Barack Obama through Filipino-American Eyes

When Barack Obama was born in 1961, many blacks still could not vote in many parts of the United States. For many of them, being lynched, or hanged by an angry white mob, was still a threat. Filipino Americans, mostly farm workers, were still pretty much viewed as outsiders, and many of them still remember being barred from hotels with signs that said, “Positively No Filipinos Allowed.”

But there were signs of change.

A group of young Americans, called the Freedom Riders, braved violence in the southern states in a bid to register black voters so they could finally take part in the electoral process. Meanwhile, in the fields of California, Filipino farm workers were gaining ground in the decades-old battle against abuse and injustice.

Obama was three when three members of the Freedom Fighters – two white students Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and one black, James Chaney – were kidnapped and then beaten in Mississippi in 1964 in one of the most savage assaults on the Civil Rights Movement.

He was five when Filipino farm workers, led by Phillip Vera Cruz and Larry Itliong, launched in 1966 the Delano Grape Strike in Central California which would pave the way for the creation of the United Farm Workers, now a major political force in the United States.          

In 1968, when Obama was seven, students at San Francisco State University, including many Filipino Americans, waged what turned into one of the longest campus strikes in American history. The so-called SF State Ethnic Strike pushed for greater representation of minority students in recruitment and admissions.

In April of that year, Martin Luther King, the symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, was assassinated.

Nearly half a century later, Barack Obama, the biracial son of a Kenyan immigrant and a woman from Kansas, who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, began his career as a community organizer in the poor neighborhoods of Chicago, ignited incredible political movement, is on the verge of becoming the first person of color to serve as president of the United States.

His victory is not assured. Given the intensity of the campaign, and the high stakes involved, anything can still happen to derail what has been a hard-fought campaign.

There are still doubts about his ability to lead, mainly because he is a newcomer and considered untested. But many Americans have watched him get tested in perhaps one of the most intense campaigns in recent history. Obama not only endured, but actually thrived, in the campaign, responding to attacks with an even temper and poised intelligence that have helped erase many doubts about whether he is ready to take on the American presidency.

To be sure, if he wins, Obama will undoubtedly face one of the most gargantuan challenges ever faced by an American president.

The next US president will have to deal with two wars, and possibly a third in the event that tensions with either Russia or Iran come to a boil. He will inherit a battered economy, marked by a financial system that is falling apart. And he will have to lead a demoralized nation, tired of war and political squabbling, and fearful of a new era of economic uncertainty.

Things are so bad in America that, if he does win in November, Obama will have to make tough choices and painful compromises. And many of these decisions inevitably will disappoint, perhaps even anger, those who now support him.

It is then that his temperament, intellect and integrity as a leader will truly be tested. Who will get the short end of the stick in the choices he makes? How will he explain these decisions to those parties, the American public and the world?

But even if Obama does not make it to the White House, he has already made a huge difference. He has been an astounding example, someone who has shattered the centuries of prejudice against people of color in America.

As a Filipino expatriate, it took me time to understand the painful story of race in this country. It became somewhat more difficult to understand given the baggage many of us Filipino immigrants inevitably bring with us when we come to this country.

My wife Mara, a committed feminist who grew up on the UP campus and who has lived here longer than me, helped me understand. And so did Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize-winning novelist, who said something years ago that I’ve never forgotten: That in their desire to become part of America, many immigrants embrace the views of the dominant white society – including the prejudiced, distorted image of blacks.

“In race talk, the move into mainstream America always means buying into the notion of American blacks as the real aliens,” she wrote in Time magazine in 1993. “Whatever the ethnicity or nationality of the immigrant, his nemesis is understood to be African American… It doesn’t matter anymore what shade the newcomer’s skin is. A hostile posture toward resident blacks must be struck at the Americanizing door before it will open.”

Many Asians, including Filipinos, have embraced this view, consciously or unconsciously. As the respected Asian American civil rights attorney Bill Lee told me many years ago when I wrote about this issue for the San Francisco Chronicle, “Immigrant communities generally tend not to know the history and to buy into the biases and prejudices of the dominant group. Unfortunately, becoming American often means buying into the prejudices. They want to identify upward. They don’t want to identify with those at the bottom.”

But there were many Asian American activists, including Filipino Americans, who rejected the mainstream views of Blacks and Asians, who chose to identify with those at the bottom.

Japanese American civil rights attorney Kathy Imahara said, “It started with this bizarre model minority thing, this image of the white man holding an Asian American up and patting us on the head in this condescending manner and telling other minorities, particularly Blacks and Latinos, ‘If you minorities just work as hard as the Asians, then you too will be able to succeed.’”

Many Filipino Americans, with no delusions about what Obama faces and what he can achieve, have nevertheless been inspired by his campaign. I’ll let them speak for themselves.

There’s the veteran activist Prosy de la Cruz who praised a “candidate who rose from the ranks of the poor, then, the middle class and now, one who is well off and comfortable with folks who wield power and folks who generate grassroots results from all backgrounds.”

There’s Terry Bautista, a veteran of the San Francisco Bay Area movement against the Marcos regime who said, “Barack Obama has, so far, revealed his knowledge and support for Filipinos, their history and culture, in the multicultural fabric of the U.S. He has recognized Filipino American History month, Philippine Independence, the fight of our Filipino World War beteranos.”

“There are those of us who are excited that a person of color is running for the top office of this country, be it as it may that we strongly disagree about his readiness, experience, and his ability to serve as commander-in-chief,” she said. “The next president will inherit some of the most serious problems that affect all of us.”

And then there’s Gayle Gatchalian who wrote me after a piece I wrote about the sad truth on how many Filipinos may not want to vote for a black candidate.

 “My entire family hates Barack Obama and I can’t have a decent conversation with them without a mention of Muslim, Hussein, and the myriad other issues that have come out that proves he is a decent human being,” she said in an e-mail. “I understand that it’s because they have something against black people, and my black friends have tried to explain it to me… Hearing or reading it from a fellow countryman truly made it all clear to me.”

There are no guarantees. Obama could very well turn out to be just another politico, as flawed or incompetent as some of the recent occupants of the White House.

But many Filipino Americans believe it’s worth taking the chance.

For Obama, if he emerges as the wise and courageous leader he promises to be in the campaign, could move America’s story forward in a way that honors the memory of Schwerner, Chaney, Goodman and other the young blacks and whites who gave their lives for civil rights in the American south.

And those of Vera Cruz, Itliong and other Pinoy farmworkers whose sacrifices now also are part of the story of America’s journey.

The author is a Filipino journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.