What Abe Lincoln Means to Me

Watching a production of “Alamat,” a play documenting a group of Filipinos brought to the 1930 World’s Fair as “specimens,” for an exhibit of indigenous people, I had a slight aversion to a section of the play where the Filipinos sang a song in the style of negro spirituals. This narrative song, not meant to depict traditional Filipino folk songs, was a contrivance, a way to evoke the oppression experienced by these people who were essentially zoo animals.

After having lead youth esteem-building workshops in Chicago public schools, I have a sense that whatever anyone akins slavery to ought to be pretty substantial. Being brought over to be ogled at for a few weeks does not measure up. So to me, the contrivance was ineffective and to a degree, inappropriate.

So as the nation celebrated the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, I’m forced to think, what does the history of the African American people mean to me as a gay, Asian man? Well, I do have an innate kinship to at least the internal sensibility of feeling oppressed, being viewed as less than, or striving to discover inner confidence and beauty. But I have never experienced the kind of oppression seen by slaves or African Americans throughout U.S. history.

What I do connect with is that feeling of being on the outside looking in. And feeling that what’s inside is what I so desperately want.

So therein lies the question. What is it that makes the picture that’s out of my reach so appealing? Is it the idea of equality? I’ve always felt that education would trump anything else, and besides the “good old boy’s” club, which I’ve run into to a degree, my professional career has never suffered. But I think that this idea of “equality” really means wanting to be white. That’s the crux of it. And that’s the internal Achilles’ Heel from which I still need emancipation.