On FOBBDeep
One of the many reasons FOBBDeep came about was a desire to contribute to the already limited world of blogs and media culture. Granted, the views expressed are not carbon-copies among its contributors or its readers, we feel these views are unique and help complicate the oversimplification of Asian American men and women in American media (and yes, the blog world is important too).
The image above and our header photo was copied from a manual I found back in college when I was doing research for my Ethnic Studies courses. The manual was not found in the Filipino studies section (if there was ever one). It was found among various military texts. It was a U.S. Military manual written some years ago on how to suppress the objectives of the NPA guerrillas in the Southern Philippines. The NPA is classified by the US government as “terrorists.”
The word “FOB” is much more understood word in American collequalisms. Traditionally, we have used the image of the FOB to denigrate and essentialize the experience of American immigrants. As Filipino Americans, we have assimilated this image to appease our own insecurities with our histories, our families, or own race or the race of others.
But, we also understand the FOB as a source of pride and an icon of all our identities. A FOB is an immigrant/soldier/overseas-worker who’s home entails a perpetual sense of colonialism, abandonment and rejection. A FOB is someone who is needed in the world to live in shadows, clean up our mess, fight our wars, work the jobs we don’t want under conditions not good enough for us so that one day they themselves or, at least, their children, can become as privileged as us. We humbly hope that FOBBDeep deepens the love and respect for our families and our people they call FOBs.
-Mark
Related Links:
Guerilla Busfare points us to a photo book covering women soldiers in the PI. This post was partly inspired by the reference. Thanks, fam.
Bambu Rants has a great dialogue going on about Filipinas hustlin’ the modeling game and the areas in which it complicates the efforts to end sex trafficking and general subordination of women of color.
FOBBDeep also loves Bay Area rap shit. This is a new Droop-E beat w/ daddy E-40 on the opening verse (brought to my attention by DJ B.Cause).
February 15th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
whats up with the breakdown of the name? i thought it was pretty straight forward and self explanatory
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February 19th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Mark,
This was an excellent and profound post. And, for my part, I’m glad you went into details on the name, though I still think it should be said that FOB means “fresh off the boat.”
What I appreciate about this blog is that y’all are striving to capture a larger experience, a totality, and are, in the process, shattering the Model Minority bullshit that plagues conventional understanding (if it can even be called ‘understanding’) of non-Asian folks.
The image is dope and I think it legitimizes the independent struggle of Filipino people instead of contributing to the idea that the only valid violence is that of the State and its ruling classes.
I would say that the need to elaborate the struggles of the Asian diaspora isn’t for the need to foment an identity politics, but to expand the content of the “working class” and thereby create new categories for it. Just as C.L.R. James characterized the Civil Rights and Black Power movements as a deeper expression of working class struggle, so we can and should be looking at the larger movement of Asian folks within the same paradigm. This isn’t to subsume it under and, hence, subordinate it to what is often confused with the struggle of skilled, white labor, but rather liberating the term ‘working class’ from such a narrow content and placing the Asian struggle and that of all people of color and women squarely at the forefront of the general class struggle.
I say this only because it is crucial that we find the unifying thread in all our experiences and struggles; that can only be people who work.
Last night, LBoogie and I were discussing working class revolt up to and including the period of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 which is documented in detail in C.L.R. James and Grace Lee Boggs’ (an important figure in the Asian-American working class struggle) book, Facing Reality. This passage is particularly important:
“The image above and our header photo was copied from a manual I found back in college when I was doing research for my Ethnic Studies courses. The manual was not found in the Filipino studies section (if there was ever one). It was found among various military texts. It was a U.S. Military manual written some years ago on how to suppress the objectives of the NPA guerrillas in the Southern Philippines. The NPA is classified by the US government as ‘terrorists.’”
This reminded me of one of the main focal points in Facing Reality: that working people of all nationalities are organizing independently in their workplaces (as well as their communities and schools) and resisting both management and the unions (whether Communist or “democratic”) for control of the work process. These experiences are not being discussed by both official society and the Left. Official society can only think in terms of the inevitability of its rule and the Left can only think in terms of an elite Vanguard which will lead the workers in revolution. As such, you cannot find anywhere, any independent expression of working class resistance and power except within the working class struggle itself and, especially as it relates to workers within the former Soviet Union and Eastern bloc, within the files of the secret police who know most, besides the workers themselves, what the workers are up to.
This is where FobbDeep comes into play; y’all are “recognizing and recording” these unofficial, undocumented experiences of Filipino and other Asian folks because official society and the Left cannot. However, I’m not saying that this absolves us from the responsibility of critical intervention because, obviously, without that we leave it to the authoritarian Left and the status quo to channel independent rebellion into its “legal” institutions.
The hip-hop component cannot be underplayed. Nowadays, young people of all nationalities are expressing their rebellion (as well as their conservatism, fears, contradictions, etc.) into this universal medium and we cannot ever have a conversation about working class struggle, Filipinos, black youth, etc. without taking up the question of hip-hop culture. FD does this in such a positive way that it makes the hip-hop conservatives and all the others screaming about the backwardness of black youth cringe.
Keep it up. Right now, FD is my number one blog.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Oh damn, I forgot to plug Blak Orchid. Check this out, y’all will appreciate this: http://blakorchid.blogspot.com/2008/02/southeast-asian-youth-terrorists-in.html
Y’all need to link up.
November 7th, 2009 at 11:07 am
[...] Btw, I always get asked about the banner for the blog, it’s not me. Refer to Mark’s post. [...]