Filipinos Have the Best Chance of Averting the Predicted “Clash of Civilizations” in California.

By Bobby Mercado-Reyes of Sorsogon City and West Covina, CA.

The fastest-growing ethnic group in the nation’s largest state, the Census reported this week, is not Latinos, but Asians — up 31.5 percent over the last decade, to about 5 million. There are more Asians in California than the total population of any American city but New York, and the group is larger than 28 of the states. --  TIMOTHY EGAN

T wenty-two years lapsed before the Census validated my claim that the Los Angeles County would become the fastest-growing Asian metropolis in the entire world. I coined the word, “Asiangeles©,” in 1988 for my then-column, “Unsolicited Advice,” in the Philippine Journal bi-monthly magazine and Manila Standard—L.A. Edition weekly newspaper.

After the two Filipino community publications folded up in 1989, I published the “Asiangeles Times” under a DBA/fictitious name registered with the Los Angeles County Clerk, “Asiangeles© Communications and Publishing House.” My claim to “Asiangeles©” was based on the common-law version of the copyright.

I registered also at the same time as a DBA the “Asiangeles Times” in 1989.

Then I received a demand letter from the lawyers of the “Los Angeles Times” that “requested” me to desist from, and cease, using the fictitious name registered with the County Clerk office. Since I did not have the resources to mount a defense of my coined phrase in a probable suit that might be filed by the Los Angeles Times, I folded up my fledgling of a community newspaper.

But I continued with the “Asiangeles© Communications and Publishing House.” In 1993, it published my political novel, “One Day in the Life of a Filipino Sonovabitch.”

Flexing of Asian-American Political Muscle

Mr. Egan wrote also in his article that “You don’t see any of this (Asian-American population’s clout) in Congress, where there are 50-percent fewer Asians in the House than in the population at large, and 66-percent fewer Latinos than the numbers nationwide. But you will. Soon. And California, though it failed to add a congressional seat for the first time in nearly a century, will be at the head of the parade of new political power.”

There are now Asian-American members of the U. S. House of Representatives, California Assembly and Senate, City Councils and School Boards in California. Eventually, more and more Asian-American highly-qualified public servants will be elected in California, especially in the “Asiangeles©” districts.

To read in its entirety the op-ed piece of Timothy Egan, please click on this link:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/rise-of-the-ethnoburbs/

Why Los Angeles Is Asiangeles©

I wrote in 1988 that eventually the Los Angeles basin would be home to the biggest concentrations of Asians outside of their respective homelands in the entire world.

At that time, the Korean-American community was just organizing the “Korea Town” in the Mid-Wilshire District of Los Angeles. The Filipino-American community leaders were pushing the establishment of a Philippine Town in the Temple-Beverly-Alvarado corridor of Los Angeles. The Thai-American community was just starting the “Thai Town.” The three were additions to the long-established China Town and Little Tokyo enclaves near the City Hall of Los Angeles. The Cambodians were starting to settle in the City of Long Beach.

Although it is located in the County of Orange – less-than 30 miles south of Downtown Los Angeles – the “Little Saigon” was starting to blossom under the leadership of its recognized founder, Frank Jao.

On Nov. 30, 2001, the Media Breakfast Club of Los Angeles adopted Frank Jao as an “Honorary Filipino” at a function in a hotel near the Los Angeles International Airport. Mr. Jao has been inviting Filipino-American groups to participate in the cultural events (and Tet Lunar New Year celebrations) held in “Little Saigon.”

In 2001, this writer joined a group of Filipino-American visionary leaders in incorporating the “Philippine Town, Inc.” And in exchange for the promise of supporting the formal recognition of the Temple-Beverly-Alvarado corridor as a Filipino-American enclave in Los Angeles, we supported the bid of then-City Council-candidate Eric Garcetti. After Mr. Garcetti won his seat in the City Council in 2001, he kept his promise. He sponsored a resolution that recognized formally the “Historic Filipinotown.” The City Council resolution was passed on Aug. 2, 2002. Now, Eric Garcetti is the president of the City Council and he is one of the leading candidates to replace termed-out City Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in the 2013 election.

According to educated guesses of community leaders and Filipino diplomats, Southern California has now more-than one-million Filipino residents and American citizens of Filipino descent. The area that I dubbed “Asiangeles©” in 1988 is now the unofficial world capital of the more-than nine-million Overseas Filipinos.

Eventually Filipino-American budding politicians may stand the best chance among Asian Americans to be elected as some of California’s decision-and-policy makers. Here are my arguments about this issue:

A No-Magic Formula for Fil-Am Candidates’ Victory at the Polls

“Clash of Civilizations”

T he emergence of the Asian-American socioeconomic and political clout in Southern California has given rise also to a feeling of uneasiness, if not resentment, among Caucasians and other non-Asian Minorities in the region.

For instance, there is now a joke that the University of California—Los Angeles (UCLA) campus is actually the “University of Caucasians Lost among Asians.” And that the University of Southern California (USC) actually means more the “University for Southeast-Asians and Chinese.”

I have written also that there are “ethnic clashes” between Latino-American youth and some Asian-American young people. I describe this ongoing clash, if not feud, in this article:

The "Clash of Civilizations" Now Brewing in California? (Part II)

But of all the Asian Americans in California, it is the Filipino that has the best chance of averting the predicted “Clash of Civilizations” in California. Why? Most of the Filipinos have Hispanic names, Chinese blood – if not looks – and they are the closest to Black-American community (as more-than 6,000 Buffalo soldiers were sent to the Philippines by the U.S. Army from 1899-1901, 20 of them defected to the revolutionary Philippine Army, and some 1,200 of them married Filipino brides after peace was declared on July 4, 1902). Mexican Americans also consider Filipinos as like their first cousins, in view of the long history of more-than four centuries shared by Mexico and the Philippines, especially when both were Spanish colonies and ruled by the same Spanish Viceroy in Mexico City.

The Filipinos also easily accepted by Caucasian Americans, as they are the most-Americanized of all Asian minorities.

Even among Europeans, Filipinos are easily accepted either as “Hispano Filipinos” or the “Italians of Asia.” Please read these articles to read the arguments of this writer about his contentions:

Filipinos Are Indeed the Italians of Asia (Part 8 of the "Filipino Psyche" Series)

Rediscovering the “Missing Latinos in America”: The HispanoAsians and the ñ-Filipinos

N ow, if only everybody would accept the sentiments of some Americans of Filipino descent that Filipinos should be called the “Brown Americans,” then their political-and-socioeconomic future would indeed be brighter. As background materials, please read these articles:

How Filipinos Came to Be Called as "Brown Americans"

Is Jesse Jose "A Little Brown American?"

The Filipino and the Clash of Civilizations, Part I

“Browns for Brown” Co-chairs Attend Jerry Brown Primary-Victory Event and Invite Mexican-American Leaders to Join Initiative

(To be continued . . .) # # #