Thank you to the members of the Kuya Ate Mentorship Program (KAMP) for participating in our tentatively titled "Filipino American Activism Community Forum" last Sunday!
My personal message: It was a lot of fun and it brought my energy level up being with you guys. Keep on doing what you guys are doing one student at a time. With your genuine vision, you guys are moving mountains and shaping the lives of young adults.
To give a preview of what it was like, I'm going to cut and paste part of the outline that Ed Dawg diligently composed: COMMUNITY PROFILE: Kuya Ate Mentorship Program (KAMP)
In San Diego County, Filipino Americans (also known as FilAms) comprise a significant portion of the total population (close to 10% across the board). Furthermore, the FilAms in San Diego, particularly youth and young adults, are fast becoming active and assuming the roles of “change agents” of their respective communities, particularly in the midst of social and political change in the FilAm community as well as the greater portion of San Diego County.
How this may result will be reliant on how Fil-Ams in San Diego “come of age” as a social group and how this diverse group shape their own direction in the future.
As a start and for a pending event in April, The Backroom Podcast will be profiling and interviewing one of the active community groups composed and driven by FilAm youth and young adults in San Diego.
Known as “KAMP”, short for “Kuya Ate Mentorship Program”, this program strives to “foster youth leadership skills, encourage young minds to seek and critically understand” the FilAm Community “from social and global standpoints” and to a certain degree foster the relatively nascent sense of community awareness and activism.
This is something that myself and The Crew have been working on lately. This is our baby that we plan to nurture for the next few months.
Stay tuned for more updates. Please visit our site at www.ftstechnology.com/backroom. KAMP episode will be posted up soon.
My older brother who is also one of the founders of FTS Technology Solutions/114 Entertainment showed me this YouTube video on Thanksgiving Day:
Although this doesn't directly hit home for me, I am disappointed at how blessed people are, yet they choose to be ignorant toward other people's culture. It makes me shake my head "no" and wonder if there will ever be a day that we'll rise above this kind of sh*t.
I actually interviewed one of the Minutemen and for a second I was scared that they were going to lynch me. I tried to interview this one guy named Jeff, but he couldn't even look me in the eye. Maybe deep down inside he knew that he was wrong. Another man wearing a "Minutemen" hat called me a racist because I was wearing an NCLR Media badge.
"You're a racist!" he yelled at me. He must have been in his mid 50s or something.
Either way, it looked like his wrinkly face was melting underneath his white set of hair worn tacky with a black Minutemen hat.
"Excuse me?" I said, wondering he couldn't possibly be talking to me!
Then he pointed at my media badge and said, "You're with the racist group!"
By this point, I knew that no matter what I would try to argue back with him, he would never change his mind on how he felt about me. Instead of trying to prove a point and probably getting into an emotional argument, I decided to just ignore the mother f*cker and continue trying to find my interview.
Unfortunately, the interview got erased. This has to do with my lack of knowledge on my voice recorder since I bought it a couple of weeks ago at the time.
In a way, I'm glad the interview got erased because I don't want to be associated with them.
Don't get me wrong. I believe that they somewhat try to uphold the values of the Constitution. Just replace "We the People" with "We the White People..."
Here's something I wrote for my school newspaper last year, Nov. 2007:
On the season premier of ABC’s popular TV show Desperate Housewives, Teri Hatcher’s character, Susan, said something that created an uproar within the Filipino community.
During the show, Susan went to get a medical check up and is told that she may be going through menopause.
Susan said to the doctor, “OK, before we go any further, can I check these diplomas? Just to make sure, they aren’t, like, from some med school in the Philippines.”
According to Asian Journal, the following Wednesday, 30,000 people signed a petition demanding an apology from the producers of the show. The number rose to over 125,000 signatures.
In another article in the Asian Journal, ABC Desperate Housewives Publicist Chandler Hayes issued a three sentence public apology; however, it was not enough for the Filipino people.
Mt. SAC’s high school outreach coordinator Aida Cuenza said that it is hard to say if the public apology is enough.
“It’s one thing to have a three sentence apology, but it’s not nearly enough if that’s all they are going to do,” Cuenza said.
Dr. Benjamin Camacho is a Filipino doctor. Camacho said he heard about the news the day after the show aired.
“I was shocked it was even aired on a major show,” Camacho said.
He said that the line implies negativity toward Filipinos in the medical field.
In addition, Cuenza, who is Filipino-American, did not take light of the comment made on the show. She said that the media perpetuates stereotypes and beliefs about groups and communities.
“My initial reaction was ‘here we go again,’ you know?” Cuenza said. “Portrayal of different ethnicities that have no real thought as to the impact on individuals,” she said.
Cuenza also said she felt a mix of emotions.
“There’s that sting, and the realization that this is Hollywood’s negligence as well. You have to continue to fight those stereotypes,” she said.
Another faculty member at Mt. SAC, Naomi Abesamis, 34, said that it was a thoughtless statement that affects the reputation and livelihood of educated Filipinos in the health profession.
She said she is making a conscious effort to boycott the show.
Abesamis has a good friend who went to medical school in the Philippines and is now taking her residency in the U.S. Her friend has worked very hard for it.
“ABC might want to do their research first regarding the value and success of the medical schools in the Philippines,” Abesamis said. “It was an ignorant and insensitive comment to make and it devalues the experience education and compassion that Filipinos bring to the health profession.”
Abesamis also said that Hatcher should be accountable for what she said, regardless if it was written in the script.
However, Dan Smith, a professor of television who has been involved in the industry for 24 years, does not think Hatcher should be accountable since it was her character that said it.
“The fact that these characters aren’t perfect is inherent to the show’s title,” Smith said. “It would be a mistake for anyone to confuse what her character would say for what Teri Hatcher would say.”
Smith also said that Hatcher could be fired by the producers of the show if she refuses to say a line.
Cuenza said that what Susan said on the show was not necessarily a racial slur, but it was a racist comment that elicits a type of attitude toward a certain group.
“What [Susan] is saying that she doesn’t value the expertise of the training of these [doctors and nurses] that come from [the Philippines] whether or not there may be truth to it,” she said.
“What is the basis for saying that?” Cuenza added.
Smith also said he thinks she would have been justified in not saying the line because it targets a nationality and it is not that funny.
“Perhaps it was written for shock value, but I can think of several ways of wording the line that would give the audience a bigger laugh,” Smith said.
According to the online petition, Filipinos account for the second largest immigration population and many enter the U.S. as doctors, nurses, medical technicians while successfully passing U.S. licensing boards. In addition, the Philippines produce more U.S. nurses than any other country in the world.
Camacho said his educational experience in the Philippines included a rigorous curriculum at The University of Santo Thomas.
“It is a good school and one of the best schools recognized worldwide,” Camacho said.
Brianna Metton, 20, said that sometimes people take TV too seriously.
“It could come off as a racist statement, but I think it was more of a joke,” Metton said.
As you may or may not know, The Backroom has been working on it's pilot series called, "The Backroom Sessions." The purpose of this is to provide coverage of local artists to our valued listeners. To throw in a little bit of fun, we give the artists a venue to perform at for a small audience, particularly their followers or our listeners. Think MTV Unplugged, but a lot more localized.
On Thursday, DueRight, Ed Dawg, and myself went to the taping of Envision San Diego at the KPBS studio located on the campus of San Diego State University.
A documentary entitled "Getting By" took up 23 minutes of the show. To sum up the documentary, it was about an educated couple raising their child trying to live the American dream in San Diego as well as dealing with financial and emotional hardship. The documentary discussed the cost of housing, the job market, and where the county is heading with regards to the demise of our economy.
The documentary shows how this family is affected trying to fulfill the American dream and they learn that it's not all what it's cracked up to be. "Getting By" documents how the family adapts and also provides a brief history along with a set of facts that lead us to the current situation. It proses the question, "Will we live better than our parents did?"
A panel of civic leaders and experts were also there in this town hall setting. They answered questions the audience had after the documentary was finished (or at least they tried and they gave the proper PR answers in my opinion). DueRight and myself agree that Alan Gin was the only one who gave good answers and well thought explanations to the audience.
The Backroom Podcast Show is a community-based and listener-driven podcast. Its a free service we provide to our thousands of listeners since its inception in 2005. Our reach is international, national and regional - yet our focus is in communities we live in: San Diego.
Covering issues that affect our listeners and their communities - from contemporary arts & culture to social and political issues.
Listen to current and past episodes. You can download it to your iPod, iTunes, or simply stash and listen on your computer at www.ftstechnology.com/backroom
We welcome your ideas and input.
The purpose of this blog is to provide more coverage to our audience. Media, in all forms, is essential to informing our audience. Why not expand our services to our audience more?
Here you will find transcribes of interviews, opinion pieces, written coverage of events, photos and photo links, and more!
