by Emil Guillermo On the first Saturday of Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian Heritage Month, Saturday Night Live featured the Filipino American pop star Olivia Rodrigo singing and acting up a storm (even pratfalling down a staircase).
But how many people only saw her as white and not Asian American? Does it matter?
The show opened auspiciously with comedian Aziz Ansari, a South Asian born in South Carolina, playing the only Asian American declared exempt by the alleged WHCD shooter—Kashyap Patel.
With bulging eyes, Aziz, as FBI Director Patel, proclaims, “I’m the first Indian person to suck at their job.”
That’s a big anti-model minority laugh. Honesty is debilitatingly funny.
But there’s more.
“Everyone says Indian people are smart, hard working, and incredibly intelligent,” he added. Then, he pivoted. “I prove without a shadow of a doubt that we can be just as incapable and incompetent as the whites.”
Big laugh as Colin Jost as Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth ducks into the shot.
So we’re high up in the culture and in life. And we can take a joke. All is good, right?
Not so fast.
Are we so cool, or are we anxious?
Axios calls us “America’s Most Anxious Demographic” as it reports Asian Americans say they are suffering from high levels of anxiety.
The findings are from the annual STAATUS Index (Social Tracking of Asian Americans in the U.S.), which came out just recently.
Asian Americans aren’t laughing. They’re worried. 44% of Asian Americans said they’re worried about life right now.
And we’re the only group where our worry outweighs our hope (40%). We’ve got a hope deficit of 4%. No matter how many songs Olivia Rodrigo sang on SNL on Saturday.
What me worry? You better. STAATUS highlights how the general public’s attitudes toward Asian Americans have worsened over time.
More than one in five adults (21%) say Chinese Americans pose a threat to society, the survey said.
Wait, remember Pearl Harbor? When Japanese Americans were seen in the U.S. as the enemy. What did Filipinos and Chinese in America do? As the groups attempted to climb in U.S. society, they wore buttons that said, “I am not a Jap.”
Will we see “I am not Chinese” buttons in 2026? Passed out by non-Chinese Asians?
One other survey finding should cause alarm. Nearly one in 4 U.S. adults believes Asian Americans are more loyal to their ancestral home country. About half the adults asked were unsure.
But there’s enough negative sentiment out there to suggest that when people see Asian Americans, they still see “foreigner.”
Not American. Foreigner.
So what has happened since the 1965 Immigration Act ended racist quotas and allowed for the formation of Asian American communities?
While many of us have thrived as Americans in society, the anti-Asian sentiment that has been present for centuries has not been fully eradicated.
Remember how the Pearl Harbor experience disproved the idea of a solid Asian American community. Are we better and more unified now? When is identity politics essentially being condemned for being anti-American?
As we celebrate Asian American Heritage Month this year, let’s use the month to get beyond the food and cultural shows that will abound.
Let’s begin to build and maintain the coalitions needed to thwart the anti-Asian elements in our present day.
Voting Rights Act Diminished There’s plenty to worry about after seeing the Voting Rights Act gutted last week.
‘The Voting Rights Act— which was part of the winning trifecta of LBJ’s “Great Society” that included the Civil Rights Act and the Immigration Act— was already a shell of what it was.
But now it’s a tool to go backwards in time.
The law used to help rectify the exclusion of Blacks and people of color in politics. Now Justice Sam Alito, leading the charge in the court’s 6-3 decision, declared bluntly that race could not be used when drawing up congressional districts.
It’s the “colorblind” myth applied to electoral politics.
And it’s the reason Politico and Civil Rights Leader Andrew Young said the Supreme Court will “go to hell” for that decision.
Of course, it will.
When the law dictates you can’t use race to ameliorate a racial problem, you are in the strange, immoral universe that perpetrates injustice by leaving mitigation up to chance. There’s a bias against the aggrieved. Already, there are states planning to rejigger the districts so that we go back in time and people of color lose representation.
It’s the same thing that happened with affirmative action when the court barred race from admissions.
Visiting My Alma Mater Recently, I visited Harvard, where the final official numbers have not been released for the incoming class yet. But the school did feel like it was heading toward being 40% Asian.
Some of you will say what’s wrong with that? But don’t you think there’s something wrong when Asian Americans get more than our fair share?
I happened to be grabbing a quick bite of hand-pulled noodles at a Cambridge restaurant when a diner at the next table engaged in conversation.
He was a Filipino who immigrated in the ’80s, naturalized, and became a successful lawyer. He was at Harvard because his son was attending an event for those accepted into the fall class, but had not made a final decision.
The man was worried about the cost. I told him that if the family income was less than around $200,000, then essentially the tuition was free.
The man, modest of his success, politely said that the provision did not apply to his family.
It made me see how far Filipinos had come. When I was a student in the ‘70s, Filipinos were mostly from the Philippines and wealthy. A small group. They were not like me, the son of a fry-cook who came to America in 1928.
That’s progress! After 50 years, Filipino Harvard students are smarter and more successful than ever.
Then the father said his Lolo was named Emilio from the Visayas, and his son was named for him. The fact that I was an Emiliano with Philippine roots talking to him during this trip was seen as a kind of omen.
Forget science and physics and all that. Filipino juju was in play!
The father later emailed me and said his son had made a decision. He chose Harvard.
I’m sure he’ll be a success in a class that is predominantly Asian.
Lampoon I was at Harvard for a reunion of the humor organization, the Lampoon. When I looked at the book of classes, the membership was all-white until just the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, when I became a member.
That couldn’t have happened without the aforementioned trifecta during the “Great Society” years.
The Lampoon was actually celebrating 150 years of its founding in 1876 and the erection of its castle. (Yes, an actual castle at 44 Bow St.).
It spanned generations of wits, writers, and artists, and at one of the gatherings, I met a Filipino American, Ingrid Pierre, class of 2012. Her mother was Filipina, and her father was Haitian. An artist, she was showing me the cover she designed for the magazine, which was being repurposed as a bathroom towel dispenser.
She was one of the 21st-century Filipino alumni I encountered.
But it reminded me again of how few Asian, or even Filipino, faces showed up at the Lampoon until I showed up in 1973.
Another moment worth marking.
As my event was starting, Harvard students had another small celebration happening. It was Southeast Asian Visibility Week on campus.
Southeast Asians (which included the Philippines in this program) were barely represented when I was a student in the ‘70s. Now they are sizable enough to want to distinguish themselves from East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans) and South Asians.
In fact, with so many Asians now, Harvard may need to have a white student visibility week.
Another reminder of the rich diversity of countries and ethnicities that make us Asian America. And how the political umbrella of AAPINHI or AAPI or APA, or whatever you want to call us, is so tenuous at best.
But it is our best way to deal with the current realities of American political society. Like the Golden State Warriors used to say, “Strength in Numbers.”
I’ve always said Asian America is like a big hotel with many rooms. But each of us stays in our separate rooms too often. Time to commingle and celebrate our commonalities. And enrich our natural coalitions for our common good.
It might help us all worry a little less.
EMIL GUILLERMO is an award-winning journalist, commentator, and comic monologist. He does a micro-talk show on YouTube.com/@emilamok1
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