Philippine American history - Research Paper Example

Existing studies are branded as “sketchy, superficial, and flawed in their methodology as well as their assumptions. Lamenting this neglect in the literature, the Filipinos ought to be considered as “forgotten Asian Americans” that “very little significant has been considered on them” and that in this group there is “no history, no nothing”. The institutional invisibility of the Filipinos and Philippines is considered to be connected to the historical amnesia as well as the self-erasure of the United States colonization of the Philippines and associated imperialism.

From a cultural perspective, the academic neglect of the Filipinos results from the erroneous assumptions on the lack of authentic indigenous culture from the Philippines. This echoes the contention considered by researchers and anthropologists ignoring the group because they are considered to be “too westernized with no culture of their own.” Thus, this suggests that the history of Filipinos ought to be well understood within the context of the colonial and postcolonial associations existing between the united states and the Philippines (Lee, 366).

Filipino Americans started settling after the Philippines were accepted as a territory of the United Kingdom in 1898. The Filipinos arrived as labors for the domestic and agricultural plantations as well as students. By 1930, the number of the Filipinos numbered to 45,026. Since then the population has grown tremendously. In 1970, the number of Filipinos was estimated to be 336,731, and it has numbered at least seven times to 2.4 million today making up almost 1 percent of the national population in the United States (Liu et al., 233). The Filipinos population is composed of the native Japanese and Hawaii population and the Hapas, who constitute at least 22 percent of the Filipino population in America.

Due to the integration of the