The Kitchen Is Not the Living Room: A Filipino Columnist Confronts Seattle’s ‘Kind’ Prejudice
In a 1929 column, W. Toerin turns Seattle’s self-image of American kindness back on itself, pointing to the University Y.M.C.A.’s resistance to Filipino students and a Congressman’s push to exclude Filipinos from the United States.
The American people are fond of abbreviations. For instance, Calvin Coolidge is called Cal for short. And Herbert is Herr. Icarus is a good abbreviation for colonial administration.
“The American people are kind,” said a returned Filipino student in a speech at Manila. That boy is married to an American girl. You cannot expect him to say otherwise.
There is no question about American kindness. They are Christians and have the Christian spirit. They are good, minus their racial prejudice. A bunch of Y.M.C.A. Americans in Seattle, for instance, are against the presence of too many Filipinos in the University Y.M.C.A. Outside of this the American people are kind. But you must not stay in their living room. Stay in the kitchen.
For instance there is a kind American Congressman who wants to exclude the Filipinos from the United States. That is not typical of American kindness.
On another occasion a Filipino said in a speech sometime ago in Seattle that the Philippines are practically independent. If they are, what is that independence agitation for? Filipinos should be careful in their public utterances when they come to the independence subject. The Filipinos are not independent, either practically or any other way.
The Filipinos should tell the truth. They want independence, no matter who hears them.
Now that Mr. Osias is coming to Seattle I anticipate another movement to ask for a labor commissioner. That is like reading “Stories of Long Ago.”
By W. Toerin March 15, 1929
“They are good, minus their racial prejudice. A bunch of Y.M.C.A. Americans in Seattle, for instance, are against the presence of too many Filipinos in the University Y.M.C.A. Outside of this the American people are kind. But you must not stay in their living room. Stay in the kitchen.”
The column’s line about the living room and the kitchen still lands with force: it names the polite limits placed on belonging in Seattle long before today’s debates over immigration, campus inclusion and who gets to feel at home in American institutions. The specific target — the University Y.M.C.A. — makes the abstraction concrete: exclusion happened not only in laws but in rooms, organizations and everyday welcome.
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