Flip Flops

AS a measure of how effective the Republican million-dollar media campaign has been, the term "Flip Flops" has become associated in the public mind with Democratic challenger John Kerry. But since this October is Filipino American Heritage Month, this topic will not deal with the contradictions of either presidential candidate.

But it will cover the "public mind" or at least what passed as the prevalent thinking of white racists more than 60 years ago in the 30s when Filipinos first appeared in large numbers in California.

Racists already had a term for Blacks (the N word), for Mexicans (the Wet B word), for Chinese (the C word) and for Japanese (the J word). Now what to call these Filipinos?

At the turn of the century when US troops occupied the Philippines after suppressing the "insurgency," Filipinos were called "googoos." But that just didn't sound right in the 30s.

Somehow, somewhere the term "Flip" came up as a popular word to call Filipinos. But it didn't sound pejorative enough. So the adjective "Dumb" was added and it stuck. "Dumb Flips" became the common denigrating way to describe Filipinos.

"Hey Bob, how many Dumb Flips did you hire as houseboys?"

Most of the Filipinos in the 30s worked as itinerant migrant workers who labored in the agricultural farm valleys of California and other western and southwestern states. In between the various crop seasons, the Filipino farm workers would live in cheap hotels or in places that were called "flop houses" where cheap rooms were rented to jobless folks to flop their bodies in while looking for work or waiting for the next harvest season.

These places were called "Flip Flops" as this was where the Flips flopped. (If this wasn't what they really were popularly called at the time, they should have been.)

But now there are two new meanings to this term which involve Filipinos.

The most recent use came just last July when the Philippine government decided to abandon Bush's "Coalition of the Willing" and withdraw all its troops from Iraq. This sudden change of course earned the ire of the White House which eagerly wanted to denounce the decision with the screaming headline: "Flips Flipflop" or just "Flips Flop."

The other meaning has to do with our efforts at political empowerment.

For more than a decade now, Filipinos all over the US have been actively campaigning for the passage of the Filipino Veterans Equity Act, introduced in this Congress as HR 677, but to no success.

This year, despite securing the co-sponsorship of 198 Representatives, the bill remains stalled in the House Veterans subcommittee of Representative Chris Smith (R-New Jersey) who last week announced that he wasn't going to move the bill to a floor vote in the House because it might pass and there just wasn't any money to fund the bill. This is because all the money has been poured into the sinkhole known as Iraq or given back to the wealthiest one percent in the form of tax cuts.

So with only a few weeks left to go before Congress adjourns for the year, the sorry headline may read once again as Flips Flop on Equity Bill."

The other example has to do with our failed efforts to get a Filipino-American elected to the US Congress. Filipinos are the only remaining major Asian ethnic group that still has no "role model" in Congress. The Indian-Americans, the Vietnamese-Americans and the Korean-Americans all have joined Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans with representatives in the Congress. The Hmongs in Minnesota may even get to Congress ahead of the Filipinos.

Gloria Ochoa of Santa Barbara County, California almost got there in 1994 but she lost to a carpetbagger from Texas named Michael Huffington who spent $10 million of his own money to win the seat. Jon Amores, a four-term West Virginia Assemblyman, lost his bid to be the Democratic congressional candidate from his district in 2000 because he couldn't raise enough funds from the Filipino community. In 2002, Republican Lupo "Sonny" Carlota lost his bid to be his party's congressional candidate in Tennessee.

Assemblywoman Veloma Veloria from Washington state was viewed as the great hope of the Filipinos in the Pacific Northwest as a possible Democratic congressional candidate in a heavily Democratic district but she took herself out of the running this year when she resigned her seat in the Assembly to accept a job overseas.

Jeff Coleman, a Republican Assemblyman in Pennsylvania, was seen as a shoo-in to be the Republican candidate for Congress in a heavily Republican district when the incumbent retired but he too resigned his Assembly seat this year.

California has never had a Filipino in its legislature, either in the State Senate or in the State Assembly. The last chance evaporated in March this year when former Milpitas Mayor Henry Manayan lost in the Democratic primary for the Assembly seat representing a part of Alameda and Santa Clara counties.

Manayan lost in part because the incumbent Filipino-American mayor of Milpitas, Joe Esteves, whom Manayan endorsed when he ran for mayor, actively campaigned for the other candidate.

Flips flop in politics.

This year, Myrna Lim is running a well-organized and well-funded campaign for Supervisor in District 11 in San Francisco hoping to become the first Fil-Am Supervisor in the City.

But Myrna doesn't have the support of the Filipino American Democratic Club of Joe Julian and Roy Recio nor of the Filipino American Democratic Empowerment Council of Jose Caedo and Osserman Caceres. And she also doesn't have the endorsement of the local Republicans who are backing a little known Filipino retired military man who shall remain little known.

And somewhere in the bowels of Los Angeles, a gadfly is hard at work encouraging Filipinos to defeat my bid to win re-election to the San Francisco Community College Board.

Will Flips flop in San Francisco too?

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