A PERSONAL STORY: Racism In The US

The global pandemic has gotten the focused attention of the entire planet at this stage, and that grave concern is more than sufficient to drain the energies of many countries.  Some more than others.  Take the US, for example, prior to this the country had already been embroiled in serious political stripe from the start of the current administration.  The scourge has definitely added more burden.  Now, we have the protests, riots, violence and destruction inundating the breadth of the continent, partaking supposedly in the nature of racial stripe.  Though we believe it is a lot more, just the same we want to address the current unrest bedeviling the country.

I thought I’d contribute my little bit on the subject, having lived in the US for 30 years as an adult with our entire family.  Then resettled back in the old homeland while the kids are left there with their own families.

As an immigrant Filipino family we had relocated to No. California in the 80’s with 4 under-age children. We initially settled and then later the kids on their own settled in quite diverse communities in this place called the Bay Area.  The places they worked and the families they consequently established on their own tell us of this diversity of experiences and relationships.  My children married into African-American, Caucasian, Persian, and of course, Filipino families.  My wife herself is of mixed parentage, her maternal grandfather descended from immigrant Jewish family from Europe.  I feel then this accords me some bona fides when it comes to the issue of racism or its absence.

And my approach will not only be more experience-backed, but its anecdotal portions are supported by provable data and statistics.

First, we have to be clear what is objectionable about racism as compared to other similar attitudes about people.  Racism is first and foremost the attitude that your race or ethnicity is superior to the others that you discriminate against.  If you simply prefer one ethnicity over another that is not necessarily racism.  Thus, a prospective bridegroom is not racist simply because he prefers a tall lady rather than a short one, one with fairer hair rather than one with very dark hair, or even one with fairer skin over ones with darker skin, or even Filipina over a Chinese lady.  He has to bring into play the attitude of superiority to make him a racist.  But having discriminating tastes is not racism. So we have to treat with delicate and deliberate caution when we use the term racism.

On the other hand, it would not pass muster in accuracy to conflate slavery with racism, especially because of what we know today.  That slavery in Africa was started by Africans against their fellow Africans and taken over by white slave traders.  Or that in earlier times, slavery was done by others against their own.  Like Romans against their own, or Moro pirates in Mindanao against other native tribes in Mindanao.  In short, racism is not the only reason for slavery.

Now about the US.  If one studies the laws of the United States one cannot find one that outright spells racism, though there may be dead-letter remnants from the past that are left unnoticed in the dusty files of statutes.  I was still living there when somebody discovered some aged local law in one or two farming towns in central California that prohibited the marriage of white ladies with migrant Filipinos which stemmed clearly from the racism of an earlier time.   I believe that was summarily repealed. But those that are current and in use, we can truly say that racism is completely erased from the books.

But hate like love is difficult, if not outright impossible, to legislate.  Even the government or the people cannot get into the minds and hearts of other people and to forcibly remove racist streaks in them.  So, yes, there is still racism in the US, but not of the kinds and pervasiveness as in the past.  I would venture to say no different than the racism in other countries, whether very developed or not.  And I recall that we Filipinos also had our spells of racism, maybe.  And to this day, even in the US, many Filipinos are still very negatively critical of black America.  In the homeland, many Filipinos continue to think ill will against the dominant minority, calling them derogatory names. But we do not immediately jump into the bandwagon of condemning an entire group or country because of racism.\

I will admit that I and the family also were subjected to attitudes and language that could be construed as racist, but we knew they were more because of the ignorance or cluelessness of individuals, rather than an ingrained belief ascribable to an entire group. I recall one busy night at the hotel while on duty at the front desk when one white individual approached my station.  This non-guest wanted to encash a personal check, which I politely refused explaining to him that only registered guests could get funds from the front desk.  But he would have none of it and continued loudly to insist.  Not getting his way, he rushed close to my station and planted his angry heated face close to mine and said:  That is the problem with you Vietnamese, you are so stupid and thus, we lost the war.  And I could only move back and smile a bit, until security came to remove the guy.

In the big hotel I worked for 20 years, it had over 1000 employees from very diverse origins.  If one met a black person one had to be extra careful because one was not sure if he was African-American, Ethiopian, Liberian, Somali, or one from the deep South whose language sounded foreign, etc.  But generally things went along pretty well.

 

I was among the first Filipino immigrants to be assigned to the front desk and my fellow Filipinos made sure I marked that well.   But I did not pay much attention to it in that way.  I thought of it simply as a business decision.  Like, as I noticed in the hotel’s Sales Department which was peopled mostly by white sales managers, and one Japanese sales manager.  At first blush that sounded discriminatory at the very least.  But then one learns, if the main business of the hotel was with white corporate America and white individuals from the upper classes, then one understands.  What about the Japanese sales manager?  Well, because many tourist groups who patronized the hotel came from Japan.  Wise business decisions, indeed.  Not racism.

And the reason why I included the word immigrant in my description of myself is quite easy to explain.  Most of us first generation immigrants regardless of how educated and good at the English language we were, we continued to carry our distinctive accents, making us sound different from everybody else including FilAms who were natives to the place or grew up in the place.  The tacit reasoning has its roots in an observation I realized and was confirmed by others that people there felt more comfortable and more at ease speaking and listening to those who spoke like them.  Media personalities were good examples.  You found them in many ethnicities, but all spoke like the natives, so that one could not tell what ethnicity they had if one did not look directly at them. Applying to our local situation, we bisayans do feel more at ease listening to a tagalog speak bisayan, though we know we would be able to understand him in his native dialect because we also understand Tagalog.  And this is so, because it is just human nature.  In any free and unplanned social gathering, people who speak similarly will group together and most likely speak of their common interests.  That is human nature, too.

When talks about racism in the US erupt, usually occasioned by flashpoints, like a white person killing a black person, they are typically centered around the black segment of the population against the majority white population.

First a breakdown of the current US population.

Loosely, this is how the current US population is distributed

Non-Hispanic whites                  -    62.2%

Hispanics                                   -     15.3%

Black Americans                      -      13.2%

Asians                                      -        5.4%

Other statistics would claim that Hispanics now number about 20% of the populations while blacks are as low as 10%.  But an interesting stat is that of foreign-born residents/citizens which now account for over 14% of the total and in a rather surprisingly lopsided manner, close to 30% of the population of California, the most populous state, are foreign-born.  Regardless, it is no mere idle speculation to state that the America of pre-Civil War era or even in the 60’s has changed very dramatically, most noticeably in ethnic composition.  Thus, we could say that to claim systemic or structural racism in that context is almost logic-defying.

Still, there is no denying that charges of racism are still an almost regularly recurring reality in the US, and when flashpoints are ignited then it exhibits the paroxysms of riots, destruction and violence, yes, killings, amidst peaceful protests and marches.  The charges inevitably stem from the belief that blacks are unevenly and unfairly targeted, bullied, and punished by the US justice system.  The general outrage is bracketed by the claim that while blacks are a small minority in the population, yet they are over-represented in the justice system – thus for them, more killings, more prisoners, more brutality cases, more arrests, etc.

But do the realities bear these out?  This is always the crux of the matter that though easy to resolve is never done.  Because for some reason or other, stats seem to surprisingly not matter in this rather thorny issue, and where it is most needed and apt for any meaningful resolution.

No denying that the black minority is or appears to be over-represented in the justice system when compared to their total number in the population.  But plausible reasons can be advanced why these situations are so.  And there is ample data to explain and rationalize this.  And facts do not point to anything suggesting that systemic racism is causing them.   Thus, comparatively blacks engaged in more numbers in criminality, especially in communities where they dominate in numbers like Chicago, Oakland, etc.  In the realm of detrimental social issues, as much as 70% of black families are fatherless, and children born out of wedlock are pretty high.  And criminal acts by blacks against blacks are so high, they cannot compare with say, criminal acts of whites against blacks, or even blacks against whites.  Even in abortion cases, the black community rates extremely high. In 2019 alone, there were only 10 instances of deaths involving police officers against blacks.  And I do believe a couple of them were done by black police officers.  So the grave difficulty in promoting the claim that there is systemic racism in the country.

But the stubborn myths continue to propagate otherwise, stoked by politicians and interest groups who are constantly harping on the race card to promote their identity politics.  For example, learning a little of Black Lives Matter will reveal its agenda on race relations.  Information is never wanting for those interested to learn.  The diligence and the interest are what are more needed.