The Amazing Race

With it being PCN season and all, I feel bad for feeling this way. But so be it.

I don't understand this strategy of making friends by searching for the Filipino community on campus, and then automatically assuming that y'all are cool.

To be quite honest, it breaks my heart a little that you would do that. It makes me pretty damn uncomfortable.

To each their own, I guess. To me, it just seems so cliquey... immature... exclusive... racist.. presumptuous... unfortunate...

...Is that why you're friends with me? Because I'm Filipina? Or maybe you see something more in me. But were I not Filipina, would you not have given me the time of day?

Within my own family, I am proud to be a Filipina. Among my Filipino peers, it makes me uneasy. Talk about stereotypes - it's in these groups that I feel categorized the most. Outside of that circle, I'm just me -- I get to choose. I'm a Berkeley student. Catholic. Peace & Conflict Studies Major. Sister. Friend. Roommate.

It's alright, I suppose. Just one more year of pretending that I feel like I belong to this Filipino-American community. Until then, you like me. I'll even pretend that it's for more reasons than the color of my skin.

Get Out of Here, Poli Sci 4!

Am I just cranky, or what?

Listening to a lecture about Paine's "Common Sense" right now, and I'm getting hella annoyed by Paine's philosophies. It gets difficult to simply sit quietly in class and let this professor talk at me about the novelties of revolutionary American thought.

To paint a pretty little picture, my professor is a middle-aged, petite, white woman who always dresses as though she is a politician attending a funeral. She projects her husky voice with overbearing assertion; her voice is surprisingly big for such a small woman. If one were to look (or listen) past her demeanor, her words suggest that she was hired by the government to act as official cheerleader of American politics. Ugh. Slay me.

Speaking of pain... Listening to political theories aimed only at 18th century WASP men as outlined in Common Sense is not and should not be applicable to today. While it is important to learn of the history of politics, the teacher does not encourage our diverse, powerful community of students to compare these outdated ideas of equality to modern concerns. She does not encourage my classmates to reflect on the hypocrisy in today's foreign affairs as compared to America's very foundations.

If I were to give Paine the benefit of the doubt and not assume that he cares only for the "rights" of Christian white men, if Paine were alive today he would be fighting on the side of Palestine, of the Middle East, of everyone that hegemonic, (arguably) imperial, capitalist America is against today.

Thomas Paine, a terrorist? Damn straight. Of course, today, what do we call terrorists that win the war? Revolutionaries.

T. Paine: a rose by any other name... still dead.