Clueless Poets

In my previous incarnation as dictator of soc.culture.filipino, I lamented the fact that eventually, white people took over the newsgroup with the tacit approval of the Filipinos. I believe it was some sort of lack of knowledge. The Filipinos in the newsgroup did not understand that there were a limited number of locations in which Filipinos could write, and discuss things. That the point of the newsgroup was to invite other Filipinos to contribute and write and show the world what they thought.

Eventually, the newsgroup transformed from a place where Filipinos could write about their experiences and history into a place where Caucasian husbands of Filipinas could congregate to "learn" about the Philippines. All this with the tacit approval of the Filipinos there. I can not blame the Filipinos now as I did then. I now realize that they were colonized. Not knowing the extent of colonization extended into their mind and personality, they allowed a second time of victimization. This time around, they allowed others to take a place where they could congregate and write and share about their experiences.

I always made it a point to never reply to a white person in soc.culture.Filipino. My logic was that if I wanted to speak to an intelligent, rational and sensible white person, I could find one in Berkeley. And contrary to belief, Berkeley is not all liberal whitewash.

And so we come to the point of this elaboration. Ron Silliman who is phenomenal for his ability to comprehend and understand poetry of various disciplines wrote a review of Barbara Pulmano Reyes' second book Poeta en San Francisco. Refer to the March 6, 2006 entry and the comments that follow for this point.

The wife noted that there was a discussion / flame war going on about the comments in the blog. I could scarcely believe my ears that the participants of said flamewar were Nick Carbo, Eileen Tabios and Leny Strobel. Why these are the luminaries of American literature. What could possibly make them descend from their heavenly seats?

And so it was that I learned that they were fighting the good fight. They were trying to explain to white people, I should add, CLUELESS WHITE PEOPLE, that the Unites States' history is not one of honky-dory all good and niceness. It seemed to me like it was Sisyphus once more giving the rock his attention. For in this world, there is nothing more difficult to change than a person who does not know that they need to change. I should warn the world that if you have a brain, you might want to reduce your brain activity to half. That way, you will not jump into the fray against the CLUELESS POETS.

It is sad to say that Eileen deleted her entries. The SO said that she was posting in three languages, and one of them was Ilocano. I am sure that with the use of two languages, the CLUELESS POETS were already seething. And who can blame them? Most Americans are unable to understand English yet alone a second language. Hell, you can barely expect them to correctly spell the name of a second language. Bwhahaha.

In diversity training, I watched a video in which a white person took 48 hours of intense 9 on 1 attention before he could figure out that there was a problem about race. In my experience, they are totally CLUELESS unless they decide that they need to learn. And so, the fight goes on.