by Edwin Quinabo
Increasing voter turnout has been a goal for communities throughout the U.S. mainland and Hawaii is no different.
To spike Filipino voter participation, Hawaii’s Filipino community in the past has tried coordinated carpooling to election sites, set up voter registration booths at community events and publish and announce election information in Filipino newspapers and radio programs.
But results of the Primary Election 2022 Office of Elections Turnout by Precincts map suggests voter turnout in the Filipino community remains low relative to other ethnic groups. While the Office of Elections does not track voter turnout by ethnicity, looking at voter turnout by neighborhoods is telling. The map indicates lower voter turnout in neighborhoods with high Filipino concentrations than in neighborhoods known to have fewer concentration of Filipinos.
The Office of Elections map shows East Oahu, Manoa and Mililani (mostly non-Filipino districts) with voter turnout above 45% while Ewa and parts of Kalihi (high Filipino population) registered in the 35-40% range. And lower Kalihi had less than 30% (lowest category) voter turnout. Waipahu and Kunia were the Filipino neighborhoods with the highest turnout at 35-40%.
Mail-in voting was not the silver bullet elections officials had hoped for to increase voter turnout. The 2022 primary election turnout dropped to 39.6% from 51.2% in 2020, the year mass mail-in voting was implemented due to the pandemic. In 2018, the primary turnout was 38.6%.
Traditionally, Hawaii has posted among the lowest election turnouts in the nation. Even in 2020 with mass mail-in voting, Hawaii was ranked third from the bottom nationally on the M.I.T Election Data & Science Lab’s measure of turnout based on eligible voters.
Filipino political empowerment – Vote!
Fortunato Elizaga, M.D., who has lived in Hawaii for over 50 years, said “There is no question that actively participating in local politics will immensely enhance our impact. Sadly, our voting turnout every election year has been poor. It is high time to improve it. We must increase the presence and impact of Filipinos this election year! Get out and vote should be our mantra.”
Dr. Elizaga believes Hawaii’s Filipino community is behind the Japanese and Chinese communities because they effectively participate in local politics. He recognizes strides forward in the Filipino community but says there is room for improvement. What to do to further Filipino empowerment?
He said, “First and foremost we need much more unity in all our endeavors in politics, business and education. We should actively support smart, well qualified Filipino political candidates in their efforts to get elected. Their presence in our local government will enhance our impact and increase others’ understanding of our needs and ability to contribute to the broader community.”
Serafin Colmenares Ph.D., a community leader and someone who has worked for Hawaii state government in key positions, said while Filipinos are the second largest ethnic group, this has not translated into political strength. “We have the potential and have taken steps toward it, but we have not yet arrived. Several factors limiting us can be mentioned. One, Filipinos are not united; we don’t vote as a bloc, are divided with our regional and personal biases. Second, we lack leaders – quality leaders – around whom we can coalesce. Thirdly, we don’t have the financial resources nor the social capital to support statewide/national campaigns.”
He adds, “We lack quality leaders. We had a few promising ones, but they lacked the finances, the networking with other groups, the experience, and the solid support from the Filipino community. We have upcoming young leaders, but they still need a lot of experience before they can aspire for higher offices.”
UH Manoa professor Patricio Abinales, Ph.D. agrees with Dr. Colmenares that Filipinos in Hawaii have not yet arrived politically when you look at all branches of government in Hawaii. He said, “it takes time for an ethnic group that reaches majority status to gel as a political community. it took the Irish and the Italians decades before they could dominate cities like New York. There is a lot of room for improvement.”
Train our youth for leadership to enhance political empowerment
Dr. Abinales said he notices how political parties train their young members and prepare them for leadership. The Republicans have the Heritage Foundation’s and GOPAC’s Young Leaders Programs. The Democrats have the Best Democratic Practice Institute and Young Leaders Summer Institute, he points out.
He believes besides voting, enhancing Filipino political empowerment here can be achieved through young adult leadership training. “It’s also doable here like on the mainland given that there is a Philippine Center [at UH Manoa], good faculty in the UH school system, active civic organizations like the Filipino Association for University Women and the Knights of Rizal, influential associations like the doctors’ and lawyers’ groups, and some leaders already in state positions.
“These groups and individuals can pool their resources towards creating a Young Filipino Leaders Program whose sole goal is to put more Filipinos into political and government positions. Nothing else but training for political power. As one who studies Southeast Asia, I’ve seen this done with a certain amount of success in Singapore, Malaysia and to a certain extent the Philippines, where ‘they start them young’ in terms of training in political and administrative instruction,” he said.
Rowena Stern, a Filipina who grew up in Moanalua now living in Orange County, CA, is shocked at voter turnout still being low in Hawaii given the availability of mail-in voting. She believes voting turnout can make a huge difference to enhance political empowerment. “There is no excuse not to vote. It’s super convenient in Hawaii compared to many parts of the mainland where not everyone can qualify to vote by mail, automatically. We call it absentee mail-in voting. In some states you must provide an accepted excuse to vote by absentee mail like being away from home on election day, being required to work during polling hours or having a disability.”
She elaborates, “I think two things are going on with low voter turnout: first there’s voter apathy; and second some people do not see the connection between voting and the impact it can have on improving one’s life situation. Filipinos should know that voting is empowering.” She suggests there is a correlation between Filipinos’ low voter turnout and the marginal success in elections.
Filipino representation in politics and government: well-to-low representation
Filipinos comprise 25% of Hawaii’s population (about 370,000), behind Whites (43%), ahead of Japanese (22.1%), Native Hawaiian (21.3%) and Chinese (14%), according to DBEDT. Well before the community’s population climb to second, politicos since the 1980s coined the Filipino community as the “sleeping giant.” Of late, some leaders have offered up a new moniker identifying the Filipino community as the “unmotivated giant,” certainly awakened from slumber but still sitting on their hands from realizing their full potential.
How are Filipinos faring in local politics? Politicos point to their firm representation in the State Senate and Honolulu City Council, but they have abysmal numbers in the State House and no ethnic representation at the highest seats of state and federal government: the governorship and Congress.
As for top government posts, it’s no longer that Filipino “unicorn” roaming the halls of power as it used to be decades ago, as pioneering Filipino administrators in government had described. But today there is fair representation of government leaders of Filipino ancestry.
Empowerment beyond politics
Colmenares said, “There are different types of empowerments, but they can be inter-related and often overlap. Economic empowerment can lead to improved social status, while social empowerment can lead to political engagement. They often work together to create positive and transformative change in individuals and communities.”
Outside of politics, the journey toward Filipino empowerment in Hawaii is an ongoing process that can be characterized by triumphant highs and devastating lows.
Since the early 1900s when Filipino imported labor arrived, there’s been punctuations of solid gains like the election of Gov. Ben Cayetano and the building of the Filipino Community Center, Filipino leaders often tout as monumental achievements.
Coupled with those historic moments were also tragic setbacks. COVID-19 Filipino deaths were among the highest in the state at 24%, Hawaii’s Department of Health reports. And Filipinos in Maui are still reeling from the devastation caused by the 2023 wildfires.
But most socio-economic experts would say community empowerment is less about a singular or string of time capsule events, and rather it’s a measurement of well-being, looking at statistics over stretches of time. In this light, Filipino empowerment has been steady in progress in some areas and unrealized potential in others, some Filipino community leaders say.
Education: incremental gains, high college attainment, but not at professional level
In education, Filipinos make up the largest group in public schools with a high graduation rate of over 90%. In the University of Hawaii System (UH-Manoa and community colleges) Filipinos comprise 14.1%, but at UH Manoa 11% undergraduate, 5% graduate, 2.5% faculty and only one dean, according to a Pamantasan Council report.
A Hawaii State Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism (DBEDT) report shows a more illuminating statistic on Hawaii Filipinos and higher education, showing educational attainment of Filipinos in Hawaii: 34.3% with some college (associate degree), 18.3% with a bachelor’s degree, 4.8% with a graduate or professional degree.
The Pamantasan Council report did not track Filipino high school students leaving the state for higher education. The U.S. Department of Education statistics show an increasing number of first-time undergraduate Hawaii residents are choosing to attend colleges outside of the state. About half of students leaving public school in Hawaii choose to move to the mainland for college. Filipinos are a part of this trend, but statistics do not provide this exodus by ethnicity.
Statistics suggest incremental gains in higher education among Filipinos. It’s not that one or two Filipinos sitting in a university classroom as it were in the 1970s, feeling isolated but proud to be the first in the family to go to college. At the same time, Filipinos in higher education today does not adequately reflect their overall state population, educators say.
Positive indicators: high homeownership, high unemployment
The same DBEDT report shows areas where Filipinos excel like in homeownership in Hawaii at 64.6%, the second highest by ethnicity in the state behind Japanese.
Filipinos are also second in highest employment rate in Hawaii at over 70% and second lowest unemployment rate at 4.1%.
Annual Earnings: Low individually, but high in household
DBEDT shows Filipinos in Hawaii with a median annual earning of $37,400, behind Japanese ($48,300), Whites ($43,000), and Chinese ($42,000). But measuring median household income (not adjusted for household size), Filipinos place on top at $100,300, followed by Japanese ($94,800), Chinese ($83,000) and Whites ($88,300).
Low Poverty boosted by Ohana living
Due to higher number of income earners living in a single household, Filipinos have the second lowest percentage of people in Hawaii living in poverty at 7%, behind Japanese at 6% and ahead of whites at 10% and Native Hawaiians at 12%.
Health: low rating
According to a Rapid Health Survey conducted by the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization (UHERO), Native Hawaiians and Filipinos tended to report lower health ratings compared to Whites and Non-Filipino Asians.
Collectively, looking at statistics in various well-being categories and relating them to other ethnicities in Hawaii, impartial measurements of Filipino empowerment in Hawaii reveal a mixed bag of progress.
What empowerment means to Filipinos
Colmenares believes to enhance empowerment, “not only must we be aware of the community’s needs but also provide members with the resources necessary to remove barriers to their development and to uplift their situation, be it social, economic, political. Empowerment allows individuals to actively participate in decision-making processes that directly involve their lives, to take charge of their lives and take action toward their goals.”
Dr. Elizaga, M.D., offers examples that enhances community empowerment — getting involved in political events and civic projects, promoting and emphasizing higher education, supporting scholarships and mentoring, and patronizing Filipino businesses. He says, “within our families we should be encouraging our children to stay in school and to pursue higher education. With generations of educated Filipino students they can pave their own path to empowerment.”
Stern said while there is room for improvement, Filipinos in Hawaii underestimate how empowered they really are. “It takes moving away to see the contrast. I’ve been living on the mainland for about 30 years. Each time I come back to Hawaii for vacation, I never feel like a minority because Filipino culture is so deeply interwoven in mainstream Hawaii culture. People like to look at conventional measures of empowerment like income, education and career. But culture and a feeling of belonging as among the majority in Hawaii, that’s very validating and empowering as well. Strength in numbers does matter.”
The formation of community as the beginning toward empowerment
Professor Abinales says of early Filipino immigration to Hawaii and the start of community, “When Filipinos migrated to Hawaii and elsewhere, they came in less as Filipinos and more of members of an ethnolinguistic group (Ilocanos, for example), or former residents of provinces and cities outside of Manila (hence, Cebuanos, Dabawenos, Ilocos Sur, Bicolanos) or even religions (Catholics, Protestants, Penticostals, Muslims). The truth is these ‘divisions’ are the initial basis of unity. The challenge then is to overcome them, and look for a new basis of unity, and for me, that will be defining and asserting the Filipinos’ place in state and city politics. From these ‘local bases,’ we can then aspire for national positions.”
Filipinos in Hawaii were a divided community up through the 1980s, community leaders assert. The exiled Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos into Hawaii in 1986 forced a fragmented Filipino community to iron out their regional division, some say.
The late 1980s and 1990s saw a plethora of Filipino organizations forming, mostly based on provincial origins in the Philippines. But umbrella organizations also formed to unite these organizations. It is at this time that talks of Filipino empowerment begun to get traction, in the backdrop of discrimination due to accent and stereotypes from the larger local society.
A major empowerment turning point came in 1994 when Ben Cayetano ran for governor. All these organizations rallied together to encourage Filipinos to elect the first and only governor in the state of Hawaii and U.S. “I was finishing up my degree at UH-Manoa and still living in Hawaii at the time. I remember Filipinos wanted to elect Cayetano as a symbol of hope for our community,” Stern said. “It was more than an election. We took all our feelings of frustration over being treated as second-class citizens in the state and harnessed that energy to put Cayetano into office. His victory was the most empowering moment for Hawaii’s Filipino community I’d say up until now. Many of us cried that election night, including myself. I think it was also the beginning of our unity as a community,” she said. “But there is still work to be done like ending crab in the bucket mentality. It’s common on the mainland in the Filipino community and I hear it’s still a problem in Hawaii.”
Many Filipino leaders attribute “crab mentality” as a hinderance toward community and personal empowerment. Like Stern, Dr. Elizaga encourages Filipinos to reject crab mentality. “As a community, let’s strongly reject the crab mentality. Let’s not look at the successful ones among us and wish for them to fail. Instead, it is essential that we support each other to achieve our dreams and full potential. For example, there are many excellent Filipino businesses that need our support. Wouldn’t it be great to actively look to them for your business first?”
Ethnic identity is key to community and empowerment
Before a strong sense of community and empowerment can occur, Filipinos must be anchored in their ethnic identity. Colmenares sees slippage in the connection younger Filipinos today have with their inherited culture, their ancestral homeland and ethnic identity. “The sense of being Filipino, the feeling of national pride, is lacking, particularly among the younger or local-born Filipinos. While older Filipinos maintain some connections with the homeland, local-born Filipinos are more attuned with American life and customs. They don’t speak the language and they see Filipino customs and traditions as foreign. There is a need to educate local-born Filipinos about their roots so as to instill pride of being Filipino. Without that pride, without that spirit of Filipino-ness in one’s heart, that sense of community cannot grow and endure.”
Dr. Elizaga speaks highly and with gratitude of Hawaii Filipinos’ connection to their culture. “I love Hawaii. I can’t think of any better place that I would have loved to raise my family and to practice medicine. Here, I feel like I am practicing medicine in the Philippines with American standards and amenities as most of my patients are Filipinos who can relate to me with ease. This is my big advantage over the non-Filipino doctors. Whatever empowerment our Filipino community has achieved since I arrived in Hawaii has definitely helped me to be a successful physician. I’m so grateful for our collective evolution and increasing empowerment.
Back to political empowerment, Colmenares said, “It’s very important because reforms and policies that could promote change go through the halls of government. Thus, to promote Filipino empowerment, it is necessary to have representation in government and be part of the decision-making process.”
The 2024 Hawaii Primary Election is on August 10 and there is still time to register to vote. Paper Voter Registration Applications must be submitted to County Elections by July 31.
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