No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
From Running Amok to Eating Dogs: A Century of Misrepresenting Filipino Americans in Hawai'i
Abstract
This article reviews and analyses historical and contemporary processes of the racist representation of Filipino Americans in Hawai'i. Historically, it discusses the causes and consequences of the extreme over-representation of Filipino men among those executed from 1900 until 1944. In contemporary terms, it examines how the news media, ethnic joke telling and the 'local literature' of Hawai'i reinforce stigmatizing stereotypes of Filipino Americans. While some of these stereotypes are new, others have been revived from the pre-Second World War era. The factors that explain why Filipino Americans have been subject to extremely denigrating stereotypes include their continuing subordinate status and the considerable proportion of immigrants among them, which result in their being associated with especially perverse and 'barbaric' activities, such as running amok and eating dogs, that are common in the Philippines as a seemingly culturally underdeveloped nation.
... While there is ample archaeological evidence that early humans across the world consumed dogs, since the late twentieth century in particular, the eating of dog meat has been another site of clashes over values and norms, clashes which are also continuously evolving (Oh and Jackson, 2011;Podberscek, 2009). Dog meat is eaten in many East Asian and South East Asian countries, including South Korea, China, Vietnam and Cambodia; it was eaten in the Philippines, as seen in the derogatory description of Pilipino men as 'dog eaters' by white Americans (Okamura, 2010), though the eating of dog meat has been banned in the Philippines since 1988 (Podberscek, 2009). There are conflicting reports on the eating of dog meat in Thailand; while Podberscek (2009) includes Thailand in the group of countries in which dog meat is eaten, Nir Avieli (2011) quotes a study which suggests that dog meat is not eaten in Thailand due to the prevailing view of dogs 'as sort of degraded human beings that lack moral restraint [incest] and indulge in forbidden practices [eating its own excrement]' (Avieli, 2011: 68). ...
The previous chapter has examined the important role food plays at the nation-state level and the ways in which the state uses food in its attempts to control, modernise and homogenise the nation. It also showcased the close relationship between the state’s domestic political, social and economic policies and its intervention in the nation’s diet. However, the relationship between food and nationalism and its importance to the nation-state extends far beyond the borders of the state. Food is not only used for domestic purposes and as an internal and banal symbol of the nation; it is also used internationally by the state in its diplomatic engagements and as a form of soft power, often referred to as gastrodiplomacy. In this regard, national food can be seen as exhibiting a duality; on the one hand, it can be used to indicate the attractiveness of the nation and increase its appeal, while, on the other hand, it can also be seen as a ‘contested medium of cultural politics that demarcates national boundaries and identities’ (DeSoucey, 2010: 433). This means that what is viewed as national food items or traditions can be used in branding and marketing the nation internationally, but this might also require state intervention and protection from foreign claims. In other words, national food is viewed by the state as a resource that can be utilised to accomplish a variety of aims but that also needs to be secured.
... While there is ample archaeological evidence that early humans across the world consumed dogs, since the late twentieth century in particular, the eating of dog meat has been another site of clashes over values and norms, clashes which are also continuously evolving (Oh and Jackson, 2011;Podberscek, 2009). Dog meat is eaten in many East Asian and South East Asian countries, including South Korea, China, Vietnam and Cambodia; it was eaten in the Philippines, as seen in the derogatory description of Pilipino men as 'dog eaters' by white Americans (Okamura, 2010), though the eating of dog meat has been banned in the Philippines since 1988 (Podberscek, 2009). There are conflicting reports on the eating of dog meat in Thailand; while Podberscek (2009) includes Thailand in the group of countries in which dog meat is eaten, Nir Avieli (2011) quotes a study which suggests that dog meat is not eaten in Thailand due to the prevailing view of dogs 'as sort of degraded human beings that lack moral restraint [incest] and indulge in forbidden practices [eating its own excrement]' (Avieli, 2011: 68). ...
Exploring a much neglected area, the relationship between food and nationalism, this book examines a number of case studies at various levels of political analysis to show how useful the food and nationalism axis can be in the study of politics.
... Writing a few years later, Rafia Zafar (1999) wondered whether, with the updating of the image of Aunt Jemima on the pancake box, the consciousness of the American public about African Americans and food had been altered. Perhaps Western disgust over Asian consumption of dog meat, for instance, is more muted now than in the past (Okamura, 2010;Wu, 2002) and more ridiculed for its hypocrisy (Foer, 2009). In an intriguing comparison between the politics of race in his native India and the USA, Krishnendu Ray (2007: 135) suggests that the 'visceral disgust of blackness – the body, its appetites, and the comestibles that go into it. ...
Recent reviews of food scholarship in Progress in Human Geography have begun to engage with racial identity but have not considered the breadth of work on the subject. Once we look outside what is known as agri-food studies to research in international development, environmental history, feminist theory, cultural studies and anthropology, it is evident that a large body of research exists relating race to the production, distribution and consumption of food. However, to see how this work actually refers to race often requires reading between the lines. Authors may refer to ‘difference’, ‘alterity’ or ‘Otherness’ instead of race and some are not explicit about the theory of race upon which they draw. Consequently, it is not always evident how race matters to the study of food. This paper’s contribution is to propose how theories of race are being used in this literature. It does so by drawing on the work of geographers, but the paper seeks to engage with research outside the discipline as well. Most literature implicitly relies on the social construction of race to consider representations and performances of race in contexts of eating or producing food. A smaller body of work theorizes racial embodiment as a material process. Explicit engagement with the concept of race and its diverse theoretical foundations is important because it allows scholars to make arguments about how racism shapes food systems, to understand how race changes through food, and to consider how food might enable different theorizations of race.
This chapter investigates normative concerns related to food in reference to nationalism making the most of the highly symbolic nature of food. It focuses on the question of who decides what is appropriate to grow, produce and eat in the international arena. The chapter opens with an examination of the case of whale meat eating to review how the question about resource management has developed into a contestation of values with nationalist tinge. It then introduces a comparative context in reference to dog meat and foie gras consumption, and the growing international debate over the use of technology in food, with a specific reference to genetic modification and the fears it raises about food safety but also about the ‘contamination’ of national food, tradition and heritage.
The colonial mentality, a perception of Filipino cultural inferiority, results in many Filipinos distancing themselves from their Filipino heritage. In Hawai‘i, the colonial history of the Philippines is reinforced by the history of Hawai‘i’s plantation era and the creation of a “local” identity, which marginalizes the Filipino community and strengthens the colonial mentality. A content analysis of 105 essays written by Filipino students enrolled in college-level Filipino language and culture classes in Hawai‘i was conducted to critically examine whether and how educational curriculum is used to challenge the colonial mentality. Data analysis shows students often entered classrooms with a colonial mentality that they learned through familial socialization and experiences of ethnic discrimination outside of the family. Although these language and culture courses helped students to reconnect with their Filipino heritage, many students developed a positive and essentialist construction of a Filipino identity, which reduced the individual’s agency in constructing an identity and facilitated processes of othering.
In this article, I map a new theoretical space for Kānaka Maoli, the autochthonous people of Hawaiʻi, within the landscape of critical race theory (CRT). To engage the ways that Kānaka Maoli have been identified as people of color, Asian Pacific Islanders, and Indigenous people, I review literature on CRT, Asian critical race theory, and Tribal critical race theory, revealing that these areas of CRT are at once resonant and dissonant with Kānaka Maoli sensibilities and experiences. Working through this resonance and dissonance, I weave together relevant concepts from extant strands of CRT with Kanaka Maoli knowledge and interests in the offering of new tenets toward a Kanaka Maoli critical decolonizing framework (KanakaCrit).
Criminal insanity cases tried in common law courts in the 19th century attracted the sustained attention of doctors, lawyers, government officials and members of the public. This intense interest was due, in part, to the drama of these cases. However, criminal insanity and the criminally insane also prompted experts and others to contemplate intractable, metaphysical questions about the limits of sanity, the existence of free will and the justification of judicial punishment. This essay argues that, while scholars working in the field of what might be called ‘forensic psychiatry studies’ are acutely conscious of the many ways in which the history of criminal insanity intersects with broader histories of the mind sciences, law and the self, criminal insanity remains largely, and regrettably, tangential to these broader literatures. The essay describes some new directions in the scholarship on criminal insanity that promise to enrich forensic psychiatry studies and also, it is hoped, related fields.
This article shares tactics for teaching Blu’s Hanging as a text assigned because of its controversy, though not necessarily subsumed by it. The novel is presented so as to grapple with the stakes of ethnic/racial representation alongside careful textual analysis, using the controversy around Yamanaka’s work to “teach the conflicts” of literary studies.
As a result of the Philippine-American War and their long history of labor migration, Filipinos, the second-largest Asian immigrant population in the United States, figured prominently in the U.S. popular imagination during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 In his autobiography, America Is in the Heart (1946), labor activist and writer Carlos Bulosan chronicles the lives of Filipino farmworkers during the Great Depression. A substantial part of the text is set in California in the 1930s, when an increase in the state's Filipino immigrant population provoked anti-Filipino sentiment and Filipino farmworkers were the subjects of racial violence and discrimination.2 The book depicts this violence in vivid terms, nowhere more graphically than in a scene where three Filipino farmworkers are lynched. The narrator, Carlos, is preparing union materials with two Filipino labor organizers in a restaurant when five white men with guns barge in and force them into a car.
In this essay I discuss two related issues concerning the impact of transnationalism as concept and process on Asian American Studies (hereafter referred to as AAS). I first review what has been termed the "transnational turn" in the field from the initial "domestic" perspective of the late 1960s and early 1970s focused on the "community" and discuss the critiques of this theoretical transition to a greater emphasis on transnational and diasporic perspectives. Secondly, given this transnational redirection, especially during the past decade, I consider its consequences for demarcating the disciplinary boundaries of the field in relation to Asian Studies, American Studies, and what is called "Asian Pacific American" Studies. Despite the emphases on transnationalism, I argue that AAS still should retain a primary concern with the community by situating it transnationally in the larger context of global economic and political forces and processes. Such a transnational perspective does not elide race as a sig...
Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 5.1 (2004) 261-263
Yen Le Espiritu's past books have dealt with the history and sociology of Asian Americans (Filipino Americans in particular)—Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws, and Love (1997); Filipino American Lives (1995), and Asian American Panethnicity (1992). In her most recent book, Home Bound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries, Espiritu takes the narratives she collected in Filipino American Lives and uses them to examine "how Filipino men and women—as a simultaneously colonized national, immigrant, and racialized minority—are transformed through the experience of colonialism and migration and how they in turn transform and remake the social world around them" (2). Home Bound starts with the U.S. occupation of the Philippines, even though Espiritu noted in Filipino American Lives that Filipinos were in the Americas before the British colonists arrived in the New World. She does this to demonstrate how American encroachment in the Philippines affected their culture, government, and financial system and forced the citizens to emigrate to the United States. Antonio J. A. Pido describes this process as the "inoculating of Pilipinos with American values and the Coca Cola Culture" (Pido 1997, 24). America is advertised as a superior country to the Philippines in every aspect. This displacement within their motherland is important because it creates a dual sense of home for many Filipino Americans. American incursion in the Philippines gave Filipinos a sense that they were a part of America before they even emigrated. Once in America, they found that they were not necessarily allowed to participate in the American dream. Espiritu in Home Bound calls this feeling "the foreigner within" (14).
The irony, as Espiritu points out, is that Filipinos have participated in American history at all levels in occupations such as nurses, as migrant/plantation workers, and naval stewards, even though the U.S. history textbooks do not discuss them. They have created homes in the United States where they were told they did not belong, yet maintained their homeland with American earnings. Their homes have been in both countries, both physically and psychologically. This transnationalism has both positive and negative aspects—sometimes the sense of home and racial identity is lost in trying to build a life in the United States, which sees itself as white.
In the attempts of Filipino Americans to maintain their homes in the Philippines under U.S. influence and to build new ones in America, Home Bound is able to present numerous subtexts (for example, gender) that can be isolated for further scrutiny. In order to control the Philippines, the United States has depicted Filipino men as effeminate to show that they are incapable of governing themselves. In response to this racial subjugation, Filipinos uphold the morality of Filipino women (Filipinas) versus that of white women.
In Home Bound Espiritu describes the gender restrictions Filipinos faced in immigrating to the U.S. in the early 1900s. Women were restricted in order "to ensure greater profitability from immigrants' labor and to decrease the costs of reproduction—the expenses of housing, feeding, clothing, and educating the workers' dependents" (63). These rules would allow migrant/plantation workers to stay for an extended period of time, but restricting Filipinas was a deterrent for permanent settlement in the United States. The need for family and home eventually led some Filipinos to marry outside their ethnicity, adding to identity issues for their progeny. Another aspect of this migration is that some wives assumed control of the home when their husbands migrated to America. Although Espiritu discusses this subject in Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws, and Love, it is not appraised in Home Bound.
Because the home is held as the female domain, Espiritu tries to emphasize this point by offering personal accounts of Filipino American women who gave up their paid employment for their husbands and decided only to deal with housework and childcare. This is misleading because it implies that Filipino culture, like other Asian cultures, considers women subordinate to...
Hawai’i’s multiculturalism and perceived harmonious race and ethnic relations are widely celebrated in popular and academic discourse. The image of Hawai’i as a “racial paradise,” a rainbow of peacefully coexisting groups, partially stems from the fact that among the various racial and ethnic groups there is no numerical majority and from the common belief in equality of opportunity and status. Hawai’i ethnic humor is part and parcel of the maintenance and continued reinforcement of the notion of Hawai’i as “racial paradise” with underlying racializing and stigmatizing discourses that disguise severe social inequalities and elide differential access to wealth and power. In this paper, I examine the intersection of language, humor, and representation by analyzing the linguistic practices in the comedy performances of Frank DeLima, a pioneer in Hawai’i ethnic humor, and excerpts from
Buckaloose: Shmall Keed Time
(Small Kid Time), a comedy CD by Da Braddahs, a relatively new but tremendously popular comedy duo in Hawai’i. Central to these comedy performances is the use of a language variety that I call Mock Filipino, a strategy often employed by Local comedians to differentiate the speakers of Philippine languages from speakers of Hawai’i Creole English (or Pidgin). A key component to understanding the use of Mock Filipino is the idea of “Local” as a cultural and linguistic identity category and its concomitant multiculturalist discourse. I argue that the Local comedians’ use of Mock Filipino relies on the myth of multiculturalism while constructing racializing discourses which position immigrant Filipinos as a cultural and linguistic Other, signifying their outsider status and their subordinate position in the social hierarchy and order. The linguistic practices in the comedy performances are thus identity acts that help to produce and disseminate ideas about language, culture, and identity while normalizing Local and reinforcing Hawai’i’s mainstream multiculturalist ideology.
The Peoples of Hawaii: A Statistical Study, Honolulu: Institute of Pacific Relations BALCE, N. S. 2006 'Filipino bodies, lynching, and the language of empire
- R C Adams
- T M Livesay
- Van Winkle
ADAMS, R. C., LIVESAY, T. M. and VAN WINKLE, E. H. 1925 The Peoples of Hawaii: A Statistical Study, Honolulu: Institute of Pacific Relations BALCE, N. S. 2006 'Filipino bodies, lynching, and the language of empire', in A. T.
Master's thesis Honolulu: Bess Press *** 1993 DeLima's Jurassic Classics, audiocassetteKilling us softly with these words', Fil-Am Courier
- Honolulu
- Hi Delima
- F Evangelista
- B Filipino Youth Is Hanged For Girl 's Murder 'filipinos Pay Death Penalty ; Brave
- To
- Last
*** 1974 [1936] 'The Filipinos in Hawaii: A Study of Their Social and Economic Conditions', Master's thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai'i, Honolulu, HI DELIMA, F. 1991 Frank DeLima's Joke Book, Honolulu: Bess Press *** 1993 DeLima's Jurassic Classics, audiocassette, Pocholinga Productions *** 1995 Babooze, sound disc, Pocholinga Productions ESPIRITU, Y. L. 2003 Homebound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press EVANGELISTA, B. 1994 'Killing us softly with these words', Fil-Am Courier, March, p. 6 'EXPIATES MURDER ON THE GALLOWS' 1914 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 8 April 'FILIPINO YOUTH IS HANGED FOR GIRL'S MURDER' 1932 Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 28 July, p. 1 'FILIPINOS EXPIATE MURDERS' 1913 Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 8 July, p. 8 'FILIPINOS PAY DEATH PENALTY; BRAVE TO LAST' 1915 Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 5
247Á80 From running amok to eating dogs 513 Downloaded by [Nipissing UniversityRace relations in Hawai'i during World War II: the noninternment of Japanese AmericansAsian American studies in the age of transnationalism
- J Y Okamura
- S Babcock
- M Temperament And Race
- Ma Boston
- R G Badger Reinecke
- J E Reyes Guilty Of Murder
- Is
- Verdict
Monrayo, Tomorrow's Memories: A Diary, 1924Á1928, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, pp. 247Á80 From running amok to eating dogs 513 Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 07:14 10 October 2014 OKAMURA, J. Y. 2000 'Race relations in Hawai'i during World War II: the noninternment of Japanese Americans', Amerasia Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 117Á41 *** 2003 'Asian American studies in the age of transnationalism', Amerasia Journal, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 171Á93 *** 2008 Ethnicity and Inequality in Hawai'i, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press PORTEUS, S. and BABCOCK, M. 1926 Temperament and Race, Boston, MA: R. G. Badger REINECKE, J. E. 1996 The Filipino Piecemeal Sugar Strike of 1924Á1925, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press REYES, B. J. 2005 'Patriotism', Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 23 November 'REYES GUILTY OF MURDER, IS JURY VERDICT', 1927 Honolulu Advertiser, 29
Stereotyping among national-racial groups in Hawaii: a study in ethnocentrism
- B Seto
- A
- J C Spores
- Woman Kde Records 'vicente Kacal
- Slayer
- W E Pays Penalty Vinacke
- Farrar
- Straus
- Jonathan Giroux
March, p. 1 SETO, B. 1993 'Professors call amok a killing frenzy', Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 2 April, p. A3 SPORES, J. C. 1988 Running Amok: An Historical Inquiry, Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, Center for Southeast Asian Studies 'A TOAST TO SUCCESS AND SACRIFICE' 2005 Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 20 November TULBA, A. 2002 Locally Disturbed, sound disc, KDE Records 'VICENTE KACAL, WOMAN SLAYER, PAYS PENALTY' 1929 Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 2 March, p. 1 VINACKE, W. E. 1949 'Stereotyping among national-racial groups in Hawaii: a study in ethnocentrism', Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 30, pp. 265Á91 VORSINO, M. 2005 'Citizenship', Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 21 November YAMANAKA, L. 1993 Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre, Honolulu: Bamboo Ridge Press *** 1997 Blu's Hanging, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux JONATHAN Y. OKAMURA is Associate Professor in the Depart-ment of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. ADDRESS: Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822, USA. Email: okamuraj@hawaii.edu 514 Jonathan Y. Okamura Downloaded by [Nipissing University] at 07:14 10 October 2014
The Filipinos in Hawaii: A Study of Their Social and Economic Conditions
- R R Cariaga