Education as Commodity and Identity

We talked a bit about education in class today – how it can act as a “category changer” and how it is so clearly tied to class – that I wanted to further develop a few of my thoughts on the subject here, since I’m certain education will continue to be an important factor in our future readings.

Through our recent forays into history – Contagious Divides and Impossible Subjects – we know that education, though it was frequently difficult to access, was a means of improving an immigrant’s social and political standing in the United States. Maram’s article “’White Trash’ and Brown Hordes’” corroborates that idea; she quotes Severino Corpus, a Filipino immigrant, as saying, “I think it is wonderful that a Filipino boy can come to this country without funds and work his way to both an A.B. and M.A. degree” (Maram 127). Corpus’s possession of both an A.B. and an M.A. degree place him in what Maram describes as an “elite crowd of Filipinos” (Maram 127). This elite crowd is also marked by a familiarity with Spanish, however, such a familiarity was a product of attending the colleges and university established by Spanish missionaries in the Philippines, further emphasizing that Corpus is elite simply because he is educated. This leads me to the conclusion that education is both a commodity (something of use, advantage, or value) and an identity.

This idea of education as commodity and identity is particularly apparent in Santos’s story, “Brown Coterie.” All of the characters are defined by their personal commodities, their education: “Clarita got a Ph.D. in Ann Arbor” (Santos 152), “Pilar and Tecla, one with a Ph.D. in chemistry and the other, seriously threatening to get one in a year” (Santos 153), “[Anita] had a master’s degree in History from Miami University in Oxford” (Santos 154), “Angela had a Phi Beta Kappa pin” (Santos 154), “Doc, lately from Johns Hopkins” (Santos 154), “Lino enrolled in Yale” (Santos 155), “Joe from M.I.T.” (Santos 155), and so on. Very little personal description is given beyond the degree, school, and profession of each person. Their education is their identity. Those educations are also what make these people such a “brilliant and self-sufficient” (Santos 155) bunch. They have access to a comfortable American life, they appear to be free from oppressive policies and opinions, and the men even have access to white women.

However, what problematizes this otherwise hopefully straightforward post is that some of the Pinoys are educated, too. When Eric harangues the women (except Clarita) for being snobs, he says of the Pinoys, “…but they have degrees, too, some of them” (Santos 162). The question I’m left pondering then, is how does education fail to work as a category changer for the Pinoys when it is clearly a valued commodity and identity for others. Perhaps some groups are perceived as beyond being improved by education? Perhaps the perspective from within the Filipino community is much harsher than that from an outside perspective? These are all questions I’ll be mulling over as we continue to read about Asian immigrant experiences and their educations.