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I first heard of the “Browning of America” when it became Time Magazine’s cover story twenty years ago.   That was two census seasons ago.   In my intercultural communications class in college, we used terms like “melting pot” or “salad bowl” to describe this country’s cultural diversity, and to distinguish the difference between cultural assimilation and “separate but equal.”   This was before “multiculturalism” or “political correctness” joined the American vernacular.   

As an immigrant, I’m very chary of labels.  I have assimilated up to a certain point.   I don’t agree that becoming American means erasing one’s ethnic identity.  Unlike the previous generations of Euro-immigrants, I ‘m brown as burnt rice.  I’m lactose-intolerant, non-cheese eater. There’s no mistaking my Asian origins.   Right now, the number of people who look like me are still largely insignificant.  But in the future, about 40+ years, as mentioned in the article, the face of America will look like this:

By 2056, when someone born today will be 66 years old, the “average” U.S. resident, as defined by Census statistics, will trace his or her descent to Africa, Asia, the Hispanic world, the Pacific Islands, Arabia — almost anywhere but white Europe. (More here from Time Magazine).

Changes are said to begin this year.   According to the Associated Press, “minority” babies will outnumber “majority” babies in 2010 (read here).   In simple speak, children-of-color will outnumber white children this year.  What Time Magazine didn’t predict are the socio-cultural and economic changes sweeping the country right now:  the recent collapse of Wall Street, a recession worse than the Great Depression, and the election of America’s first President-of-color.   That’s enough to shake the grounds of Puritan America.  How will the current economic downturn impact the demographic changes in the future?

Truth Is

Good times always find a way of masking true innate feelings.  Economic prosperity turns a country with deep intercultural issues into a superficial festival of nations.  What’s there to be angry about?  We are all eating.  Shopping.   Then one day, the bottom lid falls out.   

The truth always shows its face when things are very, very wrong.    30 million people are unemployed.   People are losing their homes.  Xenophobia is reborn, and hate is its language.  People of similar origins band together.  Media gives way to propagandists.   All of this hate–mostly directed at people who are “different”– finds its way in good ole time American organizing.  And the Tea Party , overwhelmingly white male conservative, marches  through Washington (see picture).

What we are seeing in the U.S.  is the proliferation of blame in American language.   President Obama’s skin color has made his attempt for a united government impossible as his assumed alliances become a rallying cry for conservatives.   He has been called a “socialist” and a “Muslim,” words given negative connotations as America searches for blame.  With 40 million Americans living in poverty, there is every reason to be angry.   There are 5 million baby boomers who are currently unemployed.  The competition for jobs is stiff.   At this level, we sometimes forget our neighbors.  We especially forget our neighbors who don’t look like us.

Eurocentrism

The Nazis rose to power during a major economic crisis in Germany, the darkest time in recorded history.  However, given a mountain of evidence, some German communities are still in denial about concentration camps in their own towns.   Sadly, they all have benefitted from Hitler’s psychosis.   Because of short term memory, Europe once again is switching on its denial mode as it becomes a right-wing, anti-immigrant continent  (story here from NPR).  Never mind its long history of colonization of the brown world.  Never mind the death of millions of Jews.   Never mind that World War 2 was only 60 years ago.  The search for blame and hate rages on, taking on a new form:

Targeting Muslims is a common denominator that now unifies a great proportion of European political elites and media. The reasons are numerous and obvious. Some European countries are at war (which they have chosen) in various Muslim countries; desperate and failed politicians are in need for constant distractions from their own failures and mishaps; associating Islam with terrorism is more than an acceptable intellectual diatribe, a topic of discussion that has occupied more radio and television airtime than any other; also, pushing Muslims around seems to have few political repercussions – unlike the subjugation of targeting of other groups with political or economic clout.  (more here).

Eerily, what is happening in Europe parallels the rising levels of intolerance in the U.S.   Americans should know better.  The European continent does not have the immigration history of this country.   America is built on the backs of immigrants.   Also, Europe will probably not see the level of demographic changes that will sweep the U.S. in the next decades.   Yet, xenophobia is the staple of colonial histories.  America, after all, still traces much of its ancestry to Europe.   We have truly just begun dealing publicly with issues of race and equality.   What does this mean for the future?  Will changes in American demography mean a positive shift in the act of tolerance?  Or is xenophobia so deeply rooted in American culture that people-of-color will simply give it a new spin.

Case in point: Over easter lunch, my mother and I went to a Vietnamese restaurant in Jersey City (very POC, mind you).  A group of teenage Latinos walked in and took the table behind us.   A few were looking for “chicken wings,” and “beef and broccolli” from the menu.   After making very loud, ignorant, and biased comments about the names of food on the menu, they walked out.  

Blacks in America

While I probably won’t be around to witness the reversal of minority/majority in America, I will be here long enough to see it gradually happen.   Already, the election of the first black president has made many people resort to old anti-black sentiments as a way of public expression.   What once was private dinner conversation is now out in the open.  Interestingly enough, in my job interviews, I have been asked about my ethnic background, as if it has any bearing with the job.   As a former Human Rights Commission employee, I know that it is a red flag for discriminatory practices.    I must admit feeling extremely uncomfortable after being asked the “Where are you from?” question, but I went ahead with the interview feigning a smile.   Of course, as expected, I never heard from those people again.   What’s there to do if you’re a person of color looking for job in this economy?  Identity-erasure? Is the strategy of this unemployed black man necessary?

But after graduating from business school last year and not having much success garnering interviews, he decided to retool his résumé, scrubbing it of any details that might tip off his skin color. His membership, for instance, in the African-American business students association? Deleted. (More here from the NYTimes)

I don’t think so.  Should it surprise us that the unemployment rate among blacks is twice as much as whites? 

The Spirit Level

If the trend of intolerance continues in America, are we heading toward a system of Apartheid, where the majority is forcibly led by an oppressive  minority group?  Right now, the U.S.  has more inequality of income than any country in the world.  It also has more people (mostly Black men) in its penal system than any other country in the world.  

A new book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, offers a ray of hope.   First it tell us about us, as mentioned in a review of the book in The Guardian:

America is one of the world’s richest nations, with among the highest figures for income per person, but has the lowest longevity of the developed nations, and a level of violence – murder, in particular – that is off the scale. Of all crimes, those involving violence are most closely related to high levels of inequality – within a country, within states and even within cities. For some, mainly young, men with no economic or educational route to achieving the high status and earnings required for full citizenship, the experience of daily life at the bottom of a steep social hierarchy is enraging. (More here from The Guardian).

Then, it goes on to analyze why the more equal a society, the healthier it is.  And in contrast, the more unequal, the more problems it has.   

Lessons for the Future

This downturn economy is teaching us much about ourselves, our level of tolerance, our history of racism.   It is not only a lesson for the white majority with a long tradition of imperialism and racism, but also for people of color who submit to such racist traditions.   As America diversifies, the face of the oppressor changes as well.   We all have bias in our blood. We all have a long tradition of protecting our own tribes.   But we are also more aware and more educated than our ancestors.   We understand diversity more.  We know what democracy can bring each of us.  

As these babies of 2010 grow up, what can we teach them about America of old and new?   How do we pass on the message that the fundamental richness of this country is its ability to live in harmony despite the differences that could potentially divide?

Related Reading:  In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap, The Rage Is Not About Health Care, Whose Country Is It?, Institutional Racism in Employment and Unemployment, Again, The Spirit Level, Poll: Tea Party overwhelmingly white, male and conservative, In the Face of Racism, Distress Depends on One’s Coping Method.

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So I hope I am not too late for the train. I just saw the movie “Avatar” yesterday. I swear I tried to keep an open-mind. During the Oscars night, there was a flurry of commentaries and posts on Facebook about the Hollywood formula and the continuing saga of “othering” in these narratives. Nonetheless, I pinched myself several times to make sure I didn’t mask with bias my attempt at openness and willingness to watch this movie. Even that didn’t work.

For Starters, Calling Hollywood Savages

Hollywood has a long history of what I would call the “savage genre.” Of this, King Kong is most famous. For decades, natives of other countries (and planets) were angry, grass-skirted, bone-ornamented, barefooted tribes who just had to be whipped into modern consciousness. Goodbye, tree worshippers. Hello, western capitalism.  And then, they were put on public display, in cages. 

Gone are the days of Hollywood’s manifest destiny. What we see in movies now is Hollywood with guilt.   From Pocahontas to Dances With Wolves to Avatar, the “savages” seem to be winning over the colonizers.   After decades of being portrayed as brainless, chaotic cannibals deserving of a tent at the World Fair, we slowly find out that these savages actually have some form of organization and an unfathomable connection to nature.  We also find out that they’re welcoming and nonviolent, that they’d be happy to break bread with a lost colonist and call him “Dances with Wolves.”   They’re also more than willing to share all their secrets to a “dream walker” named, ah, Jake, who goes unconscious once unplugged.   Nary a sense of suspicion of these infiltrators-turned- indigenous, the natives were more than happy to share their secrets (after all, being secret-friendly is the savage way), all their secrets at that, I mean, all. Their God Eywa even communicates with the impostor, in the tradition of Eywa-knows-best (Was she sharing her secrets too?).   Then one day, the natives get attacked.  Suddenly, everything is Hollywood-familiar: we see the same old savages of the King Kong days, a bunch of tribes fleeing from a burning tree with asses on fire.

They Can’t Save Their Gluteus Maxes

And so the story continues.  We find out that our dear savages can’t save their asses.   Infiltrator-turned-indigenous had to find a way to save them, because he had fallen in love with the leader’s daughter, our extraterrestrial Pocahontas who couldn’t find a good mate in her tribe, she had to go for someone that had to be plugged into an electric outlet. 

What are we learning from the highest grossing movie of all time?  

I am not sure what Writer and Director Cameron was thinking.  I can only assume that he was exonerating himself from the sins of his fathers.   He might have wanted a “more accurate” portrayal of native peoples.   He might want to show a planet with subconscious connections between land and people.   Also, he might have wanted to exagerrate the invading Americans by painting their characters with Blackwater ideologues of recent Iraq War memory.  However, his hero complex just couldn’t imagine the possibility of Pandora natives defending themselves.  Cameron’s message is clear, given all the exotic touches and beauty of native life and their complex ecology, they are too dumb to know that they are about to be invaded and have their asses set on fire.  

They need a hero.  Let’s see: Christopher Columbus, John Smith, Ferdinand Magellan, Fernando Cortes, um, ah, Jake.

Learn from Lapu-Lapu

In the Philippines, we have Lapu-Lapu.   He’s a warrior, after whom a fish was named.   He should have been the national hero of the country, because he would have given Filipinos a value to behold.  Every native country or planet needs a Lapu-Lapu.   If you don’t know who that is, well, he beheaded Ferdinand Magellan.  He belongs to a select group of warriors who stood up for themselves and their people.    Yet, his narrative is not known to many.  In his place, Magellan rises as the heroic figure.   Nobody ever mentions Magellan was beheaded; his true heroism was circumnavigating the world, as evidenced by the endeless references to his name.  True to point, while Magellan is the name of a strait, of countless avenues, and of proud Spanish last names, Lapu-Lapu’s claim to fame is a tasty fish in local Philippine markets (see picture). Is this what happens when you defend your turf? And oh, I don’t know of one Filipino named Lapu-Lapu. Guess who the late dictator Marcos was named after?

The World According to Avatar James Cameron

In his world of profiteering and invasions, there is always a price to pay.   The price is the betrayal by one’s own.   In Avatar, Jake had an epiphany and had to choose between a life on a wheelchair and a joyride on a pterodactyl.    He turned on his own people and saved the world of the natives. 

According to Cameron, natives can’t save themselves.   They are peace loving blue people whose heads are so deep in the roots of the land, they couldn’t process why there were foreign creatures on their planet.   They have a god named Eywa who had to call on animals to save Pandora, because it’s own humanoid inhabitants were too high on peace and kumbaya.  

According to Cameron, if there was no such a thing as betrayal, the blue people of Pandora would all have been deep-fried brown Lapu Lapu fish.  For people like myself, who have come from countries that have yet to recover from the deep roots of colonization,  it is message worth reinvestigating.   Beyond the glamor of new technology, the narrative content demonstrates the need of dominating cultures to regurgitate their power through this global Hollywood medium.  The movie itself, just like a BigMac, is mesmerizingly satiating, until one day we are all too fat with propaganda, we can no longer get up.

Related Reading: Dances With Aliens: James Cameron’s Avatar Movie and White “Saviors” (Updated), Avatar and Whiteness, A whole lot of Avatar and whiteness,
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