Part I of a Series on the American Dream

Jerry Brown Aided Ethnic Minorities in their Drive

to Achieve the “American Dream”

as California’s Governor in 1975

We got our chance at the American Dream the way most people do – at the bottom of small businesses. I think we are making the American Dream too hard (to achieve) for too many people – Carly Fiorina

C arly Fiorina, the Republican nominee in California for the United States Senate, is one of the few candidates that still talk about the American Dream in campaign speeches.

Many candidates don’t mention the topic anymore for they probably believe also that the “American Dream is over,” to borrow the words of Los Angeles Times Columnist Gregory Rodriguez.

Mr. Rodriguez wrote on Sept. 27, 2010, a classic piece entitled, “The American dream: Is it slipping away?” He first defined it as “the dream (that) is the glue that keeps us all together. It's the vague promise that our lot will get better over time that gives us the patience to endure whatever indignities we suffer at the moment. It's the belief that our kids will have a better chance in life than we do that keeps the many elements of this diverse, highly-competitive society from ultimately tearing each other apart. More than anything else, it's the fabled dream that fuses hundreds of millions of separate, even competing individual dreams into one national collective enterprise.”

In his article, Gregory Rodriguez mentioned also “the ABC News/Yahoo News poll revealed that today, only half of us think the American dream — which the pollsters defined as ‘if you work hard you'll get ahead’ still holds true . . .”

To read Mr. Rodriguez’s article in its entirety, please click on this link:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rodriguez-dream-20100927,0,1797219.column

Why Filipino Americans Are Still “Browns for Brown”

An

overwhelming majority of California voters of Filipino descent considers themselves “Brown Americans for Jerry Brown” (Browns4Brown@aol.com). Why? Because when Jerry Brown became the governor of California in 1975, he complied with his campaign promise to allow immigrants who were graduates of foreign colleges of accounting, nursing, dentistry and medicine, among other fields, to take the state board exams without going back to an American school – as was then the practice in the Golden State and other states in the country. To read more details about the “Browns for Brown,” please click this link, How Filipinos Came to Be Called as "Brown Americans"

Many other states in the United States copied Gov. Jerry Brown’s initiative and, thus, it led to socioeconomic empowerment of many women and minorities, especially from the immigrant communities.

Now, 35 years after the first Jerry Brown governorship, many ethnic minorities continue to pursue the American Dream. Many of California’s public and private high-school valedictorians, salutatorians and honor students come from the ranks of the immigrant communities, especially from the Asian-Californian student population.

Even in the collegiate level, many Asian-American students continue to excel in the classrooms in pursuit of the American Dream. There is a joke that UCLA actually means “University for Caucasians Lost among Asians.”

California is now home to some of the biggest immigrant populations not only in the United States but probably in the entire world. For instance, Southern California is the home of more-than one-million Americans of Filipino descent, Filipino immigrants and contract workers. It is the biggest Filipino population on Planet Earth outside of the Philippines.

The Golden State is now the capital of more-and-more ABER Filipinos, Mexicans, Asians, South Americans and other immigrant populations. An ABER citizen, as this writer has coined, means “American-born, -educated and/or -raised” person.

The ethnic minorities, especially the ABER Californians (or Americans), are probably some of the few people that still work hard to achieve the American Dream.

(To be continued . . .)

Editor’s Note: To read a related article written by Ben G. Maynigo, a Washington, DC-based Filipino-American lawyer, please click on this link, The American Dream from the Perspective of an Aging Filipino Ambassador of Goodwill