Thursday, October 16, 2003
Whoa, trippy
Drums were beating themselves! Or so it seemed. I couldn't see anyone hitting them.
They sang solemnly to the beat of clashing bamboo sticks and canned goods, telling a story of many Pilipino immigrants' experience—years of work on farms and canneries, and in domestic and sex industries.
So, the canned goods go with the canneries, and the bamboo sticks go with the sex industry, I guess. Beat the bamboo sticks, woman!
Although Pilipinos are the largest Asian-American group in California, they only make up 3.7 percent of the campus's undergraduates.
The explanation, of course, comes a few paragraphs later:
Last month when the Pilipino American Alliance surveyed students about stereotypes of Pilipinos, many people—both Pilipinos and others—considered the group ..."dumber than other Asians."
Well, that's because Pilipinos (or Filipinos, if you want to add the F of oppression) really are dumber than other Asians, as far as scholastics are concerned. Maybe if they didn't perform so poorly in academic pursuits, people'd stop thinking of them as dumber than other Asians. Duh. But it's really an unfair stereotype, as one participant explained:
"Some stereotypes might be true for certain people but not for the whole," said junior Mark Ramos. "In the end we're all just brown; we're all just Pilipino."
Rarely will you hear a sentence structure of "Stereotypes for us aren't true, because we're all just..." and for good reason. Much like "The Asian American community unites with one voice to fight stereotypes."
Speaking of the F of oppresion (last letter on the page, Genene's letter about my comments is there by coincidence, I swear), I just realized that it's our good/useless buddy Ligot-Gordon who had gotten pissed off that time about how using an F is just as demeaning to Pilipinos as colonizing them. . . . Yeah. I might add that to the list of "Holy crap, that's one hell of an overstatement." (Remember, trying to put the African American studies classes into other departments, and not slavery, was "the manifestation of white supremacy at its zenith.")
When did The Daily Cal change its editorial policy to spell it with a P?
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