John McCain and Sara Palin stopped by this Pennsylvania town of 71,000 working class people a few days ago. They held a rally at Lehigh University, one of Bethlehem’s academic institutions. They are desperate to win this swing state in November.
But it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Hillary won here during the primaries. And her fans are now closing ranks, heartened by growing trust in Barack’s ability to fix the economy.
As you may have already guessed, I’m back on the campaign trail stumping for Barack Obama here in Bethlehem, once a booming town of railroad barons, steel titans and ordinary folks who work the steel mills and live in the community. Bethlehem Steel Corp, based here, was at one time the nation’s second-largest integrated steel producer, a company that created the Golden Gate Bridge and built much of the New York City skyline. Lots of history here in Bethlehem.
Sometimes it feels like I’m in the Holy Land, with neighboring towns named Nazareth and Egypt.
On this crisp Wednesday morning, I’m standing on a curve with dozens of Obama-Biden supporters across the street from where hundreds of McCain-Palin followers are lining up to enter the Stabler Arena. Except for occasional heckling matches between diehards of both camps, the public engagement was largely civil. People here are exceedingly polite and friendly.
Deployed here by my union to get-out-the-vote among our members, I find myself each day knocking on doors at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, pleasantly surprised not only to find people at home but to see all the Obama yard signs in this predominantly white neighborhood. There are also Hispanics, African Americans and a few South Asians from India and Pakistan.
I ran into one on West Union Blvd. while street canvassing. I still couldn’t believe what happened next:
I’m walking up the front door. I see a dark-complexioned woman dressed like a housekeeper doing yard work. “Is somebody home?” I call out. She doesn’t answer. I repeat myself two more times as I approach her. Still no answer. Then she gives me a cold stare. “Do I look like I don’t live here simply because you saw me working in the yard?” Stunned, I suddenly realize with much embarrassment what I just did. I grope for words to redeem myself, but the damage is done. Without thinking, I have wrongly assumed she’s one of those day laborers, possibly an undocumented immigrant, hired by white home owners to mow their lawns and tend their gardens. Reacting to the color of her skin, my reflex is to stereotype the woman as an outsider, not someone who actually owns the house. In the back of my head, I am subconsciously defining her as someone who doesn’t belong in this white neighborhood, a migrant, a foreigner, a “someone” other than who she really is. An other.
Humbled, I apologize and ask forgiveness. I check my walk list and she confirms that, indeed, her name is Rose.
“I’ve sometimes been asked by neighbors who pass by who see me doing yardwork how much I charge the owner,” she points out. “I said I don’t charge because I am the owner.” I can feel those piercing words like darts aimed at me. “You’re like that neighbor,” she’s screaming in my head, shaking her fist in my face, and I’m shrinking with shame every second.
But no. She doesn’t do any of that, although I expect her to rant and rave about my racist actions and tell me to go to hell. She has the manner and demeanor of a highly-educated woman. After straightening me out, she engages me in a rather thoughtful and dignified conversation.
Feeling at ease now, I’m recalling a similar experience. While working at GWU library as a supervisor several years ago, I was talking to a patron, a white woman, who simply refused to believe anything I said about the library’s borrowing policies. “I want to see the supervisor,” she demanded. “Ma’am, I am the supervisor,” I replied, as politely as I can. She took a step back, surveyed me from head to toe, and with a smirk dismissed me with a taunt: “You’re not a supervisor. You’re an Eskimo.”
I probably looked like one then — short, stocky, long dark hair, round brown face, heavy accent. Never mind that I was wearing a formal jacket, white shirt and tie. But to this woman I had zero credibility. None whatsoever. To her, I had no business behaving like a white man, because in her world only whites can be supervisors. To derisively call me an Eskimo is to define me as an interloper, an outsider, an illegal alien — thus a usurper of what rightly belongs only to whites.
Fast forward to October 2008. This time, I find myself doing to Rose what the white woman in the library did to me, although not as crassly. My body language is telling Rose she can’t possibly be the owner of this house because she’s a dark-faced woman doing yard work - the only thing she’s capable of doing - in this white neighborhood.
After accepting my apology, we chat a bit more. Then I ask who she’s voting for in November. This time I am careful not to assume anything. “Shouldn’t it be obvious from the way we both look like?” she answers with a question. I am stomped. She senses my unease. “Don’t worry,” she smiles. “It’s good news.” I am wearing a green t-shirt, with these words emblazoned in white: “AFSCME for Obama-Biden”. Assured, I bid her goodbye and walk away still feeling a bit guilty, but chastened by the experience.
This awkward but revealing encounter confirms for me why some Filipinos look at Obama with the same suspicion and mistrust. He’s an outsider, after all. An other.They’ll never admit they’re being racist, of course. But, let’s face it, on one level there has to be an element of race in it, in the discomfort of folks in our community who choose not to vote for Obama because he is black.
Oliver Wang, a sociology professor at California State Universiy, explains Asian immigrants’ reticence to back Obama. “The images of African Americans that get exported to other cultures is not often positive,” he says. “It’s not unusual to find new immigrants who have never had a meaningful, personal encounter with an African American. So there’s a very uninformed bias.”
Wang, who teaches pop culture and race, adds: “Obama is a different kind of African American. His background doesn’t date back to slavery; he’s half-black, half-white; he grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii. In other words, he’s not Al Sharpton. But those nuances get lost when someone comes from a foreign country. To them, it doesn’t translate.”
And then there’s our own colonial experience as Filipinos, subjects under Spain for 300 years and America for five decades. We’ve been conditioned to identify with white privilege, to regard everything white as superior. Any other color - brown, black, yellow - is somehow inferior.
I realize it’s offensive to even suggest that some, not all, Filipinos reject Obama because of his color. The younger generation certainly doesn’t. Instead, we cloak that racial bias with rationalizations that seem more acceptable, albeit bizarre. Examples: Obama’s link to terrorists because of his middle name, his Muslim upbringing, his socialist and left-wing views, and other distortions and falsehoods clearly designed to smear and slime an intelligent, thoughtful and brilliant senator who, by the way, also happens to be a church-going Christian.
But the more we fall prey to political propaganda that Obama is to be feared and mistrusted because he has a “hidden agenda,” the farther away we are from confronting our own racial biases.
From the prism and prison of our own colonial history, it is easy to understand why the notion of a black President in a predominantly-white country is simply unthinkable. We’ve become prisoners of a narrative written for us by our colonial masters.
It’s time we liberate ourselves from the choke-hold of such a narrative and write our own. Obama’s history is our own story. That’s why this election is historic. This is what change means, in personal terms. By electing Barack Obama, we are making a break from an insidious past that’s allowed us to doubt our own right to rise up and stake our own claim like everybody else, regardless of gender, skin color, ethnicity or national origin.
Here in Bethlehem, I had my own epiphany after my encounter with Rose. The battle for Bethlehem is a battle to change hearts and minds, to be freed from our own fears, to be immuned from the muck and myths peddled by cynics who insult our intelligence. It is a battle that starts within ourselves, with a whisper of hope that says we welcome and celebrate the birth of a new day in America. And we are a vital part of this transformation. And that’s the good news.
We have more in common with Barack than we care to admit. We just need to remove the blinders. Let’s seize the moment and make history.
E-mail your comments to jonmele@aol.com
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Jon Melegrito is a Filipino American community activist based in Kensington, Maryland, a member of St. Paul’s Kensington United Methodist Church and a staff writer for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
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