EARLIER THIS WEEK, ROSA PARKS LAY IN STATE IN Washington’s Capitol Rotunda, an honor usually reserved for presidents and other distinguished American men. I mean men in the literal sense, Rosa Parks being the first woman to be honored that way in Washington. It was a fitting homage, one that came almost 50 years after she stood up for her rights, by refusing, paradoxically, to stand up.
It was Dec. 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, where buses were divided into two sections-one for whites, the other for "coloreds." Rosa Parks, a seamstress in a department store, got on the bus and sat in the first row of the colored section. But the white section eventually filled up and when a white man came in, Rosa Parks should have, by law, given up her seat and moved back.
She refused to give up her seat, was arrested, jailed and fined $14. Five days later, thousands of blacks (I'll use this term rather than the currently politically correct "African-American") gathered in a Baptist church, where a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. called for action.
That sparked a 381-day boycott of Montgomery's bus system, ending only when the US Supreme Court ruled that the segregated busing policy was illegal. By then, American blacks had been galvanized into action, launching a civil rights movement that was to transform the nation.
Blocked history
I grew up learning American history, here and in the United States, where blacks were, well, blocked out. I learned about George Washington and his cherry tree, and about Abraham Lincoln and how he freed black slaves.
Years later, I had to unlearn some of that history. The cherry tree incident never happened, it turns out. And yes, Lincoln helped to emancipate black slaves but almost a hundred years after Lincoln, buses and schools were still segregated and in many states, there were still all kinds of racist laws and policies.
Last week, I wrote about how the Code of Kalantiaw was fabricated as part of our precolonial history, but many other countries' historians have their little sins, too, of commission as well as omission. The history of America, until fairly recently, was mainly a history of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant American males, a version which, unfortunately, got exported as well to many countries like the Philippines.
It's time then we unblocked American history, and learned who made that country what it is today. That means giving Rosa Parks and others like her their space in history books, including those we use in the Philippines.
Tired
But, you might ask, what does Rosa Parks and black civil rights movement have to do with us Filipinos?
A lot. In the same way that the Philippines' People Power revolution of 1986 is mentioned in schools in other countries, the story of Rosa Parks speaks of the sheer power of civil disobedience.
Rosa Parks reminds us that sometimes it's good to feel tired, too, and angry. The story goes that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat because she was tired from a long day's work. In her autobiography, she refutes that story: "I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. . . No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."
Giving in. That phrase resonates for Filipinos, in these trying times. We give in all the time to feckless leaders and bosses. We're a nation of martyrs. And when we go overseas, we take that mind-set with us, ready to be servile. When victimized, we bottle up our rage. Sometimes, as in 1986, we see that rage transformed into heroic valor; more often though, it turns inwards and we allow ourselves to be slowly consumed.
Racism
Like American blacks, we suffer from racism, often from the very people we serve as we slave away overseas. Our response? We create reverse racism, spitting out our disdain for the "Kano," the "Japs," the "Arabo," the "Intsik"-behind their backs, of course.
Even worse, we have what the psychologists call counter-transference, training our sights on other "races" perceived to be lower than ourselves on the totem pole. Filipinos in America are notoriously racist, with all kinds of pejorative terms for blacks and Hispanics. In turn, we get labeled "flip" by other groups.
We try, sometimes, to be politically correct: "Oh, African-Americans are such good musicians"-which is what the whites are saying, too, about "flips" and "Hispanics" and good luck, may more of your tribe become American Idols.
My gripe though is that just like American whites, we claim to enjoy black music, equated with Michael Jackson and rap, without understanding how black music laid the foundations for jazz, rock and even American classical music. Neither do we understand how black music rose out of their daily lives and their history as an underclass.
It's not surprising our appreciation of black culture is limited to local artists aping mindless rap routines and that we know little about the achievements of other black Americans in the arts and sciences. How many Filipinos know, for example, the simple yet elegant poetry of Maya Angelou?
We need to look for the common threads to the struggles for human rights, whether in the United States, South Africa or the Philippines. We need to understand how racism continues to be pervasive even in international affairs, and that all too often, America continues to treat us as if we were still their colony, as if we were still their "little brown brothers" (and sisters).
Conversely, we need to understand how the fight for human rights is in fact a global civil rights movement. Young Filipinos need to learn more about how Rosa Parks didn't just influence the American civil rights movement but also African freedom fighters thousands of miles away. When South African President Nelson Mandela, who had himself spent years in prison for daring to defy apartheid, visited Detroit in 1990, he walked past dignitaries and headed straight for Rosa Parks, calling out "Rosa, Rosa, Rosa Parks" and acknowledging she had inspired South Africans in their own struggle. Three years later in a speech delivered in the States, he compared her to David tackling Goliath.
As we expose our schoolchildren to Rosa Parks and to Nelson Mandela, we can fight the stereotypes Filipinos have about blacks. More importantly, we might learn from them why self-respect is so important. When we learn to acquire that self-respect, we can then ask the world to respect us.
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