The Campus Misfits: Asians in Racist Society

The Campus Misfits

Asians in Racist Society

CURT JAIRUS PEREZ AND SHIARA HOSMILLO

IN EVERY HIGH school movie, there are always the popular cool kids and bullies, who are known to rule over the campus, as well as the outsiders and misfits who “do not” fit in because they are likely different from other students. Similarly, this sounds familiar when you look at your environment and see how people interact with a distinct race or a darker skin color than theirs. In short, this kind of juvenile plot and setting can surprisingly resemble a wider scope of the subject, which is racism.

2020 was the year when the whole Asian-hate dilemma sparked primarily within the pandemic, whereas Asians were tortured and scapegoated as the main roots of the notorious COVID-19. Some people even have called it the “China virus”, “Wuhan virus”, “Chinese virus”, and “Kung Flu” as the former United States President Donald Trump had always uttered in his press conferences and state addresses, according to The Hill. The said article was agreed upon by the World Health Organization (WHO) by warning people on preventing calling the virus on a specific location or race to avoid stigma.

Yet, it has happened again. Primarily, because racism has always been a part of human society due to the circumstances and actions done in the past. Racism nowadays gets its sustenance from social media and in how leaders address the issue judicially.

Untold by History Books

It may come to your surprise how this entire ball of problem rolls back again from history to this present day. Likewise, the bubonic plague, which dates back to the past 1900s broke out in Honolulu, was blamed on Chinese people living in Chinatown consequently setting 41 of their buildings on fire as cited in a documentary of The Try Guys about Anti-Asian Hate. This is just one out of hundreds of anti-Asian hate acts and discrimination untold and unmentioned on today’s schools’ history books.

Back to the point, Asians were deemed to be dirty, diseased, and demented similarly as to how British and American imaginaries framed both Irish and the Chinese in the nineteenth century based on Open Edition Journals. This also leads to the point of how the Filipino ancestors in the past were denigrated for their uncivilized and unclean bodies in the early 20th century assuming that they are inferior, weak, and dumb just because they are who they are.

Around a hundred years ago during the American colonization of the Philippines, a historical documentary by Bani Logrono reported that approximately 1,200 Filipinos were lured by the Americans to go to their country but in the end, they were held as captives in one of the largest human zoos in history. The reason is linked to how Americans enticed Filipinos due to the need of cheap labor promising them a better life and better wages while being immensely unaware of how they were being portrayed by the American media in the US. They were commonly depicted as an incorrigible boy, a savage beast, a monkey, or a clown, based on ‘The Forbidden Book’ by Prof. Helen Toribio.

In addition, racial discrimination still continues as Filipinos in the early 1900s migrated to Hawaii and to the West Coast of the United States to work on plantations that then became the driving force behind America’s agricultural industry. According to the NextDayBetter, they were severely accused of stealing their jobs and women along with facing mobs and oppression.

The Sick School System

What happened before will surely have an effect in the present. As colonizers colonized our country, they have indirectly seized our perspective when it comes to races and skin colors, introducing colorism and racial stereotypes.

If you look at the Filipinos now, there are some apparent habits and instances where it falls under discrimination or prejudices. For example, complimenting people that they are ‘beautiful’ based on their skin color, mocking one own’s Filipino face features yet praising common Western features, mimicking other foreigner’s accents, dreaming to marry a foreigner because you thought they are wealthy, pulling back the corners of your eyes and say, “kung hei fat choi,” and pointing other foreigners or races as “intsik”, “negra”/”negro”, “kano”, and “bombay”. Apparently, there are several racist habits and comments shared within the Filipino community if they were enlisted.

Still, as written in a Reddit Thread, what is worse is that Filipinos are “leaning more towards harmless ignorance than the harmful intent” to the point that their everyday conversations with racist comments and jokes, just seem to be normal until someone gets hurt.

According to Esquire, it would not be new to say that Filipinos are lowkey racists as racism is ignorant at best and insulting at worst in the Philippines. It also stated that their “lack of racial diversity in the population” has made them blind and “tone-deaf to the unconscious racism of Filipinos” and unable to identify the “lack of cultural sensitivity until someone points it out”.

However, racism does not just linger in one country, but it also spreads on every corner of the world resulting in traumas, oppression, and torture to people that might be done irrationally due to hatred.

Learning and Decolonizing

Racism, as well as stigma, is “the most dangerous enemy” as quoted by Mike Ryan, the executive director of WHO’s Emergencies Program at a news conference with The Hill. Indeed, it might be our dangerous enemy more than the current COVID-19 virus, yet there’s no way to learn about them unless people are educated.

Accordingly, here are some ways enumerated by Forbes to tackle racial discrimination and to gradually free yourself from it: 1) first, make a conversation and keep it going; 2) embed antiracism into your values and actions; 3) spread awareness by speaking out more; 4) lastly, cultivate diversity and tackle unconscious bias.

Asians, who were discriminated against because of their color, features, and clothes might be considered as different or as a ‘misfit’. They are always beaten, kicked, and left behind by the socalled popular kids and bullies. But, no matter how many scars history has left them and how many beatings they have taken, they still stand and resist proudly waving who they are as an Asian.

In terms of racial identity, the difference has brought racism and superiority complex. To prolong humanity and create a utopia, racism and superiority complex should be disregarded and be replaced by acceptance of difference. The racial and superiority complex is old-fashioned and has no room in the modern era. The difference between green apples and red apples is their color hence, they are still apples, same with humans. In short, physical characteristics are not a basis on the value of a human.