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Want to be my leader? Put my masculinity to work. Let me do a dignified job, for a solid boss, to get a tidy house in a cozy neighborhood. Make me look good in front of my woman.
From The Asian Reporter, V18, #23 (June 10, 2008), page 7.
Two notes about newcomer votes
Part II: Father’s Day in an Election Year
About a month ago, we ran a Mom’s Day column called "Caring for our mothers."
This is the promised second part, about getting immigrant votes.
We work with immigrants. And refugees too. We do exiles and sojourners, all from bad politics, all for better tomorrows, all for our families. We are determined dads and muscular moms. We dress good. We show up early for work.
Three important points about us in this election year need to be made. They need to be made early, they need to be made often. Father’s Day is a good day to make ‘em.
First: Old Worlders happen in families, we really do. Only in our new American schools do we learn about people as individuals — as standup and stand-alone, smart and autonomous units.
And second: ayah! — there are a lot of us. We show up in big families. Branched out like banyan. Ver-ry different from U.S. households statistically stable at 2 parents, 2 kids, 1 Skippy (the dog).
Our familia is our pop and ma and her sisters, our brothers, their children, those children’s children, and a couple of crazy cuzin-types (no English word for them) who can’t seem to find wives or work. What’s more: each of our big family tree branches is real busy making more pretty kids. And this is a pretty important point because, as anyone with any arithmetic will tell you, there’s a monster demographic wave rolling forward here, and that energetic ocean, that American tide, is us.
Now, this new "us" is not inky numbers lying languid on a state statistician’s tidy desk. Imagine a splendid turquoise sea. We are a living wave. And news from North Shore is: surf’s up, brah.
Turn your back if you dare, whine if you want, but best you set your surfboard mauka (toward shore), stroke strong and steady like Duke Kahanamoku taught, get your feet under you one long moment before that big wave rises overhead. And get ready to ride.
Shut up, focus, and ride this wave because our numbers and our immigrant energy must now engage every aspect of Oregon infrastructure: housing, schooling, doctoring, social servicing, traffic jamming, banking, policing, adjudicating, jailing.
Cheerleading rowdy nativist anti-immigrant impulses not only violates international law, it’s an awful local logic. As a practical matter, this demographic wave, our immigrant workers, are shouldering long-term care of that other big U.S. demographic bulge — our baby boomers. That is, our mainstream leaders or their parent. As noted earlier, numbers don’t lie and don’t lie around. And those figures say brown folks’ salaries pay for the Social Security system that white folks draw from.
Why all this matters
What these two big points have to do with Father’s Day in an Election Year is simple. And it’s also the last of the three important points promised at the top of this column. Leaders running for public office, candidates courting immigrant votes need to think of themselves as family. Be part of our family.
On Father’s Day put yourself in our shoes: in kitchen crews’ thick-soled sneakers, in shingle-hammerers’ steel-toed boots, in IT staffs’ Eddie Bauer loafers, in Giorgio Brutinis of guapos like me. And what do our guys do? Who do our dads aim to please? Where do our Yankee Doodle dollars go?
A: (Any dope will tell you) our women.
You want my vote in Election Year 2008?
A: Make me look good to my wife.
And what makes a big guy a good man?
A: Simple. Asians and Islanders and Africans, children of the Spanish-speaking Americas, children of Russian-speaking nations, and children of our Muslim world — every muchacho who ever had a traditional ma was told (and told and told again): a good man protects his wife and provides for his babies. Protect her from bad people and things, from anxious times. Provide them with money. It’s how we love. Simple.
I need to work. I need to work hard then come home with a check big enough for us to pay our bills timely and dress our kids nicely. If I don’t get the hours or the wages to be a good husband and good dad, I will probably drink to numb my shame, and I am very likely to hurt those I am failing. If I’m humiliated by my white boss and coworkers, I am very likely to mistreat my family. White men, brown men, all men aggress downstream. It’s how we are.
Want our vote? Do not talk about protecting our wives and babies from Saddam or Osama, or from Mexican men who look and sound and smell a lot like me. The politics of fear are all too familiar to our households.
Want to be my leader? Put my masculinity to work. Let me do a dignified job, for a solid boss, to get a tidy house in a cozy neighborhood. Make me look good in front of my woman.
It’s that provide and protect thing.
That family thing.
* * *
The Asian Reporter’s Expanding American Lexicon
brah (Hawai’i patois): brother. An address of kinship and affection. Does not have to be your sibling as defined by our Anglo-American legal system.
Duke Kahanamoku (1890-1968) Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku. Hawaiian royalty. Popularized surfing worldwide. Olympic gold in three swimming events, silvers in two, over three Olympiads 1912-24.
guapo (Spanish verb, Tagalog and Indo patois noun): handsome. Good-looking guy.
mauka (Hawaiian): inland direction. Opposite of makai: seaward direction. On an island, two directions that matter more then left or right, north or south.
muchacho (Spanish): masculine guy. Regular guy.
nativist (American English, immigrant readers can expand their vocabularies too): anxious values about protecting what you have against newcomers. Regular political fads rousing fear over "dark outsiders," effective because Americans are always stressed over having not enough money, love, time, goodies.