty, especially when one time they played on my makeshift kiddy basketball court, and my finger accidentally touched on dude's tongue. I sniffed my finger and it smelled foul.
Later in grade school for a school project, I had to go to a Mexican's house. I was almost pleasantly surprised to find out how clean he was because he was sort of a big dude and always kinda smelled foul.
I wasn't out there pointing this out to either one of my friends; these were just things running in my head --- caricatures of little dirty brown Speedy Gonzales juxtaposed with confirmed stereotypes of real life people.
It's not like I had anything else in my streaming experience of television, school, or real life experience (in LA no less) to dispel these wholly irrational caricatures of Mexicans/Latinos.
All I knew is that it was wrong to discriminate against any of them or any people or say bad things about them (or any other people of color, much like myself).
All I learned was not to intentionally do bad things around them or anyone else, and everything would be alright.
I didn't learn exactly how to be cool with them, what good food they had, how clean most of them were, you know stuff that we could actually connect on. All I learned was how to joke about their different stereotypes and not take those too seriously.
The problem with the widespread public idea that Speedy Gonzales is "just entertainment" or was about "jokes" is that I'm not sure there is much out there to make a better attempt at representing Mexicans for other people. It's as if their non-White racial and ethnic categories are only out there to be punchlines and caricatures. I could probably tell you more about how annoying Speedy G. than how great Cesar A was.
Masculinity and Being a Young Ethnic Male at Los Angeles Academic Conferences, Public Lectures, and Public Basketball Courts
An original version posted on 5/28/2010 as "Masculinity and Being a Young Ethnic Male in Los Angeles Academic Conferences, Public Lectures, and Public Basketball Courts" @ AMMMO
In my quest to pinpoint my real, definitive academic interests to determine my career path, I've observed around 60-70 lectures, conferences, symposiums in the past 4 years all across LA and across many topics of interests.
Topics of these lectures, conferences, and symposia have ranged from the possibility of opening a street car on Broadway in Los Angeles to 3-day conferences on transcultural psychiatry. There were random interest talks I attended just for the fuck of it, like the one about freeing the mustang, or a conference on the History of the Pacific. I went to a bunch of public policy panels dealing with health care, higher education access, local government. I was very interested in the histories of everything from sciences to Los Angeles. I went to Caltech for random neuroscience-related discussions. All of this was basically just food to feed my thinking, which I'd hope to use later in my career.
Who goes to these things?
As far as conferences and symposia go, it's professors and graduate school students. Middle-aged and older people blended in with young people.
As far as public lectures, it's also mostly middle-aged - older white people and perhaps a contingent of younger people, depending on the topic or school project.
When you take race and ethnicity into consideration, however, there aren't too many people who fit my demographic in these spaces: the young ethnic male, AKA the people who are more likely to be in prison than in school and get accused all the time of being gang members, particularly the blacks and Latinos. Being a Chino, I'm not harassed to the extent that they usually are, but on a handful of occasions, police have wanted to know what I, a 20-something year old college grad (completely unbeknownst to them), was doing in the middle of the day out of [high] school and instead on sidewalks or Metro stations. Sadly, neither academics nor long-term employers have not matched the level of police curiosity in me when out and about.
My demographic's absence was most glaringly apparent at a very small conference at USC on the history of the Pacific and when I was attempting to sit-in on an Albert Einstein symposia at Caltech.
I stuck out like a sore thumb --- a young, hip-hop habitus-ed (i.e. wearing baggy clothes), teenage-looking, no-monied kid walking amongst accomplished, middle-aged or hipper, on-the-ball younger white people with an occasional dropping of smarter, smugger ethnic females. It's not like I'm trying to antagonize people by wearing baggy clothes, it's just kind of how my clothes are and have been.
In settings like this with the exception of ethnic studies' events, it was a constant mental battle of questioning whether I belonged. Without that feeling of "belonging" or "ownership/expertise in a field", I felt a social anxiety about talking about anything and so I just kinda sat through a lot of these events indulging in my note-taking. I only asked questions if I was really really really compelled to, and even then I was quite scared doing it.
Questions of "belonging" or "ownership/expertise" are not as glaring however when I take off the academic thinking cap and go play basketball in Eagle Rock on Fridays or Sundays. Playing basketball at a public park, I'm exchanging elbows with the very young ethnic males absent from these aforementioned lectures, conferences, symposia.
This is pretty much the only demographic at many public parks and basketball courts around LA. That's our domain.
I remember an idea from The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down about how gender and power dynamics for Hmong immigrant families change once they migrated to the US. Generally, in the old country, the eldest man in the family would be the highest status individual while the youngest female would be at the bottom.
However, in the US, the dynamic of eldest being the most respected would be flipped on its head. The youngest female Hmong would likely be the highest status individual. Meanwhile, poor grandpa would be lowest because he's not likely to speak English and can't really participate in the workforce.
What this example shows seems reflective of a larger trend I've noticed: ethnic males are having a hard time breaking into positions of upward mobility.
At non-ethnic studies academic and public lecture functions, I am and have always been looking for other males of color to be like "aye, what's happening cuz" with. Latinos are somewhat hard to tell, but the ones that I kick it with don't seem to match the social habits of the ones I might see at the conferences. I've only seen like 2 black dudes at all the academicky non-ethnic-studies-related conferences. I was damn near shocked and mentally celebrating to see a dreadlocked black guy attend the transcultural psychiatry conference, but understood his plight when he interacted with almost no one. At that same conference, I also saw my very first Filipino who wasn't me, but actually ended up not being affilated with the conference and all and was some kind of CSUN Business douchebag.
In contrast to this absence, ethnic women are a pretty fast emerging group of academics. Maybe it's because they tend to be more flexible in the US as far as broadening their careers to different things. Maybe males have a more rigid way of doing things which is harder to jibe with the cultural norms in America.
Sometimes on the court I'm thinking, what we as ethnic males are all doing, besides playing basketball. In my basketball group, I know one engineer, one freshly-minted nurse, a tutor, a few bank employees, and the self-employed alpha player taking accounting classes. Not the worst, but still not in positions of power (i.e. policy-making --- politics and knowledge-making --- academia). It feels like we have a glass ceiling.
Why is this all important?
Well, I think that human beings in general tend to make life decisions based on their social groups and networks of influence. Whatever is "normal" around you becomes almost a glass ceiling, difficult to break out of for groups of people and possibilities limited. With limited possibilities means less representation in important legislation, and decisions about what gets counted as knowledge.
I wonder what keeps us from getting into these positions of upward mobility. Are we either one of or either too practical, too egotistical, too impatient? If we are, what makes our groups like that, especially in academia?
In my quest to pinpoint my real, definitive academic interests to determine my career path, I've observed around 60-70 lectures, conferences, symposiums in the past 4 years all across LA and across many topics of interests.
Topics of these lectures, conferences, and symposia have ranged from the possibility of opening a street car on Broadway in Los Angeles to 3-day conferences on transcultural psychiatry. There were random interest talks I attended just for the fuck of it, like the one about freeing the mustang, or a conference on the History of the Pacific. I went to a bunch of public policy panels dealing with health care, higher education access, local government. I was very interested in the histories of everything from sciences to Los Angeles. I went to Caltech for random neuroscience-related discussions. All of this was basically just food to feed my thinking, which I'd hope to use later in my career.
Who goes to these things?
As far as conferences and symposia go, it's professors and graduate school students. Middle-aged and older people blended in with young people.
As far as public lectures, it's also mostly middle-aged - older white people and perhaps a contingent of younger people, depending on the topic or school project.
When you take race and ethnicity into consideration, however, there aren't too many people who fit my demographic in these spaces: the young ethnic male, AKA the people who are more likely to be in prison than in school and get accused all the time of being gang members, particularly the blacks and Latinos. Being a Chino, I'm not harassed to the extent that they usually are, but on a handful of occasions, police have wanted to know what I, a 20-something year old college grad (completely unbeknownst to them), was doing in the middle of the day out of [high] school and instead on sidewalks or Metro stations. Sadly, neither academics nor long-term employers have not matched the level of police curiosity in me when out and about.
My demographic's absence was most glaringly apparent at a very small conference at USC on the history of the Pacific and when I was attempting to sit-in on an Albert Einstein symposia at Caltech.
I stuck out like a sore thumb --- a young, hip-hop habitus-ed (i.e. wearing baggy clothes), teenage-looking, no-monied kid walking amongst accomplished, middle-aged or hipper, on-the-ball younger white people with an occasional dropping of smarter, smugger ethnic females. It's not like I'm trying to antagonize people by wearing baggy clothes, it's just kind of how my clothes are and have been.
In settings like this with the exception of ethnic studies' events, it was a constant mental battle of questioning whether I belonged. Without that feeling of "belonging" or "ownership/expertise in a field", I felt a social anxiety about talking about anything and so I just kinda sat through a lot of these events indulging in my note-taking. I only asked questions if I was really really really compelled to, and even then I was quite scared doing it.
Questions of "belonging" or "ownership/expertise" are not as glaring however when I take off the academic thinking cap and go play basketball in Eagle Rock on Fridays or Sundays. Playing basketball at a public park, I'm exchanging elbows with the very young ethnic males absent from these aforementioned lectures, conferences, symposia.
This is pretty much the only demographic at many public parks and basketball courts around LA. That's our domain.
I remember an idea from The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down about how gender and power dynamics for Hmong immigrant families change once they migrated to the US. Generally, in the old country, the eldest man in the family would be the highest status individual while the youngest female would be at the bottom.
However, in the US, the dynamic of eldest being the most respected would be flipped on its head. The youngest female Hmong would likely be the highest status individual. Meanwhile, poor grandpa would be lowest because he's not likely to speak English and can't really participate in the workforce.
What this example shows seems reflective of a larger trend I've noticed: ethnic males are having a hard time breaking into positions of upward mobility.
At non-ethnic studies academic and public lecture functions, I am and have always been looking for other males of color to be like "aye, what's happening cuz" with. Latinos are somewhat hard to tell, but the ones that I kick it with don't seem to match the social habits of the ones I might see at the conferences. I've only seen like 2 black dudes at all the academicky non-ethnic-studies-related conferences. I was damn near shocked and mentally celebrating to see a dreadlocked black guy attend the transcultural psychiatry conference, but understood his plight when he interacted with almost no one. At that same conference, I also saw my very first Filipino who wasn't me, but actually ended up not being affilated with the conference and all and was some kind of CSUN Business douchebag.
In contrast to this absence, ethnic women are a pretty fast emerging group of academics. Maybe it's because they tend to be more flexible in the US as far as broadening their careers to different things. Maybe males have a more rigid way of doing things which is harder to jibe with the cultural norms in America.
Sometimes on the court I'm thinking, what we as ethnic males are all doing, besides playing basketball. In my basketball group, I know one engineer, one freshly-minted nurse, a tutor, a few bank employees, and the self-employed alpha player taking accounting classes. Not the worst, but still not in positions of power (i.e. policy-making --- politics and knowledge-making --- academia). It feels like we have a glass ceiling.
Why is this all important?
Well, I think that human beings in general tend to make life decisions based on their social groups and networks of influence. Whatever is "normal" around you becomes almost a glass ceiling, difficult to break out of for groups of people and possibilities limited. With limited possibilities means less representation in important legislation, and decisions about what gets counted as knowledge.
I wonder what keeps us from getting into these positions of upward mobility. Are we either one of or either too practical, too egotistical, too impatient? If we are, what makes our groups like that, especially in academia?
The Only Filipino I Saw in US Media Growing Up
An original version posted on 11/2/2009 as "Conrado Baylon Fiel: My Filipino Role Model Growing Up" @ AMMMO
When I was 9 years old, I knew that unless it was news-related or on Filipino news, it was a bit of a pipe dream to see Filipinos regularly on television, magazines, or newspapers.
It was as if no one knew my race and ethnicity existed, though I did see a lot of them in grade school and was surrounded by them. But I knew that they wouldn't be on the LA Times (least till my sister got into the Orange County Edition in 1994) or Eyewitness News or anything. That was a black and white dominated world. And if they did have to acknowledge Asians, it would be the Chinese. Filipinos, in my opinion, were too ordinary and boring to do anything cool.
It would be an event every time I saw some Filipno on any kind of any medium at all. I was thrilled to see Mr. Dante "Bang-a-Rang" Basco play Peter Pan's sidekick, even though he was kind of a bad guy.
But that was only one time. Basco played a fictional character, and kind of a bad guy to boot. That was all there was to him after that movie. He never showed up again. Back in 1993, there was no sense of character to him, there would be no back-story, there wasn't any googling his name to see what he was up to now. That was the end of Dante Basco, at least until the explosion of the internets and community events. So for a while, he was just kind of an afterthought of a Filipino.
Same thing with Ernie Reyes Jr. whose had one of the more successful careers in Hollywood as a Filipino martial artist and played the protagonist in Surf Ninjas, my most favoritest movie of all time as a 9-year old.
In my most formative preteen years, there weren't many real-life Filipinos to look at over and over again as heroes. I thought Filipinos were really boring people who would always be ignored until...
This guy...
Conrado Baylon Fiel!
Found...
In this book...
I knew clearly that this was a bad guy book and other than Street Fighter it was the first time I remember seeing Latinos and Middle Eastern people being in print as well.
"Victor Manuel Gerena, that guy looks like the Mexican who lives next door!"
"Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, kinda looks like Scottie Pippen, but he comes from the Middle East. You know *a far away place where they cut off your eat, if they don't like your face (quoted from Aladdin)"
It was compelling reading. Or perhaps intent staring and voyeurism - trying to see the criminal traits inherent within their faces. Very 1890s-esque, except adjusted to reflect America's trans-national diversity. It was also interesting how they didn't put any of the women on this cover, even though there was one in the book.
The statistics and descriptions this book gave about each of them made it look like a Street Fighter Profile or a basketball card
Place of Birth
Height
Weight
Highlights
Of course none of these individuals were heroes, nonetheless it was compelling for me.
The Filipino guy's profile (2nd place was the Chinese guy following him) is what I stared at the most, complete with Street Fighter II-esque attributes and descriptions.
That "swarthy, heavyset" Fiel could've been an uncle of mine! Matter of fact, every time I ran into Mr. Galicia, one of my friends' dads, I thought of Conrado. His skin color probably looked like my dads, and he was born around the same time my mom and dad were born too! In the 2nd picture, he even actually kinda looked like my dad. Filipinos wouldn't be just boring, regular people who liked to folk dance and become nurses, they could be murderers on the FBIs Most Wanted List as well!
I didn't see too many Filipinos at all in print unless it was in the Los Angeles Asian Journal, but this one book was different. It was 25 cent pocket book that was in wide circulation! It would be read by lots of people, even white people, standing in line at the supermarket.
When I was 9 years old, I knew that unless it was news-related or on Filipino news, it was a bit of a pipe dream to see Filipinos regularly on television, magazines, or newspapers.
It was as if no one knew my race and ethnicity existed, though I did see a lot of them in grade school and was surrounded by them. But I knew that they wouldn't be on the LA Times (least till my sister got into the Orange County Edition in 1994) or Eyewitness News or anything. That was a black and white dominated world. And if they did have to acknowledge Asians, it would be the Chinese. Filipinos, in my opinion, were too ordinary and boring to do anything cool.
It would be an event every time I saw some Filipno on any kind of any medium at all. I was thrilled to see Mr. Dante "Bang-a-Rang" Basco play Peter Pan's sidekick, even though he was kind of a bad guy.
But that was only one time. Basco played a fictional character, and kind of a bad guy to boot. That was all there was to him after that movie. He never showed up again. Back in 1993, there was no sense of character to him, there would be no back-story, there wasn't any googling his name to see what he was up to now. That was the end of Dante Basco, at least until the explosion of the internets and community events. So for a while, he was just kind of an afterthought of a Filipino.
Same thing with Ernie Reyes Jr. whose had one of the more successful careers in Hollywood as a Filipino martial artist and played the protagonist in Surf Ninjas, my most favoritest movie of all time as a 9-year old.
In my most formative preteen years, there weren't many real-life Filipinos to look at over and over again as heroes. I thought Filipinos were really boring people who would always be ignored until...
This guy...
Conrado Baylon Fiel!
Found...
In this book...
I knew clearly that this was a bad guy book and other than Street Fighter it was the first time I remember seeing Latinos and Middle Eastern people being in print as well.
"Victor Manuel Gerena, that guy looks like the Mexican who lives next door!"
"Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, kinda looks like Scottie Pippen, but he comes from the Middle East. You know *a far away place where they cut off your eat, if they don't like your face (quoted from Aladdin)"
It was compelling reading. Or perhaps intent staring and voyeurism - trying to see the criminal traits inherent within their faces. Very 1890s-esque, except adjusted to reflect America's trans-national diversity. It was also interesting how they didn't put any of the women on this cover, even though there was one in the book.
The statistics and descriptions this book gave about each of them made it look like a Street Fighter Profile or a basketball card
Place of Birth
Height
Weight
Highlights
Of course none of these individuals were heroes, nonetheless it was compelling for me.
The Filipino guy's profile (2nd place was the Chinese guy following him) is what I stared at the most, complete with Street Fighter II-esque attributes and descriptions.
That "swarthy, heavyset" Fiel could've been an uncle of mine! Matter of fact, every time I ran into Mr. Galicia, one of my friends' dads, I thought of Conrado. His skin color probably looked like my dads, and he was born around the same time my mom and dad were born too! In the 2nd picture, he even actually kinda looked like my dad. Filipinos wouldn't be just boring, regular people who liked to folk dance and become nurses, they could be murderers on the FBIs Most Wanted List as well!
I didn't see too many Filipinos at all in print unless it was in the Los Angeles Asian Journal, but this one book was different. It was 25 cent pocket book that was in wide circulation! It would be read by lots of people, even white people, standing in line at the supermarket.
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