Decolonization of the Filipino American Mind

The last Census revealed that Filipinos have grown to 1,850,314, the country’s second-largest Asian ethnic group behind the Chinese (2,341,537). The Filipino populous has become an “invisible majority”, with 49.72% of Filipinos residing in California. These figures beg the question, how can a group so large continue to be considered an underrepresented minority in our colleges and universities when in total, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are attending institutions of higher education more now than ever?
Though faced with the same obstacles as other American families, Filipinos possess a unique set of cultural, social, historical, and financial factors that negatively influence their ability to attain a higher education. In addition, the myth of Asian Americans as being the “model minority” has also served to limit the ability of Filipinos to access institutions of higher education. Through the research findings presented here, I hope to propose some remedies to assure Filipinos rise up from the ranks of an underrepresented minority and contribute more to the diversity of the student population in California’s colleges and universities.

THE PEOPLE
Textbooks provide a wealth of information of distorted truths on the history of the Philippines, yet little is known about the Filipino people. The diversity found amongst the Filipino people themselves is due to their origins in an archipelago of 7,100 islands and over eighty dialects. As Maria P.P Root states on page xiii in her book, Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity:
…People of Filipino heritage have experiences very different from those of other
Asian American groups who are part of the fabric of this country. Not dominated by Confucian philosophy… coming from societies that have matriarchal structures… intersected and invaded by seafarers, traders, military, missionaries, and colonizers, Filipinos of America are seldom accurately situated in history or culture and are therefore

References: Alamar, E.R. (December 1992). Multicultural education for the Filipino American child. Heritage, 6(4), pp.19-20. Altbach, P.G., Berdahl, R.O., & Gumport, P.J. (Eds.). (1999). American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges Baldazo, P.G. (March 1991). The good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly in Filipino cultural values Barringer, H.R., Takeuchi, D.T., & Xenos, P. (January 1990). Education, occupational prestige, and income of Asian Americans Blair, S.L. & Qian, Z. (July 1998). Family and Asian students’ educational performance. California Postsecondary Education Commission (2000). College-Going Rates of California Public High School Graduates by Racial/ Ethnic Group, Fall 1997 to Fall 1999 Constantino, R. (2000). The mis-education of the Filipino. Journal of Contemporary Asia. Espiritu, Y.L..(1992). Asian American Panethnicity: bridging institutions and identities. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Espiritu, Y.L., Fujita Rony, D., Kibria, N., and Lipsitz, G. (June 2000). The Role of Race And Its Articulations for Asian Pacific Americans Fong, T. (1998). The Contemporary Asian American Experience. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Fulgado, C.Q. (September 1991). Speaking on education. Heritage, 5(1), pp.17-18. Gendrano, V.P Guillermo, E. (2002, February 5). Side-by-side: U.S. lies and broken promises. SF Gate. Retrieved December 4, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/02/05/eguillermo.DTL. Harrison, F.V. (1995). The Persistent Power of “Race” in the Cultural and Political Economy of Racism Heller, D.E. (Ed.). (2001). The States and Public Higher Education Policy: Affordability, Access and Accountability Kang, K. C. (1996, January 26). Filipinos happy with life in U.S., but lack united voice. Los Angeles Times, p.A1. King, R.C. (June 2000). Racialization, Recognition, and Rights: Lumping and splitting Multiracial Asian Americans in the 2000 Census Luzzo, D.A. (October 1993). Ethnic Differences in College Students’ Perceptions of Barriers to Career Development Okamura, J.Y. & Agbayani, A.R. (1997). Pamantasan: Filipino American Higher Education. Pimentel, B. (1999, January 31). White Man’s Forgotten War. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved December 4, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/01/31/SC16131.DTL. Rodis, R. (2002, April 3). Losing track of one’s census. New California Media. Retrieved September 27, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=119. Roley, B.A. (2001, August 20). Filipinos—the hidden majority. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved September 27, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/08/20/ED194136.DTL. Root, M.P.P.(Ed.). (1997). Filipino Americans: Transformation and identity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.. Rumbaut, R.G. (2002, May 22). Competing Futures: The children of America’s newest Immigrants Sargon, E. (2001, January 19). California’s misplaced priorities deny equal rights. Daily Nexus Online Schirmer, D., & Shalom, R. (Eds.). (1987). The Philippines Reader: A history of colonialism, neocolonialism, dictatorship and resistance Takaki, R. (1989). Strangers From A Different Shore: A history of Asian Americans. New York: Penguin Books. The Filipino Crisis in Higher Education. Retrieved September 27, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://www.ocv/berkeley.edu/~pass/crisis.html. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (July 2002). NCES Profile of Undergraduates in United States Postsecondary Institutions (1999-2000) Wolf, D.L. (Fall 1997). Family secrets: transnational struggles among children of Filipino