Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

LOS ANGELES – When Illinois Senator Barack Obama was elected president on that chilly night in November, a sea of mixed emotions swept through the air across the nation and world.

Some say Obama’s election signified hope, change and infinite possibilities. Others say doom.

"For Filipinos in America, it is a time of celebration and pride. For others, of concern, even fear," wrote Ben Pimentel in a passage of his new book Pareng Barack: Filipinos in Obama’s America.

In Pareng Barack [released a few weeks after Obama’s election win], the former San Francisco Chronicle writer details how Filipinos and FilAms reacted—their excitement, anxiety, and fears - leading up to last year’s historic election.

"Like many Filipinos, I was fascinated by what was going on last year and how the Filipinos were reacting to the campaign and some of them even getting involved in the campaign," said Pimentel to the Asian Journal during a book launching in Eagle Rock.

Pimentel said that he found two reactions from the community.

"There were people who were excited about it especially the young people," he said. "And there were other members in the community that were afraid mainly based on prejudices they had against Blacks. There were others who were just not impressed with Obama for other reasons. That was sort of striking to me, that racial element, the bias element."

It is the Filipinos prejudices against African Americans that set the backdrop for Pimentel’s book.

Pimentel used a Time Magazine quote by famed African American poet Toni Morrison’s as a sort of a thesis for Pareng Barack.

"In race talk, the move into mainstream America always means buying into the notion of American blacks as the real aliens," she wrote in Time magazine in 1993. "Whatever the ethnicity or nationality of the immigrant, his nemesis is understood to be African American… It doesn’t matter anymore what shade the newcomer’s skin is. A hostile posture toward resident blacks must be struck at the Americanizing door before it will open."

"For many immigrants," said Pimentel. "It means embracing the prejudices of the dominant society and I think that’s true for many Filipinos. We’re conditioned to view non-whites to being less effective or less qualified."

But the 158-page book is about more than just the thoughts and actions of Fil-Ams preceding the election.