Finally taking root: as scholars try to get university administrators across the country to understand how distinct Filipino American studies are, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign program continues to expand

Diverse Issues in Higher Education, April 3, 2008 by Lydia Lum

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Dr. Martin Manalansan IV once found himself wondering colleague why Filipino diaspora scholars were flooding him with requests to review their papers or join their committees. The colleague reminded Manalansan that he was tenured, while most of the soliciting scholars weren't. As one of a handful of tenured faculty in Filipino American studies nationally, he was automatically regarded as a mentor.

"Just as there is an old boys network to say certain things are important, we as Filipinos need to help each other by supporting each other's research," says Manalansan, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "People such as myself need to settle into these senior roles and explain why Filipino studies is important."

UIUC is considered one of the major hubs nationally for Filipino American studies. But the fact that its core consists of only four tenured and tenure-track faculty members, including Manalansan, illustrates a historical disparity that exists among Asian Pacific Americans at U.S. colleges. Despite the diversity in this country's Asian Pacific American population in general, the majority of university faculty hires are of East Asian descent.

"Japanese and Chinese are often a standin for Asian and Asian Pacific American," says Manalansan, who's also acting director of Asian American studies at UIUC.

His UIUC colleague, Dr. Augusto Espiritu, says Filipinos are often stereotyped and even nicknamed "Black Asians."

"We're perceived as good dancers, that we've got rhythm and throw good parties," says Espiritu, an associate professor of history. "When I was in college, many Filipinos got involved in student politics and affirmative action issues. But we got more attention for our parties, our dancing. It's a flattering stereotype, yet a negative one for Filipinos as well as Blacks."

Last month, UIUC hosted a rare meeting of Filipino American diaspora faculty and graduate students from around the country including Hawaii. Fewer than one-fourth of the conference-goers were tenured faculty.

For two days, the attendees discussed the history of their academic field, the cultures of the diaspora and the future of the field, among other things. Because so many universities have--at most--only one or two Filipino scholars, they network with each other primarily at large-scale annual gatherings such as those convened by the Association for Asian Studies and the Association for Asian American Studies.

Leading up to the UIUC event, "there was a lot of excitement" among the attendees, Espiritu says.

"Many of them feel isolated academically," he adds. "Some of them are not just the only Filipino in their departments, but they're the only Asian."

A Later Ascendancy

More than 2.3 million people of Filipino descent live in this country, making up more than 17 percent of Asian Pacific Americans here, according to the 2000 Census. By comparison, about 2.7 million of Chinese descent and 1.1 million Japanese were counted in the Census. One-third of Filipino Americans are U.S.-born. Two-thirds work in management, sales and professional or office occupations, according to the 2004 American Community Survey. Ninety-one percent were high school graduates and 48 percent held at least a bachelor's, the survey showed.

More than 86,000 Filipinos live in Illinois, Census figures show, mainly in Chicago and its surrounding area. Illinois' Filipino population trails only California and Hawaii in number.

UIUC has longstanding academic significance for Filipinos, scholars say. During the early 20th century, the U.S. colonial government in the Philippines sent government scholars known as "pensionados" to the West for higher education. The pensionados--typically young, upper-class Filipino men--would return to their homeland and occupy key social and political positions. UIUC was among the few universities in the Midwest to receive the pensionados, the first ones arriving in 1903. Not surprisingly, Illinois, especially Chicago, became synonymous in the Philippines with students and academics while the West Coast and Hawaii became known for Filipino laborers in canneries, fields and on plantations.

However, the access to higher education here, along with continued migration from the Philippines, never translated into a critical mass of Filipino diaspora scholars until this decade, says Espiritu, who has researched Filipino American protest politics.

Espiritu says that in the 1970s and '80s, many of the U.S. Filipinos who organized and mobilized against then-Philippine president-dictator Ferdinand Marcos took low-wage, blue-collar jobs to allow themselves ample time for activism. He says the writings of these activists "often show brilliance" although hardly any of them held advanced degrees.

Some of these activists, in fact, dropped out of college. Hardly any of them considered academia a viable vehicle from which to pursue their goal of driving Marcos out of power, Espiritu says. Instead, they viewed academia as one of the many arms of the establishment they couldn't trust. "They certainly weren't seeking professor positions here," he says.