The following is up for the Friday edition of Saipan Tribune.  Sharing it with this listserv in case there are interested parties who might wish to comment.

The usual caveat: curious, welcome; not, see you at the bend.

Jaime


Tiger’s Fried Chicken
 
I crossed the international dateline shortly after I turned 20, heading by ship (MNL, HK, Yokohama, Hawaii, SF) for a little town outskirt of Lexington KY in a bastion of evangelicals who decided not to have anything to do with modernism.  The town voted down a proposed Interstate Highway to pass through its neighborhood.  But they were warm-hearted Wesleyans who sang their hymns with vigor and cried their sins easily in the communion rails at Vespers.
 
I did not know I was going to be an Asian trophy when I left the boonies of northern Luzon to the environs of what I thought was one of America’s citadel of liberal learning.  There were two black faces in my freshman class, both from Liberia.  Other black faces on campus maintained the premises, or cooked meals in the kitchen.  They lived in shacks across the rail tracks in town with their Sunday revival services more vibrant than the Main Street’s Protestant edifice complexes.
 
On scholarship, I work part time and the kitchen ladies loved my labor ‘cause my Mama taught me to always leave the pots and pans polished like silver.  I ate with the kitchen help so I always had an extra helping of fried chicken, along with a slice of watermelon, and a plateful of collard greens (also pronounced colored greens). I naturally devoured the veggies though I thought it needed a dab of anchovy sauce (patis), which the ladies would not touch since the Louisiana variety labeled it sauce poisson; they were not wild to eat poison!
 
This is a longish intro to Kentucky fried chicken, before the Colonel made KFC a common household word globally, but when the golfer Sergio Garcia jokingly used it in reference to what he would serve Tiger Woods for dinner, it did not sit well with the tiger.
 
The young’uns in my English class recite a local pre-school ditty that begins with Yi ge da xi gua… (“I have one big watermelon …”) in tai chi-like movement that we recite to practice pronouncing English words.  I did not know even in Kentucky and Texas that eating watermelon was also racially-laced Porgy and Bess.  Happily, it is one of the cheapest Vitamin E source in China without a taint of racial overtone.
 
We recently did a Sergio Garcia faux pas when we passed along a Pope Francis joke about his blessing the crowd at his Mass, first, on mankind with “Tuti Homini”, then adding womankind with “et Tuti Femini”, and finally, with the LGBT crowd, “et Tuti Fruiti.”  My listserv is a pretty liberal crowd, but some of my colleagues took offense to our flighty indiscretion, and I was promptly held to account on my insensitivity.
 
The use of the race card remains a volatile issue for those who use it, and those offended by it.  Bill Clinton in the 2008 presidential campaign leveled the charge against Obama as using the race card to his advantage while in the stomp in VA and SC.  I resided in DC while the Clintons were in the White House, and Bill fancied himself as being the first American Black President, albeit, albino. 
 
Obama carries that card well in his presidency, intentionally, I hope.  His popularity was tested in his GOP-upsetting reelection that upended many pundits who predicted that Romney was heading for Pennsylvania Ave.
 
It is another matter to the erstwhile Buddhist Tiger Woods, playfully half Thai with his African-American DNA.  When he won the 1997 Masters, Fuzzy Zoeller commented that he should not serve Fried Chicken and Collards at the Champions’ dinner; that makes Garcia’s jibe old but still totally inappropriate.  Racial slurs v. Obama, and now with Eric Holder in the hot seat, remain common but toothless in the nation’s capital.
 
Being of Philippine descent, I was lumped along with many of the SVES teachers as favoring Filipinos to gain honors at graduation against equally deserving Chamorros and Carolinians.  I used to dismiss this as just another instance of racial prejudice until a parent actually asked the Principal to convene a conference so that she could hear for herself the reasons why her son was not going to graduate Valedictorian. 
 
If we point out that the six awardees in the recent CNMI Math Court have names that are more Hangeul than Marianitas, and the top five at NMC have only one name that comes close to deriving from Iberian masters, it would be clear that the NMD’s call to fame on island will not be for being at the heap of  PSS’ western standardized tests.  Does it really matter?
 
It is the LGBT crowd that is now getting the brunt of prejudicial asides.  The Pope Francis joke forwarded by a devout Catholic colleague was funny to me because it let the Catholic Church laugh at its own blindside.  There is hope for the human race. 
 
Recent images of reactionary demonstrations in France held this week in protest of new same-sex marriage laws, the news that the venerable Church England unveiled plans to ordain female priests in every diocese by 2014, that 12 States in the Union already legalized same-sex unions, President Obama openly for the legal stature, and DOMA under review by the Supreme Court, the Tiger Woods of the LGBT crowd can enjoy their friend chicken!
 
Got time for a watermelon joke?
 
 
 


 j'aime la vie

Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate.  In all, Celebrate!