Producing a Filipino American Identity in the Sunbelt South

Abstract

Abstract: In the 1970s and 1980s, professional Filipino Americans constructed their community identity in public festivals and spectacles that proclaimed the international status of Atlanta. They established an ethnic association and marched in the WSB Salute 2 America Fourth of July Parade. Parade organizers and city boosters declared that Atlanta was an international hub, a proclamation that entailed distancing itself from images of the Confederacy and racial hatred. To contest their racialization, Filipino Americans presented the complexity of their emerging ethnic identity in celebrations that professed Atlanta’s racial and economic progressiveness and putative status as the “world’s next great city.”