Category Archives: blog

blog, diversity, journalism, news, race

Note from Emil Guillermo: Help,I’m a pioneer!

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AAJA, the Asian American Journalists Association has figured out the best way to get back at me after all my years of being a bickering member.

It’s honoring me.

On Wed., Aug. 4, I’m being honored among 150 others as an Asian American pioneer in  U.S. journalism. (Yes, Tritia Toyota and Connie Chung are on the list too. But so ae lots of others who were founders and original members of AAJA).

How’d that happen?

It’s just a citation for being old and one of the first Asian Americans to consider journalism instead of medicine, the law, restaurant ownership, or investment banking  for a career. 

At this point in time, I’d have to say, choosing journalism may not have been the best choice.

 But it was my choice. And I’m gratified that someone noticed that I was the first Asian American male and first Filipino American to host a national news program when I was senior host of “All Things Considered” in 1989.

I hope that doesn’t become the headline in my obituary someday.  It’s not over yet. (I can’t even withdraw from my IRA without a 10 percent penalty).

I’m still a pioneer who hasn’t quite reached the promised land.

blog, everything else

Emil Guillermo: Confessions of a bad relative

Recently two deaths occurred, one natural, the other not.  I was related to both of them, though as you can see, the guilt is only now setting in.  

My Cousin

For her privacy and to protect the innocent, let’s call her Paula.

She was a real gem.

Paula was just a few years  younger than me, born in 1958. She was smart. She was beautiful. She was a great dancer, and an even better singer. She sang, well, like an angel.

 We grew up in San Francisco. We even went to Lowell High School at the same time.

And until I heard the news this week, I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Paula, or even what she looked like. 

It was all a blank until I went to the wake and saw her portrait. Unmistakably a cousin, in her eyes and face I saw the whole family.

At the wake, I saw another relative, an aunt.  When she recognized me, I dipped my head to air-kiss her hello. Then she pulled back and said, “Say hi to your mom.”

A nice sentiment, sure. But my mother died more than 10 years ago.

By her statement, my aunt in her 80s was going before my eyes. But her forgetfulness was a forgivable, natural thing. The rest of us willfully forget. Life gets in the way, we move away, our lives in different places and connections naturally wane.

That’s the way it was with Paula and I. We might see each other at funerals.

And now she staged her own. 

She had lost a job in January. Her mother died a year ago. She had a bout of depression, and decided her meds weren’t worth it. Nor was anything else.

Did she have options? The family? What if it was like the way it was, and our families lived within blocks apart in San Francisco. And we all saw each other, and knew that it was a family full of love that could provide support. Could that have helped? 

My other cousins at the wake had the same feeling. Were where we when one of us needed us?

Busy, leading our own complicated lives for sure.  But maybe it could have been different if we had  more family gatherings other than our funerals.

 Manang Juaning

The other funeral  last week was for my Manang Juaning, 85,  an Alzheimer’s sufferer. Her son, Ben Medina  and other family members were at the nursing home  for her last breath.

Her life is like the history of Philippine immigration.

Her father, Lolo Telesforo  was the cousin of my father.  That’s why he stayed with my family  in our extra room all those years. He first petitioned for his grand-daughter Esther, who moved in with us and was like a big sister. Then came Ben, her brother. And he moved in too.

They needed their own place when the other five siblings (beautiful sisters all) arrived, along with the leader Manang Juaning. From that base came 15 grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren, and 1 great-great grandchildren.

The wake was a flood of generations—five in all, from Juanita to great-great grandchildren Robert Dorr Jr. and Jayden Dorr.

Not only did I not keep up with relatives I actually lived with, I had practically skipped 3 generations of young relatives.  Many of them were already in their late 20s. 

“We haven’t seen you in a while, uncle,” one said to me. They knew of me as the “Uncle on TV,” or more aptly, Uncle in absentia.  But I knew relatively little of them except we had blood and history in common.

You can prevent from becoming the “modern” Filipino family.

Stay close. Don’t just text or e-mail. See and talk to each other, often. Use the word love as noun or verb,  frequently.

And don’t make funerals the family reunion.

blog, diversity, news, politics, race

Sherrod story a racial speed bump, but shows Obama’s preferred passive stance on race

The road to freedom will be much tougher if we all get tossed off-kilter by the road bumps put in our way by conservative media.

FoxOpinion (it is more opinion than news, isn’t it?)  and blogger Breitbart should be ashamed of their tactics.

But the Obama adminstration suffered from a little post-racial knee-jerking, too.

First, assume the truth from FoxOpinion  is always dicey. More so from a conservative blogger. So why  couldn’t someone at the FDA verify the facts with Shirley Sherrod?

 Sure,we want to get to racial nirvana, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of the truth?

This embarrassment is more on USDA Sec. Tom Vilsack  than Obama, really. Vilsack should know better, but  so should the pres.

I’ve always called Obama the big “race avoider. He doesn’t want to deal with race as an everyday agenda item unless he’s dragged into it and issues are made of his pastor, Skip Gates, Shirley Sherrod.

Obama wants to take us to the next level by  forgetting about race. His is the passive approach. The less he deals with race minutae, the more people see the big picture:  There’s a black man in the White House. Racism? Get over it.

That’s how he wants to drag us to the promised land. But people on both sides don’t want to budge.

The racists are vested as are the race-based. 

Ann Coulter/Jesse Jackson are self-cancelling.

Post-racial thinking?  Race politics in America won’t change until we’re all on the same page.

blog, diversity, politics, race

A Sunday Fourth: Freedom as religion to all good patriots

I love it when the Fourth of July is on a Sunday.  On a day that is considered by many a holy day, a Sunday Fourth makes it pretty clear to me what this day is about.  It is a religious day, for what is America’s religion but freedom itself?

In America, of course, you can be part of some organized religion, whatever you choose, or not.  You can believe in God, gods, or just in yourself.   

“USA, USA, USA.”

But mostly we believe in your right to say,  “No, thank you.”

You can even drop the “thank you,” and be as vigorous in your dissent, alone or all together, however you wish.

When you’re an American that’s what we understand to be true and what we fight to protect.

We have faith in this freedom. It’s called patriotism. 

Patriotism isn’t a blind allegiance to folks in Washington, and the policies of the elected.  

To be a patriot is to be one who knows that freedom is beyond debate. The Founding Fathers may be dead, but the founding principles are still alive.

A patriot is there to make sure it stays that way. Who are these “patriots”?  They aren’t all from a  particular gender, ethnicity, or income group. Nor are they the rabid folk who call conservative talk shows and waste good tea. Indeed, immigrants tend to be the best patriots, fighters and rebels to the core. Many are here because they believed and fought for the same things we believed in, only in their own homelands. Ask the Southeast Asian who fought with the U.S. in the Vietnam War.  Ask a Filipino veteran of WWII.  They are no less American than the descendents of the Mayflower.

And here we are all together this Sunday,  celebrating our freedoms without question.

That’s what we Americans believe in, religiously.