A Look at Asian American Studies - Emery McKee - Ryan Caragher - Emma Rohrer - Gabe Velazquez

A Brief Summary

In this essay written by Nerissa Balce, it is made evident that the strategies used to belittle and discriminate against Blacks were used against the Filipinos in an effort to justify and develop approval for the Philippine-American War. As a result, Filipinos legally working in the U.S. were violently attacked and even lynched by white Americans who felt threatened by their presence in the country. Balce cites Carlos Bulosan’s work, “America is in the Heart”, in which Carlos recounts a personal instance in which he and other Filipino labor organizers were violently beaten and violated by white racists.

Furthermore, the Filipinos were placed in the same category as the Hawaiians, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans. The U.S. had either attempted to or successfully forced these nations to adopt American values and become a part of the country. It becomes apparent that classism and racism was the “language” of America’s imperialistic agenda. In the Philippine-American War, the Philippine army used this imperialistic language to discourage Black American soldiers from fighting in the war and even managed attract some of these soldiers to abandon the U.S. army and fight with the Filipinos.

In W. E. B. Dubois’s literary work, “Darkwater”, he identifies the Imperialist tactics used to subjugate the colonized people both in Asia and Africa. So long as the Americans could minimalize these native people’s claims to their own territory, they could rally Americans to support the wars and racism caused by Imperialism. This also caused the locals of the country being colonized to seem helpless and in need of American involvement. Fortunately, Dubois’s efforts caused journalists and intellectuals to question the United States’ involvement in other countries when they couldn’t even treat minorities in their country equally to whites.

W.E.B. Dubois

Gabe Velazquez