Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the World by R.S. Sugirthharajah

Author:R.S. Sugirthharajah [Sugirthharajah, R.S.]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Publisher: Orbis Books
Published: 2015-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

Trying Hard to Be an American: The Politics of Identity

At present, Filipino Americans rank as the second largest Asian-American ethnic group in the United States and yet we do not hear of Filipinotowns. I do not imagine that there will be Filipinotowns in the near future either, not for Filipino Americans, who have been trained to believe that they are white America's “little brown brothers,” even after years of being called “brown monkeys.” There will be no Filipinotowns, because Filipino Americans are proud of their effort to blend, not with other people of color in America but with dominant white America, though another factor may be at work here as well, namely, the strong regionalism among Filipino Americans. Filipino Americans have, in general, no aversion to “Americanization,” because that is precisely what many aim for. What is the purpose of coming to America if not to be Americanized?

Yet, even as they try hard to be Americanized, many have come to see, as Euro-Americans keep reminding them, the futility of such efforts. “I have been four years in America,” a Filipino immigrant in California said sadly, “and I am a stranger. It is not because I want to be. I have tried to be as ‘American’ as possible. I live like an American, eat like American, and dress the same, and yet everywhere I find Americans who remind me of the fact that I am a stranger.”16 Trying hard to be an American but falling short of the norm—the American as Euro-American—is the plight of Filipino Americans. No matter how hard they try to be Americans, such a task proves impossible, given the identification of the normative American as the Euro-American; Filipino Americans will always fall short of this norm and remain aberrations, forever “missing the mark,” like sinners. Indeed, falling short of the norm is rather like falling from grace: outside the norm is hell, a place where an encounter with God is perceived as impossible. Many Filipino-American youth, in an effort to be as American as possible, to be “cool,” deny their cultural and ethnic identity and, at times, even blame their parents for their physical features. They want to be just like any white youth, since that is the key to getting out of the hell of non-acceptance. Whites, in turn, often with the best of intentions, respond: “We consider you to be just like us. You don't seem [Filipino].”17

“AMERICA IS A PRESENCE AS HUGE AS GOD”: IN THE IMAGE OF GOD, IN THE IMAGE OF AMERICA

In the story of the garden of Eden, the serpent tempts the first couple with these words: “You will be like God” (Gn. 3:5). The first couple succumb to the temptation because they wanted to be “like God.” Filipinos and Filipino Americans, like the first couple in the primeval garden, have also succumbed to this temptation. They, too, desire to be “like God,” but this time, more specifically, to be like the “white gods”—their colonial and neocolonial masters. The “fall” of Filipino Americans is brought about by their desire to be “white,” to be an image of the white gods.

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