“‹I arrived in the US as an immigrant two months before Donald Trump won the election. While not the target of blatant attacks, I was subjected to microaggressions: “Oh, you just moved here? You speak English so well!” It took all my willpower not to answer, “Thanks, so do you.”
Back in the Philippines early last year, before Trump had been in power two years, I was distressed to read of racist incidents targeting women of color (WOC) that grew increasingly frequent the more Trump’s anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric were amplified by media.
Black and Muslim men and women were reported to the police for doing mundane things—sleeping, swimming, eating in places they had the right to be in. The racists being caught on camera are always white—I’ve never seen a POC involved as the aggressor in a racist incident.
Recently, former MTV video jock and model Belinda Panelo, who moved back to the US some years ago to raise her family, became the victim of an elderly white woman’s racist rant. On Feb. 12, Panelo and her son stopped for coffee at a Blue Bottle, parking on a street in the ritzy Los Angeles enclave of Playa Vista.
Panelo recorded some of the incident, but not the worst parts. What she did manage to preserve was pretty bad: her attacker screamed “He doesn’t even look human,” referring to Panelo’s son. She also called mother and son ugly, subhuman, and poor, and asked what ‘mix’ they were.
The former VJ, however, was heard to reply calmly, “Are you okay, ma’am?”
Later, in an interview with KTLA news, Panelo said that her demeanor was an effort to show a good example to her son. “How do I deal with this in front of my child? Because inside, you know, you want to react a certain way, but you are going to have to keep it together,” she said.
“You are trying to model the behavior that you want your child to [have]. You would hope that in a situation your child would react in a respectful way—maintaining their dignity but while still standing up for themselves,” she added.
Filipinos in the diaspora are not unused to being the brunt of racist attacks, but such aggressions have escalated since Trump took power. His refusal to come through for the Dreamers, his unhinged rants about “building a wall,” and his administration’s inhumane treatment of asylum seekers reinforce similar attitudes among America’s whites, whose numbers are dwindling as Latino and other POC communities grow larger.
For a long time, Filipinos in the US believed that they were accepted as ‘almost white’ because they assimilate easier than other nationalities, a dubious advantage conferred by American colonialization at the fin-de-siecle and 40 years thereafter. Fil-Am psychologist Dr. EJ Ramos David calls Filipinos “the invisible minority.” We fly so much under the radar that Fil-Am sociologist Dr. Anthony C. Ocampo says Filipinos are often omitted from discussions about race.
The truth is that Filipinos are still considered the Other, even after decades of immigration. When I was in the US, I filled out government and hospital forms that asked for my race and country of origin. Invariably, these forms carry the words ‘Philippine Islands.’ We are already two decades into the new millennium and up to now the Americans still call our country ‘P.I.’ —a term from their colonial past. It’s also Filipino shorthand for a profane phrase, another reason I dislike the abbreviation.
It’s no surprise then that it’s the older white folks like Trump, those who remember or learned from family and neighbors about the days of Chinese exclusion, Jim Crow, and Japanese interment, who carry around a racist mindset, lately fanned into flames by Trump’s xenophobic bluster. So it’s no surprise that it was an old white lady who accosted Panelo. It’s no surprise that such attacks are accelerating and we might expect more in the days to come.
Some hindsight protection is offered by modern technology. As American Muslim podcast host Qasim Hashid said about this incident: “POC and white allies: record everything.” Posting such videos for the world to see will make racists realize eventually that they are being held accountable for their actions, which have no place in a democratic society.
Meanwhile, like Panelo, we try to handle similar incidents with all the grace and compassion we can muster, keeping our dignity—and safety—intact.
We have not been the “P.I.” for nearly a century, dammit. FB and Twitter: @DrJennyO