America First Caucus’ WASP agenda

PERRYSCOPE

Perry Diaz

 The term “America First” has been bandied about in the US for so long that nobody knows what it really stands for today.  After Trump was kicked out of presidential politics last November, remnants of the Trump political family have been struggling to create a new identity for themselves.  But none of the top Republicans that include Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House of Representatives Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have the charisma or following to lead the Republican Party back to power.  Former president Donald Trump still commands the loyalty of Republicans out of fear of being primaried in the 2022 midterm elections. 
    Meanwhile, there are Republicans whose political credentials border on extremist ideas that are gaining support among the various Republican factions.  Among them are Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, and Louie Gohmert.  All four House Republicans have been identified in the past as catering to Trump’s brand of nativist politics.  
    Nativism is the policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants.  Nativism began as an anti-catholic and anti-immigrant movement in the 1840s.  In 1854, they formed the “American Party.”
    It is dedicated to the proposition that the United States was founded to serve only White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), a term that is redundant since all Anglo-Saxons are whites.
    WASPS are not the majority in the U.S. but the numbers vary depending on how you define WASP.  According to Quora, “historically, WASP referred to people of the wealthy upper class elite who were of Anglo-Saxon origin. WASP was more a matter of social class than ethnicity. As such, WASPS were not the majority, but they had a great deal of influence in society and politics. They were the people who belonged to the exclusive country clubs and attended the best colleges and universities. 
    They were once the ruling class. This generally would be people of British ancestry though some might define it to include those with ancestors from other parts of northwestern Europe such as Scandinavia and Germany. British Americans are the narrowest group of Anglo-Saxons.  They make up 13% -23.3% of the population.”
    With the influx of non-WASP Europeans and people of color into the US, the term WASP hasn’t been used for over 50 years.  Indeed, WASP has diminished in size in the American melting pot.  And that’s probably what Greene and company had in mind when they formed America First Caucus: the revival of WASP to its former glory days.  But those are bygone days.  The term WASP is now a bit anachronistic.  It’s passé.
Anglo-Saxon platform launched
 When the formation of the America First Caucus was announced, it identified Representatives Greene and Gosar as behind the new caucus.  According to a document that was released, the America First Caucus would champion “Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”  
    But as soon as the America First Caucus’ manifesto was published, Greene and her small group of hard-line rightwing politicians got themselves in hot water.  Very few politicians were buying it or would identify with its formation.
    The manifesto that was circulated on April 16, said that the caucus would battle to promote “uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions and infrastructure, engineering, and aesthetic value that befits the progeny of European architecture.”
    The document warned that “mass immigration” poses a threat to “the long-term existential future of America as a unique country with a unique culture and a unique identity.”  Country is unique due to the fact that it is now multi-cultural and has multi-racial identity.
    It’s interesting to note that the phrase “America First” was a credo of the Ku Klux Klan, which was frequently included in Trump’s speeches when he was president.
    The manifesto, which was initially reported by the congressional newsletter “Punchbowl News,” drew immediate attacks by lawmakers from both sides of the aisle.  GOP Leader McCarthy called it a “nativist dog whistle” while Rep. Ken Buck of the hard right Republican “Freedom Caucus” bashed its position as “hatefulness.”  Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger said that any caucus members should be stripped of committee appointments just like what happened to Greene.
    But Greene said that the controversial document was a “staff-level draft proposal” from an unidentified “outside group” that she hadn’t read yet.  She also claimed that it was it was “taken out of context” by “the scum and liars in the media.”  She accused the media of creating “false narratives,” and focusing on race to “divide the American people with hate through identity politics.”  The truth is that the media reports only as it happens in the community.  It doesn’t fabricate the news.
WASP resurgence
On a personal note, I believe that Greene launched the America First Caucus to promote the nativist notion that the US was founded to serve only White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or WASPs.  To them, there is no place for Catholics and immigrants in their white-only country and non-whites are deemed second-class citizens. 
    The WASPs belonged to an ethnic group of British upper-middle-class white protestants that dominated the economic and cultural aspects of the US.  All of the US presidents up to George W. Bush – with the exception of John F. Kennedy who was of Irish descent – were WASPs.  
    Barack Obama who succeeded George W. Bush was the only president who was not of white Anglo descent.  Obama’s election as president broke the American tradition of electing white Anglo-Saxons.  It was a major milestone in American presidential politics. 
    In the November 2020 election, Joe Biden, another Irish-American was elected president.  His vice-presidential running mate was Kamala Harris, a woman of African and East Indian descent.  And should she succeed Biden to the presidency, she’d be the first woman and first African-East Indian president of the US. 
    The political games being played today don’t bode well with the election of traditional white Anglo-Saxon protestants who have dominated presidential politics since the time of George Washington.  White Americans, although still the majority ethnic group has been dwindling in numbers.
Racial diversity
According to census numbers, racial minorities are gaining in numbers.  William H. Frey’s latest book, “Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America,” projected that racial minorities are the primary demographic engines of the nation’s future growth, countering an aging, slow-growing and soon to be declining white population. The new statistics project that the nation will become “minority white” by 2045. During that year, whites will comprise 49.7 percent of the population in contrast to 24.6 percent for Hispanics, 13.1 percent for blacks, 7.9 percent for Asians, and 3.8 percent for multiracial populations.  
    That’s only one generation from today!  Among the minority populations, the greatest growth is projected for multiracial populations, Asians and Hispanics with 2018–2060 growth rates of 176, 93, and 86 percent, respectively.
    It’s no wonder then that Greene is hell-bent in trying to promote Anglo-Saxon political traditions in the House of Representatives.  Not that she would succeed, but that it would continue to propagate white Anglo-Saxon preeminence in the lawmaking body. In other words, she’ll use the America First Caucus to dominate the future direction of Congress to turn the other way around.
    But with non-white Americans gaining in numbers, the trend is irreversible.  America will stay as the melting pot of all the races in the world.  However, recent anti-Asian sentiments could cause it to crack.  In my column, “Is the melting pot cracking?” (April 16, 2021), I said, “When Trump called the coronavirus Covid-19 ‘China virus’ and ‘Kung Flu,’ it created an angry backlash against Asian-Americans.  Anti-Asian violence erupted in various cities across the U.S.  Many Asian-Americans across the country were killed or harmed as a result of Trump’s characterization of the coronavirus. 
    “The American melting pot, which has withstood the test of time for more than 100 years, is suddenly under stress as the Asian-American community is being blamed for the Covid-19 pandemic that has claimed more than 500,000 lives so far.”
What Greene and her America First Caucus cohorts are doing is to disrupt the multi-racial and multi-cultural harmony by promoting the “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” in the US Congress. 
    But little did she know that the whole country is way past the era of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.   The United States of America is now in the age of multiculturalism, never again to resuscitate the prejudicial racist past of the US.  
     America has indeed come a long way but it still has a way to go to become an egalitarian society, when Americans will just refer to themselves as “Americans,” not the multitude of hyphenated Americans that is currently dividing the citizenry into various American ethnic sub-groups.  It’s time to repudiate the America First Caucus’ WASP agenda.
(PerryDiaz@gmail.com) 

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Undiscriminating the discriminated

COMMUNITY BILLBOARD
Rhe-Ann B. Ngayaan

Here is a dedicated to every proud and resilient Igorot from Yours Truly:
IGOROT KA? (OO, Bakit?)

‘Ikangiba’ytaong- bundok ako
Gusgusingindiyong ‘di respetado
Oo, kaso ako ngayo’y edukado
Reklamo ng iba'y may buntot daw ako
O, Diyos ko! Hindi ‘yan totoo
‘Tselakskalang! Bahagi tong suot ko!

Tawagin ba namang kanibal ninuno ko
Oo ba.Gusto mo’ng mapugutan ng ulo?
Resbak ko nama’y noon lang ‘yon totoo
Oto- uto ka! Ika’y naniwalang ako’ymaligno
Grabe! Sabihin ba namang ‘di ako tao
Isa isip mo,nabubuhay din ang tulad ko!

Noon, tanong mo’y nasa’n buntot mo?
Nasa’ king harap, gusto mo hawakan ‘kako?
Ngayon, tanong mo’yIgorot ka ‘noh?
‘Ikako, purong Igorot kaya kausap mo
Sabimo’t pinagpipilitan pa ri’y Igorot ay Ita!
Giit ko nama’y iba! Bastos kang nagbabalita!
***
This poem’s content is rooted in the 20th century but the 21st century must put an end to belittling statements towards Igorot tribes such as the following:

“The fact remains that the Igorot is not Filipino, and we are not related”, this was written by Carlos P. Romulo in his book Mother America published in 1943.

“Tao poako, hindi po ako Igorot (I am human, not an Igorot)”, this was blurted out by Filipina actress Candy Pangilinan way back in 2009 during a pre-Mother’s Day show at SM Baguio.

And the most recent and major major cases of cyberbullying of the model, MC Albano, and the Italy-based OFW, Louie Garcia, whether they are offenders or victims, it once more stirs the air with heightened issues of ethnic prejudices and discrimination after almost three silent years.

The word “Igorot” is said to be originally “Igolot” which means “I-gulod” (tagagulod o bundok), pertaining to ‘unhispanised’ and tribal people from the mountains. But because of the Igorot ancestors’ resistance to colonizers before, they were dubbed as uncivilized people. Until today’s generation, being an Igorot has negative connotations attached to it such as filthy, poor, uneducated, cannibal, has a tail, and other nasty ignorant comments.

Nowadays, just hearing the term “Igorot” still invokes images of "savageness" of headhunting and "primitiveness" to the general public. Some may be true but more of these were wrong assumptions and prejudgments that became ingrained in the national consciousness with the aid of careless media and a neglectful educational system.

We, Igorots, neither by lineage nor blood but by heart and mind, together in unity, make this identity discrimination into an opportunity, not an opportunity to self-justify and bark on one’s misinformation, but rather an opportunity to cure others’ ignorance through proper information.

I believe that tolerance and mutual respect for each other’s ethnicities is what every Filipino must exemplify to eradicate local racism not only among primary ethnolinguistic groups of the country but even among minority ethnic groups in the Cordilleras.

Every Igorot must have a deeper appreciation of the historical processes that fashioned and nurtured the Cordillerans’ ethnic identity.

We should not be ashamed of what have transpired in the past resulting to never-ending racist acts against us. Let not our present bury the past, or better yet, let us learn from the past and move on with positive conviction that we are accepted in our own social community because we belong.

For it is more fun in the Philippines to have an Igorot intelligentsia. A toast to every purpose- driven Igorot! Viva Igorotlandia! Matagu-tago ka!

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Identity crisis/humor

BENCHWARMER Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- Labels hurt when applied with derision and condescension. As one Black or African-American pointed out, he loves hearing his wife greeting him, “Good morning, my sweet Nigger”.

It’s different, he says, when he’s on the job and a fellow worker acknowledges him with a sneer dripping with racial slur: “Hello there, Nigger!”.

It’s in the pronunciation, intonation and inflection. It’s in the syllabic stress. “Igorot” is more acceptable. “Iggorot” is contemptuous.

Tagging hurts when it tends to encompass and to stereotype. When he was mayor of Sagada, Mt. Province, former Presidential Assistant Thomas “Champag” Killip was suddenly swamped one morning by text messages demanding him to rectify a national news headline.

It was about the arrest of suspected robbery gang members who were poking their guns on tourists along the Halsema National Highway, also known as the Mountain Trail.

The news headline and story identified them as the “Sagada-Kalinga Gang”. The label was coined by the police who tagged them as such when the suspects were presented to the media.

Killip verified and then called for a press conference at the Mandarin Restaurant along Session Road. There, he clarified that while the suspected gang leader was born in Sagada, he never grew up there. As the other suspects were born in Kalinga, the police tagged them collectively as the “Sagada-Kalinga Gang”.

The Baguio media took the police report hook, line and sinker. They used the police-issued tag in their news dispatches to the national papers. It’s as unfair and unwarranted – and embarrassing to Igorots like me. I shrink each time I read or hear a news report that identifies suspects in an anti-marijuana buy-bust operation or robbery case as “Igorots”. Curiously, the tagging does not apply when the culprits are Tagalogs or Manilenos.

Then Chief Supt. Victor Luga had just assumed command of the Police Regional Office-Cordillera when he learned of the tagging committed before his assignment here. An officer and a gentleman, he issued a public apology.

I recall that time a high school principal approached me after she visited Kiangan, the old capital of Ifugao province. She said it was a surprise to find the place so clean, free from red beetle nut chew spittle, contrary to what she thought. She apologized, perhaps knowing I’m her fellow Igorot who traces his roots to Hungduan, Ifugao. The debate lingers on whether we, the indigenous peoples of the Cordillera mountain range, should collectively call ourselves and be called by others as “Igorots”. Despite its derisive connotation stressed by its bastardized pronunciation as “Iggorot”, it means “one from the mountains”.

The negative derivatives of “Igorot” were borne out of the equally lingering ignorance of those who do not know us. Some of us up here in the Cordillera are as guilty as those who continue to believe – and mouth – that we are descendants of an inferior race (“slight”, according to a former cabinet secretary), born with tails and who climbed down from their tree abodes only recently.

In the same token, some of us Filipinos still swear by our ignorance that some women from Capiz are of the “manananggal” type who detach themselves from the waist up and, with their bat wings and fangs, fly out against a partly cloudy sky on a moon-lit night, in search of blood to suck.

Some of us still attempt to detach and distance themselves from the term “Igorot” as our collective identity as indigenous peoples of the Cordillera. Despite its connotation of subjugation, however, we don’t mind being called “Filipinos”, after King Philip of Spain at the time his army colonized these islands in his name.

Perhaps our denial of being Igorot and our acceptance of being Filipinos are both reflective of our colonial mentality or, as wags would have it, our mental coloniality.

The least we can do is to turn the tables when the occasion of ignorance presents itself. That’s what Igorot anthropologist Ike Picpican did that time some students from the tropical flatlands visited the St. Louis University Museum of which he’s the curator.

The students were instantly amused seeing some wooden spoons and ladles among the items on display. Their giggles broke into hearty laughter when one quipped in wonder, “Ang laki siguro ang bunga ng ang mga Igorot, ano?” “Bakit wala ba kayong nakitang ganyan sa bayan n’yo,” Ike asked after approaching them.

“Wala, sir.” “Wala kayong nakitang kutsarang mga ninuno n’yo sa museum n’yo?” “Wala, sir, dahil wala kaming museum.” “Meron naman siguro.Alangan namang hindi gumamit ng kutsara ang mga ninun on’yo.” Had I been there, I would have asked: “Tanga-saanba kayo kasi?” - (e-mail:mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments)

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