Both Choy in ‘Empire of care: nursing and migration in Filipino American history’ and Yano in ‘Airborne dreams: “Nisei” Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways’ present the Filipino nurses and Japanese American flight attendants in the late twentieth century as victims of racism in their respective careers.
The Filipino nurses in America were subjected to racial discrimination at their places of work. They were treated with a lot of suspicion by their American counterparts.
Choy gives an example of the 1975 incident in which Filipino nurses Narciso and Leonora Perez were falsely accused of poisoning veteran American patients in a Michigan hospital called Ann Arbor.
Due to persisted acts of discrimination, the nurses eventually formed a union to fight against discrimination while at their places of work (Choy 18).
Similarly, the Japanese American stewards popularly known as the ‘Nisei’ were subjected to various forms of discrimination due to their Japanese American descent.
During their employment, they were supposed to avoid pregnancy; delay marriage and their images were used in sexist advertisements. The Nisei had no option other than to comply because they were eager to secure employment with the Pan American airlines.
However, while the Filipino nurses retained their social status of expatriate nurses in America, their Japanese American air attendants were able to gain the status of first class citizens of the United States (US).
This, they achieved through their well paying career and the nature of their work, which involved intermingling with first class American citizens. As Yano argues, some went to the extent of getting married to white Americans (Yano 34).
In both cases, that is that of the Filipino nurses and that of the Japanese American air attendants, the United States’ political and economic dominance shaped the nature of their representations to a great extent. The Philippines were colonized by the US.
During the colonization, the Americans started nursing schools in Philippines, which culminated in a mass exodus of trained Filipino nurses to the US to seek employment as well as higher social status.
In recruiting the Japanese American air attendants, the Pan American Company was driven by the desire to win Asia’s support during the cold war.
The idea was to present the US as a country with a global image and therefore win the support of many countries, especially in Asia where the Russian led socialism was gaining momentum.
Community bazed organizing refers to the mobilization of communities into formal or informal groups to address a particular issue which is of interest to them.
The Asian American labor history is that of casual laborers employed by Americans to work in mines, farms and in the construction of railroads. Generally speaking, Asian Americans found their way to America through slavery and human trafficking by colonialists.
Due to their low social and economic status, early Asian immigrants in the US suffered great discrimination, abuse and humiliations at the hands of their white employers. This discrimination provoked them to think of ways of uniting against their common enemy.
Most of plantation workers in Hawaii were of Asian origin.
They found themselves working in the sugar plantations owned by the white man in Hawaii, where they worked to earn a decent living after they had fled their homes in China, Japan and Philippines due to poverty and lack of employment opportunities.
These workers were grossly abused by managers in the plantations through doing hard work under unfavorable working conditions and poor payment.
As a result, they managed to form informal groups and founded a common language known as the Hawaiian Pidgin, with an aim of communicating easily in order to resist the cruelty of the plantation managers.
However, their attempt to unite against their employer did not succeed because the managers quickly noticed the same and reacted by organizing the Asian workers into castes in order to weaken their newly found unity.
The castes were incited against each other and therefore there was no way they could have pushed for a common agenda (Jung 23).
The garments union on the other hand was formed by women employed in various industries in US and especially in the global factory. Most of the members were of Asian origin. The union, just like that of the sugar plantation workers was formed to resist dictatorship by their employers.
However, the garments union was registered under the name ‘The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union’ and was therefore recognized by the US government.
The union was also allowed to picket and organize strikes whenever they felt that their labor rights were abused by their employers (Louie 75).
The second generation Japanese Americans were the grown up children of the first Japanese Americans to live in the US. They were the first to be employed as flight attendants by the American airline known as Pan American airlines or simply as Pan Am.
They were recruited as part of the airline’s strategy of giving itself a cosmopolitan image. They were also preferred because there was an increase in the number of passengers from the Asian continent and therefore the airline wanted to create a market niche for itself especially for Asian passengers.
The relationship between the Japanese American flight attendants with that of the Pan Am was characterized by racism. The flight attendants were sometimes subjected to long working hours and other tough requirements during recruitment such as avoidance of marriage.
However, the attendants managed to change their social status after interacting with white Americans. The discrimination eventually weathered away.
The immigrant women garments workers in the global factory were women working to the US based factory. Their work was to make garments and get paid in wages. Most of these women were of Asian origin and they found themselves working in the global factory to earn themselves a living.
Just like their Japanese American air attendants, the women were highly discriminated against by the managers of the global factory. They were also subjected to hard work and poor working conditions as well as low wages.
However, they did not have the opportunity to change their social status because the nature of their work did not give them enough money to live a decent life.
These two studies enable us to better understand the position of the US in the international economy in that the US played the role of the employer in the two cases.
The US is portrayed as having the means of production with other countries having the human capital in form of employees. Through the two studies, we are able to understand that the US was an economic giant in the globe due to its advanced technology and infrastructure.
The nature and site of the workplace greatly shapes people’s relationship to their labor. It does so through shaping their lifestyle, thinking, perceptions and class formation. What this means is that the nature of work simply determines the nature of their life.
Lavish work environments may socialize workers to live lavish lifestyle while unfriendly work environments may socialize workers to adopt miserable lifestyles.
Taking the example of the plantation workers in Hawaii, the work environment was not very friendly. The nature of the work done by the Asian immigrants was purely manual with a lot of physical strain and in very unfriendly working conditions.
The wages paid to the workers were also very low. As a result, they lived in deplorable housing conditions. They also suffered occasional illnesses due to bad whether in the plantations. Their low incomes did not allow them to interact with their American counterparts.
The managers in fact established a caste system which categorized the workers in castes which were synonymous to social classes.
The work environment of the Japanese American stewardesses on the other hand was of lavish nature. Their work was very light and involved less physical strain as compared to that of the plantation workers in Hawaii.
They were not poorly remunerated and this enabled them to secure themselves decent housing and health. Their work involved interacting with the American elite mostly during flights.
This enabled them to copy the lifestyles of first class American citizens even though they were second or third class citizens in the US. Due to their improved social status and reasonable income, some were able to get married to white Americans.
Their improved status also made their employer stop some discriminatory practices against them such as the requirement to delay marriage or lose their jobs once they got married or when they became pregnant.
A family is a social institution established by one or more individuals of the same or different gender. Family concerns for workers include marriage, relationships, children, spouses and family welfare in general. Every worker is a social being because he or she comes from a family.
Most workers work to get some income so as to take care of their families. Family concerns therefore are very central to workers and cannot be wished away.
So far we have studied a variety of workers, most of who are of Asian origin. The Japanese American stewardesses for instance were recruited while young. In fact, most of them did not have their own families but were lived with their parents.
Their employer however had some discriminatory criteria for their recruitment. One of the requirements was that they were not supposed to be married or pregnant.
This practice was carried for a while, but with time, they formed unions of airline attendants to champion for their labor rights. One of the issues which they were fighting for was the removal of the laws which prohibited them from getting married or becoming pregnant while at work.
This was an indication that they were not only concerned with their pay or work environment but were also concerned about their family life and welfare.
The immigrant garments workers on the other hand were exposed to hard working conditions by their employer. Due to their immigrant status, they were usually overworked and underpaid.
The nature of their work therefore separated them with their families for prolonged periods, prompting them to form a union to champion for their rights including the right to get offs from their work so as to meet with their families.
They also agitated for better pay so as to take good care their families (Louie 75).
One of the prominent features in our discussions is race and nations of origin. Race is a prominent feature because the history of the Asian American is characterized by elements of racism.
The Asian American first arrived to the United States as laborers and were therefore discriminated against by their white employers. They were also very poor and therefore not able to resist the discrimination for a long time.
Most of the Filipino nurses moved to the United States to look for employment in US hospitals after being trained in Philippines nursing schools established by the US during colonization.
Since the US had colonized Philippines, it considered the Filipino nurses as nothing more than racial elements who were not capable of doing anything for themselves without the assistance of the US. They were therefore discriminated through low wages.
They were also denied some employee rights such as the right of association and also the right to belong to employee unions.
Just like the Filipino nurses, most of the plantation workers in Hawaii were of Asian origin, a race considered by the European Americans as good for nothing except for prostitution and superstition.
The plantations where the Asian workers worked were owned by the white Americans, a situation which was very conducive for racism to thrive. The workers were subjected to all manner of discrimination based on their race.
The managers categorized them into groups according to their countries of origin, with a view of preventing them from forming movements to resist the discrimination by the white managers.
Unlike their Filipino nurses counterparts, the plantation workers were not able to organize themselves into unions. This made their employer to treat them like mere slaves by increasing the levels of exploitation, purely on grounds of racism (Jung 23).
Works Cited
Choy, Catherine. Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. 18. Print.
Jung, Moon. Reworking Race: The Making of Hawai’s Interracial Labor Movement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. 23. Print.
Louie, Miriam. Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Factory.Cambridge: South End Press, 2001. 75. Print.
Yano, Christine. Airborne Dreams: “Nisei” Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.34. Print.