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6
Rise Above: Filipina/o American Studies
and Punk Rock Pedagogy
Noah Romero
It is to no degree of uncertainty that the prevalence of educational models
based on what Paulo Freire (1970) de ned as banking methods (centered on
the experiences of white males, derived from the points of view of dominant
culture, and disinterested in the engagement of students) leads to educational
underachievement, disillusionment, attrition, and self-loathing within per-
sons of color communities (Halagao et al. 2009; Tejeda, Espnoza, & Gutierrez
2003). Despite its centrality to the development of racial self-identity in per-
sons of color communities and the understanding of immigrant, underrepre-
sented, and historically oppressed populations, the implementation of Ethnic
Studies curricula that address the de ciencies of predominant pedagogical
practices faces vehement resistance in the United States, as evidenced by the
banning of Ethnic Studies in Arizona (Galvan 2015). In light of the demon-
strated importance of Ethnic Studies, I propose a pedagogy that highlights
the history of person of color participation in the counterculture of punk rock
and broadcasts a refusal to retreat from the threats of systemic racism, white
supremacy, and capitalist-reproductive educational models. By studying the
lives and works of artists who dared to challenge the operating hegemony of
capitalism and white supremacy, punk rock pedagogy (PRP) allows educators
to channel the sound and fury of punk in order to encourage students to re-
claim their radical agency.
In the larger discourse of Ethnic Studies, PRP is not only a useful curricular
tool in exploring the different ways person of color artists have expressed
themselves, it is a space within which students can develop the capacity for
creative and divergent thought that will be needed to enact radical change
in the face of perpetual oppression. Though PRP can be used to teach a vast
array of immigrant and minority experiences, this essay addresses the applica-
tion of PRP to Filipina/o American Studies, in response to the need for
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118 “White” Washing American Education
diverse curricula that speci cally serve the Filipina/o American community.
When applied to Filipina/o American Studies, PRP combines the study of
Filipina/o American history with the study of punk rock and its use by
Filipina/o American artists in pursuit of transformation, self-expression, and
dissent.
THE MODEL MINORITY MYTH
The proliferation of the model minority myth, in particular, has made it so
that institutions of higher education and their administrations oftentimes
operate under the assumption that all students of Asian parentage are part of
a uniformly high-achieving pan-Asian monolith (Suzuki 2002). When data
regarding the performance of Asian students is disaggregated to account for
students’ ethnicities, cultures, and socioeconomic realities, however, the true
nature of the educational risk factors many Asian American students face
stands in stark contrast to the stereotypes espoused by entrenched model mi-
nority narratives (Museus and Truong 2009). When this disaggregation of
data occurs, the notion that all Asian students are equipped for educational
success and do not require community-responsive support services and cur-
ricula simply by virtue of their Asianness is debunked, as students of Viet-
namese, Hmong, Cambodian, and Philippine origin, in particular, achieve at
considerably lower levels than af uent Chinese, Japanese, and Korean stu-
dents (Kwon and Au 2010).
The pressure to live up to the model minority stereotype, the reinforcement
of the myth by the lack of resources available to underserved students or even
an acceptable narrative that Asian people can be disadvantaged, and the wide-
spread idea (held by educators, administrators, and students alike) of educa-
tional struggle as atypical and even unacceptable in Asian communities can
often engender deep feelings of guilt, shame, and inadequacy. Such deeply
held thoughts and emotions ultimately discourage students from seeking as-
sistance from professors and student affairs of cers, thus perpetuating the cycle
of educational risk (Museus and Truong 2009). The challenges Filipina/o
American students face, which combine educational risk factors with a lack of
institutional and pedagogical resources to recognize or address these issues,
makes the development of curricula and knowledge bases speci cally designed
for Filipina/o American students all the more necessary.
FILIPINA/O AMERICAN STUDIES
I n o r d e r t o a d d r e s s t h e l a c k o f p r o g r a m s t a i l o r e d t o t h e e d u c a t i o n a l n e e d s
of historically oppressed populations and communities of color, educators, stu-
dents, and families have spearheaded movements for the institutionalization
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Rise Above 119
of Ethnic Studies. The objective of Ethnic Studies is to “create an academic
curriculum and structure that would serve communities through relevant re-
search and political mobilization” (Lai 2010, 187) Within the context of Eth-
nic Studies, the speci c educational needs of Filipina/o American students are
unique because, while they are racialized as Asians, Filipina/o students are still
subject to the model minority and per dious foreigner stereotypes, but also
contend with deeply held cultural values and mindsets prescribed by centuries
of colonial rule in the Philippines. The historical relationship between the
Philippines and the United States sets the context for the socioeconomic,
linguistic, and cultural challenges that are inextricable from the immigrant
experience to create a uniquely Filipina/o American brand of disenchantment
(Buenavista, Jayakumar, & Misa-Escalante 2009; Tejeda, Espnoza, & Gutie
2003). Since the Filipina/o American community comprises the “second larg-
est Asian American group (2.3 million) and the third largest ethnic group in
the United States,” college-level instructors and administrators must address
the unique educational needs of Filipina/o American students and to create
pedagogies and curricula that serve to decolonize their minds and prove rele-
vant to their experiences (Halagao et al. 2009, 1).
O r g a n i z a t i o n s t h a t c a r r y o u t t h i s m i s s i o n a n d p r o m o t e F i l i p i n a / o A m e r i c a n
Studies curriculum, such as Pin@y Education Partnerships (PEP) in the San
Francisco Bay Area, are crucial to the continued success of Filipina/o Ameri-
can communities. PEP’s mission of training educators to execute lesson plans
based on an understanding of transnational Filipina/o culture and history
affords its students the opportunity to access a decolonizing pedagogy that
would be otherwise unavailable in a traditional K–12 classroom (Tintiangco-
Cubales, Daus-Magbual, & Daus-Magbual 2010). PEP has also developed
an innovative teaching pipeline, training educators to integrate a nuanced
understanding of Filipina/o American issues and history into their lesson
plans and classrooms.
Without PEP, and other educational projects such as iJeepney and Pinoy
Teach, there would be even fewer opportunities for students to explore their
ethnic identities and unpack centuries of prescribed colonial preconceptions.
Halagao et al.’s (2009) study on the features of the emerging Filipina/o Ameri-
can pedagogy identi ed the challenge to super cial multiculturalism, commu-
nity engagement, and storytelling and performance as key components to the
content matter of a Filipina/o American Studies curriculum. Halagao et al.
(2009) then identi ed the goals of this pedagogy as the fostering of the positive
transformation of students’ racial identities commensurate with Alvarez’s
(2002) conception of “integrative awareness,” the continued training and re-
cruitment of Filipina/o American teachers and scholars, and the eventual nor-
malization and institutionalization of Filipina/o American Studies in both
K–12 and higher education.
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120 “White” Washing American Education
PUNK ROCK PEDAGOGY
By drawing upon the work of the decolonizing pedagogy described by
Tejeda et al. (2003, the Filipina/o American Studies curricula both devised
and researched by Tintiangco-Cubales et al. (2010) and Halagao et al. (2009),
and Freire’s (1970) concepts of problem-posing education and the capacity of
critical pedagogy to liberate the oppressed, I have developed a pedagogical
framework that seeks to build upon the work of Filipina/o American Studies
scholars by integrating a contextual, conceptual, and historical analysis of
punk rock and the artistic communication of anti-imperialist messaging.
When understood as a revolutionary reaction to oppressive discourses, men-
talities, and circumstances, the study of punk rock is crucial in the context of
a Filipina/o American Studies curriculum:
Punk rock emerged as a reaction to what was perceived as a system that
simply manufactured and mass produced a shallow and insubstantial
product that simply reproduced and perpetuated dominant discourse
without casting a critical eye upon it. A punk rock pedagogy grounded in
the DIY ethos has the potential to emerge in resistance to pre-packaged
syllabi and course curriculums that instructors are required to simply fol-
low by rote. (Utley 2012, 5–6)
A PRP curriculum will draw from Utley’s (2012) concept of a punk rock
pedagogy to examine the intersections of punk rock and Filipina/o American
Studies by analyzing the work of Filipina/o and Filipina/o American punk
rock musicians and how their art countered the dominant narratives of the
Filipina/o American existence while challenging the institutionalized white
supremacy present and pervasive in both the United States and the Philip-
pines. The objective of a college-level course in Filipina/o American Studies
that utilizes PRP is ultimately to examine the countercultural counternarra-
tive and to build upon this understanding to deconstruct the hegemonic co-
loniality of the discourses that shape the very fabric of Filipina/o American
identity.
S u c h b e l i e f s , a n d t h e d i s c o u r s e s t h a t c o n s o l i d a t e t h e m , i n c l u d e t h e n o t i o n
of Catholicism as inextricable from being Filipina/o, the physical and social
desirability of fair skin and white features, the insigni cance of precolonial
cultures and belief systems in the narrative of the development of a pan-
Filipina/o cultural identity, the superiority of Western culture and values to
their Filipino counterparts, and the inherent normativity and goodness of
heterosexuality and adherence to Christian conceptions of gender and gender
roles. To this, colonial discourses continue to manifest themselves in neolib-
eral development efforts that have robbed Filipina/o and Filipina/o American
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Rise Above 121
people of their economic freedom and agency (Kang 2002). The coloniality of
power, and its centuries-long presence in the Filipina/o psyche, perpetuates
the oppression of Filipina/o minds and bodies, even now that the colonizers
have physically moved on from the Philippines. The inextricability of colo-
nial mentality to the Filipina/o experience has made it so that even the ances-
tors of colonial subjects paradoxically cling to colonial-era belief systems for
dear life.
An understanding of the coloniality of the beliefs understood to be cate-
gorical truths that comprise the foundation of Filipina/o identity is crucial to
the decolonization process. The study of punk rock in a Filipina/o American
Studies context is made even more vital by the genre’s history as a medium
for reporting and broadcasting Filipina/o and Filipina/o American counter-
narratives, which allowed for artists to express discontent with mainstream
understandings of Filipina/o culture, history, and identity. The aim of PRP is
thus to foster an understanding of how art can employ counterhegemonic
messaging in a manner that affects the zeitgeist and produces shifts in the
discourse that result in positive social change. PRP will live in the traditions
of Ethnic, Asian American, and Filipina/o American Studies while position-
ing the study of punk rock as a teaching tool for social justice and decoloniza-
tion, as well as an avenue for educators to foster integrative awareness
orientations and empower students to break free from the binds of colonial
mentality and internalized oppression.
FIGHT WAR, NOT WARS: THE THREE PILLARS
OF PUNK ROCK PEDAGOGY
Since its nascent stages in the late 1970s, person of color artists have found
their voices in the punk scene. Though the genre is popularly associated with
heterosexual, cisgender, middle-class white men, radical feminists, queer ac-
tivists, and Black and Brown musicians from all over the world have made
indelible contributions to the development of punk rock’s discourse, aes-
thetic, and history. In doing so, they were able to reclaim their agency, advo-
cate for their communities, and establish punk rock as a site of postcolonial
protestation. When developing the pillars of PRP for use in Filipina/o Ameri-
can Studies, I found it pertinent to draw upon the historical in uence of punk
musicians from marginalized groups and to speci cally examine Latina/o
American and Chicana/o contributions to the subculture, as the legacy of
Spanish colonization and the internalization of colonial mentalities among
members of these communities bears a striking similarity to the Filipina/o
American experience.
H a b e l l - P a l l a n ( 2 0 0 5 ) a d d r e s s e s t h e s i g n i cance of Chicana involvement in
the early days of punk and how these early pioneers inspired women of color
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122 “White” Washing American Education
and white female artists (such as Exene Cervenka of the seminal seventies-era
punk band X) alike to explore their gender and ethnic identities through punk
rock music. Chronicling the art and activism of Alice Armendariz Velasquez
(more popularly known as Alice Bag) and Tessa Covarrubias of East LA’s The
Brat, Habell-Pallan (2005) describes how Chicanas found in punk an outlet
for expressing and exploring their complex intersectional identities in a more
ful lling manner than what they experienced in feminist circles dominated by
white women and Chicano movements dominated by men. For many Chicana
and Latina Americans, punk provided an escape from upbringings fraught
with similar traumas experienced by Filipina/o American youth: domestic vio-
lence, entrenched colonial mentalities, and the absence of mother tongue
instruction in the early stages of schooling (Bag 2011. Habell-Pallan (2005)
notes that “for these Chicanas from East L.A., punk subculture was not the
end of their identity formation, but it was a path to a new way of being in
the world and a way to expose the world to their reality” (232). After Armen-
dariz Velasquez and Covarrubias laid the groundwork for Chicana/o and
Latina/o involvement in punk, the advent of hardcore, a louder, more abrasive
and both musically and politically extreme version of punk rock, provided
even more spaces for Chicana/o and Latina/o artists to re ect upon and trans-
form their realities. The limited but in uential oeuvre of one such hardcore
band, Los Crudos, is integral to the understanding of Latina/o American
punk, as their songs addressed injustices and human rights violations that were
nonetheless inextricable to their lived experiences: forced disappearance
(“Asesinos”), systemic racism (“We’re That Spic Band”), and the economic
exploitation of the global south by industrialized nations (“La Caida de
Latinoamerica”).
In an interview with Maximumrocknroll , lead singer Martin Sorrendeguy
describes his experiences as a Latino American punk musician and the stark
realities he encountered as a person of color in America:
It has a lot to do with who you are, a lack of sense of identity or pride,
and it has to do with racism, inner racism in our own community, the
murders from gang violence, it talks about a lot of stuff in one, and it’s
basically saying Crudo soy ... crudo means raw but we also use it for
hangover and we’re hungover on the bullshit is basically what we’re
saying. (Guskin & Esneider 1993, 243)
In summarizing how Los Crudos came to be, Sorrendeguy touches on many of
the same issues that face Filipina/o Americans: internalized racism, colonial
mentality, violence, and the absence of pride in one’s ethnic identity. In punk
rock, Los Crudos found a way to explore, name, and address these issues and
in doing so, like Alice Bag and Teresa Covarrubias before them, inspired
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Chicana/o and Latina/o youth to express their collective and individual iden-
tities through punk rock. Their participation in punk provided them with a
restorative experience that was wholly unavailable to them in the education
system and in traditional institutions like the church and mainstream media
(Duncombe & Tremblay 2011).
Armendariz Velasquez, Covarrubias, and Sorrendeguy all appear in the
documentary Beyond the Screams: A US Latino Hardcore Punk Documentary
(1999), which chronicles the history of Latina/o and Chicana/o involvement
in punk rock. Directed and produced by Sorrendeguy himself, Beyond the
Screams is a valuable primer on the shared experiences of racism, othering,
and social disillusionment that draw Chicana/o and Latina/o youth to the
subculture, all of which are also dominant discourses that inform Filipina/o
American lives. Given the parallels between the Chicana/o and Latina/o and
Filipina/o American experiences, Beyond the Screams introduces its audience
to individuals who serve as living proof of punk’s ability to encourage re ec-
tion on social injustice, action based on that re ection, and the development
of an integrative awareness orientation toward racial self-esteem.
Despite the marked social, racial, and cultural differences between Latina/o
American and Filipina/o American identities, the literature detailing the
experiences of Latina/o and Chicana/o punk rockers reveals that even seem-
ingly divergent groups share parallel experiences as People of Color in the
United States. Artists like Los Crudos, Alice Bag, and the Brat were drawn to
punk by shared experiences of institutional racism and marginalization and,
in doing so, found a way to reclaim their voices and make themselves heard.
This literature on the liberatory potential of punk in marginalized communi-
ties, in addition to the narratives of the musicians and their art itself, serves
as the framework for the implementation of PRP in Filipina/o American
Studies and the importance of PRP in the broader conversation around
Ethnic Studies curricula.
THE FIRST PILLAR: A GROUNDING IN FILIPINA/O
AMERICAN HISTORY
T h e rst pillar of PRP in a Filipina/o American Studies context will be the
analysis of Philippine and Filipina/o American history to establish the histori-
cal and contextual frameworks within which Filipina/o Americans exist. A
comprehensive review and understanding of this historical context will allow
students to be cognizant of the societal pressures and prescribed mentalities
that quietly shape their identities without taking their needs or interests into
account. This historical review will then allow students to investigate the in-
stitutional marginalization that Filipina/o Americans experience as a result of
the perpetuation of the model minority myth, and how their unique cultural
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124 “White” Washing American Education
heritage is marginalized by the widely accepted notion that their experiences
are the same as those of all other Asians, and the internalized oppression and
cultural rudderlessness felt by members of the 1.5 generation—those who feel
no strong connection to either the culture of their Filipina/o parents or that of
the United States. This portion of the curriculum will likely elicit strong reac-
tions from certain students and the instinctive defensiveness students may feel
when they are tasked with calling their privilege, positionality, and deeply
held beliefs into question is to be expected. The remaining pillars of PRP are
designed to guide students through the statuses of racial identity described by
Alvarez (2002) with the intent of ultimately fostering integrative awareness,
or “a sense of racial self-esteem rooted in a self-af rming de nition of oneself
as Asian American” (p. 35).
THE SECOND PILLAR: PUNK AS HISTORICAL
AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The second pillar of PRP is the study of the social justice–oriented themes
of punk music as well as the historical and sociopolitical contexts out of
which the music was borne. This pillar is central to the curriculum because it
is what differentiates it from Filipina/o American pedagogies that oftentimes
examine the intersectionality of Filipina/o American Studies and hip-hop,
but not that of other forms of art and music. Because many students identify
with and participate in hip-hop culture, there is a wealth of research on the
ways educators use hip-hop music to allow students to interact with the mate-
rial and to create and communicate their own social messages (deLeon 2004;
Halagao et al. 2010). Though this research is of vital importance in terms of
connecting lesson plans to the interests of students, a curriculum that solely
addresses hip-hop’s connection to Filipina/o American Studies is limiting in
its capacity to address the issue that students of color who do not identify
with hip-hop culture could feel as though they have no salient connections
to dominant culture and, as such, are at a particular disadvantage when at-
tempting to express their ideas and foster their development of an integrative
awareness conception of racial identity.
The purpose, then, of PRP is to serve as a complement to established
Filipina/o American Studies curricula by creating opportunities for students
to connect the study and practice of music to a critical examination of history
and the demand for universal human rights. The desired result is that stu-
dents who identify with punk culture are able to make meaningful connec-
tions between their musical interests and the decolonizing process and to
examine the unique contributions Filipina/o and Filipina/o American people
have made to a subculture thought to be dominated by white men. Students
who may not particularly relate to punk are still able to bene t from this
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Rise Above 125
curriculum, as they attain a greater appreciation for and understanding of
punk rock as a tool for decolonization and self-expression as well as a knowl-
edge base rooted in the history and practice of activism through art.
The curriculum will rst provide a brief overview of the history of punk
rock, such as the rise of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols and the Reagan/
Thatcher–era political unrest out of which they rose to prominence. Subse-
quent lesson plans will then look at artists who espoused more overt sociopo-
litical messaging in an exploration of how women, the LGBTQ community,
and People of Color used punk to challenge prescribed societal norms and to
broadcast the injustices and human rights violations committed against them.
Artists examined in this portion may include Crass, an anarcho-feminist
band whose lyrics dealt, in explicit fashion, with discrimination and violence
against women; the Dicks, whose lyrics drew from the homophobia and po-
lice brutality they experienced as openly gay musicians living in Texas; and
National Wake, a multiracial band formed in apartheid-era South Africa
whose very existence was illegal in the regime under which they lived.
Using this understanding of the historical, aesthetic, and philosophical
touchstones of the genre (such as simple musical arrangements and lyrics
containing clear sociopolitical and revolutionary counternarratives) the cur-
riculum will then pay close attention to the rise of Filipino punk, particularly
during the Marcos dictatorship and the corrupt regimes that governed the
Philippines in the years after its fall. Bands such as Urban Bandits, WUDS,
Third World Chaos, and GI and the Idiots used punk as a form of protest and
reporting while living under an oppressive military dictatorship; the course,
in turn, will examine how these artists and their activism helped to inform
and foment the revolutionary fervor that led to the overthrow of the Marcos
regime.
The course will then examine how many of these same bands continued
their activism through art during the reign of Corazon Aquino, who, to them,
did not represent any sort of improvement over Marcos. This is made clear
on songs such as “Massacre at Mendiola” by the all-female quartet Abrasive
Relations, which recounts the government-sanctioned murder of farm work-
ers enacting a peaceful protest on Manila’s Mendiola bridge. Atrocities such
as the Mendiola Massacre are often glossed over or omitted in the heavily
colonized and U.S.-in uenced Philippine education system, making it so that
many Filipina/os themselves are unaware of their collective history. This lack
of a critical understanding of history ensures that the cycle of colonial men-
tality and internalized oppression continues unabated, and the function of
punk rock in Philippine society was oftentimes to report on the daily realities
of everyday people and to challenge the injustices perpetrated against them
by corrupt politicians, crooked police, and the destructive legacy of white
supremacy in the Philippines.
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126 “White” Washing American Education
The curriculum will then examine the participation of Filipina/o Ameri-
cans in punk rock, heavy metal, and indie rock whose works carry on the
tradition of the Marcos- and Aquino-era punks by employing music as a
counternarrative and as a form of developing consciousness. The course may
then pay particular attention to the use of punk rock to protest the corruption
and human rights violations carried out by the administrations of former
Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and former U.S. president
George W. Bush. Artists that may be featured include the Filipino American
thrash metal band Death Angel, whose work often expressed the same no-
tions of disillusionment experienced by Filipina/o Americans of the 1.5 gen-
eration, the Filipino hardcore punk band Eskapo, whose songs such as “Bataan
Death March” touch upon the history of colonial brutality not taught in the
Philippine education system, and the musical output of celebrated Filipina
American author Jessica Hagedorn, whose artistic oeuvre draws upon themes
of identity, sexuality, displacement, and the Philippine diaspora, all of which
are very much taboo in a culture dominated by Catholic doctrine and dogma.
THE THIRD PILLAR: COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
The third pillar of PRP is community engagement, in keeping with the
tradition of Ethnic and Asian American Studies and the DIY and community-
oriented ethos of punk rock culture itself. If resources allow, a community ser-
vice project with a local Filipina/o American organization and a re ection on
that experience based on the readings and lessons taught in the course will
comprise a sizable percentage of students’ grades. Since the course will have a
special emphasis on punk rock, students can elect to ful ll the community
service portion of their grade by volunteering for a local punk rock record label
or music venue and bene t from immersion in the roles that musicians
and organizations play in community engagement. Aklasan Records, a San
Francisco–based record label and punk rock distribution company run by
Rupert Estanislao of the bands Eskapo, Bankrupt District, and Anino Ko, is an
example of an organization that could bene t from the presence of engaged
volunteers while gifting students with valuable rsthand experience of the
Filipina/o American punk scene, its history, and its current and future goals.
Aklasan recently organized an all-Filipino punk rock festival called Akla-
san Fest and is currently producing a documentary on the current state of
Filipina/o American punk rock. Estanislao, through his work and advocacy
with both Aklasan Records and organizations such as Bayan USA and the
San Francisco Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines is hugely
responsible for the sustained and continued growth of the Pinoi! Punk move-
ment, as well as for much of the success of community-oriented Filipina/o
American punk bands such as Namatay sa Ingay, Digma, and Moxiebeat.
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Working with and learning from Estanislao and other activists involved
in community organizing through punk rock will provide students with an
immersive experience that will allow them to contextualize and understand
the decolonizing process and the pivotal parts that art, counterculture, and
social movements play in it. This type of project, as empowering as it may be,
should still require approval and overseeing from the instructor, so as to
ensure that the organization the student chooses will be appropriate for the
course (e.g., one that does not espouse racist, white-supremacist, or neo-Nazi
beliefs) and has a demonstrated commitment to the Filipina/o American
community.
Students might also decide to put what they learn about punk rock and
community organizing into direct action by organizing their own concert to
bene t a local Filipina/o organization at semester’s end. Given the nature of
the course, this bene t would likely have a punk rock, indie, and heavy metal
focus but can, and should, include a variety of artists from different genres
and disciplines. With guidance from the instructor, the students will be re-
sponsible for planning the bene t, coordinating logistics, conducting com-
munity outreach, booking artists, running the event, naming an organization
as a bene ciary of funds collected, and, nally, writing a paper connecting
their experiences with organizing the concert to the lessons learned in class.
Even with these community engagement project recommendations in mind,
however, the curriculum should embody the collective and communal nature
of problem-posing education and invite students to self-initiate and propose
their own ideas for community engagement projects, especially in areas with
limited access to punk rock scenes and Filipina/o American communities.
In these cases, students and teachers ought to take advantage of digital and
social media to develop relationships with groups and individuals engaged in
both punk rock and grassroots work to foster a translocal sense of community.
This type of project may involve reaching out to punk musicians and activists
in the Philippines, collecting and transcribing their oral history narratives,
and relating these narratives to the themes of the coursework in a nal paper
or project.
WE ARE THE ONE: THE FUTURE OF PUNK ROCK
PEDAGOGY IN ETHNIC STUDIES
M u s i c i s n o t p e r i p h e r a l t o r e v o l u t i o n ; r a t h e r , i t i s a p r i m a r y m e d i u m t h r o u g h
which discourses of dissent are transmitted (Vaugeois 2007). It is in the tradi-
tion of music as protest that punk rock, with its combination of simplicity,
aggression, and melody, continues to be a highly effective conduit for the
transmission of revolutionary and transformative messaging (Uehlein 2001).
Punk’s potential impact as a teaching tool should not be underestimated nor
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128 “White” Washing American Education
should its history and the historical contexts out of which it arose be glossed
over when examining the intersections of education, art, and revolution.
When integrated with established Filipina/o American Studies curricula, PRP
provides students and teachers with the pedagogical tools needed to channel
the visceral fury of punk rock to enrich the decolonizing content of Filipina/o
American Studies. In doing so, PRP affords students the opportunity to study
how alternative forms of expression can be and have been used to more deeply
contextualize the Filipina/o American experience.
T h e l a c k o f e q u i t a b l e e d u c a t i o n a l p r o g r a m s a n d o p p o r t u n i t i e s c o n t i n u e s t o
be a pervasive problem in the American education system. Education, at both
K–12 and collegiate levels, continues to favor banking methods that encour-
age students to be mere vessels for the retention and regurgitation of informa-
tion while teachers are meant to act as omnipotent narrators delivering rote
communiques. The sustained work of organizations such as Pin@y Educa-
tional Partnerships is crucial not only to the proliferation and normalization
of Filipina/o American Studies, it is crucial that such programs are made to
thrive so that Filipina/o Americans, who constitute the third-largest ethnic
group in the United States but are still a historically oppressed and education-
ally at-risk population, are afforded curricula developed from their own histo-
ries and points of view. A potential role of PRP within the framework of
Filipina/o American Studies, then, is to further normalize the discipline by
introducing and expanding the eld of special topics within Filipina/o Ameri-
can Studies. As a special topics section, a course using the pedagogy of punk
would no longer be a survey of Asian American or Filipina/o American Stud-
ies, as its marked focus on punk rock and subculture movements and their
connections to Filipina/o American history and activism would constitute an
advanced-level course that would require a foundational understanding of
Filipina/o American, Ethnic, or Asian American Studies. The institutionali-
zation of this course, and courses like it, at baccalaureate and postbaccalaure-
ate levels would then serve to solidify a comprehensive Filipina/o American
Studies program and its status as a discipline in which a student could pursue
a major, minor, or advanced degree.
The revolutionary and egalitarian nature of punk has made it so that scores
of in uential thinkers, community advocates, and human rights activists
have made it their medium of choice and, within the context of Filipina/o
American Studies, PRP aims to examine punk and how its history and aes-
thetic intersects with the issues speci cally faced by the Filipina/o American
community. In examining the work of punk musicians in the Marcos dicta-
torship and the Aquino reign that followed, PRP will then explore how Fili-
pinos have used punk to liberate their bodies and minds during times of overt
(and covert) repression. By studying contemporary artists and in conducting
community engagement projects, students and instructors using PRP will also
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Rise Above 129
be able to both examine and experience how Filipina/o Americans have used
punk to address, transcend, and transform the issues and risk factors most
pertinent to them, such as those that arise from immigration, socioeconomic
marginalization, and colonial mentality.
Beyond Filipina/o American Studies, PRP may be readily applied in teach-
ing all manner of decolonizing curricula in the greater contexts of Ethnic
Studies and Human Rights Education. An educator can use the work of the
Dicks and the Big Boys as a teaching tool for Queer Studies or a Women’s
Studies professor can integrate the music of Crass and Bikini Kill to contex-
tualize radical feminist theory. Due to its use by historically oppressed com-
munities, the working class, and activists to give voice to their hopes, dreams,
experiences, and frustrations, the study of punk rock should not and must not
be overlooked as a tool in the quest for a decolonizing pedagogy in the broader
context of Ethnic Studies. Though the pillars of PRP detailed above are tai-
lored to the Filipina/o American experience, PRP can be readily applied to
teaching about other ethnic groups and the realities of immigrant and minor-
ity groups in general.
The work of Habbell-Pallan (2005), Bag (2011), and Los Crudos provides
students and educators alike an opportunity to develop a more nuanced and
comprehensive understanding of the Latina/o and Chicana/o experience and
that community’s use of music as resistance. The music of Bad Brains, Pure
Hell, and even the rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) can be
used to explore the intersection of punk rock and Black liberation. A study of
the newly emergent Taqwacore scene, which is comprised of Muslim and
Arab American punk bands that draw heavily upon humor and irreverence
to explore ethnic and religious identities, provides a glimpse into the com-
plex dialectics of Arab and Muslim realities that are nowhere to be found in
mainstream media. Though the Filipina/o American experience is marred by
the pervasive, persistent, and pernicious presence of internalized oppression,
colonial mentality, educational risk factors, and the soul wound, the systemic
nature of white supremacy in the United States makes it so that the same can
be said about any other ethnic group in the country. When applied to Ethnic
Studies, punk rock pedagogy has the capacity to encourage the growth of a
divergent knowledge base that will allow students and teachers alike to tran-
scend the oppressive factors placed in their paths toward the development of
their own integrative awareness. In other words, to rise above.
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