I guess the bottom line is: Growing up I'm not particularly proud of being Filipino. This attitude probably came about when we first moved to Maui. I was nine years old, didn't know how to speak English, I was very shy and hardly talked to anyone in school, and the teachers didn't know quite what to do with me. It was 1996, and most of the Filipinos in school were either born on Maui or came to the island as babies, so they had assimilated. I did meet two girls who were "fresh off the boat" like me and we formed a fast friendship, but we endured a lot of teasing ("flips," "black dog," "gay" [because we used to hold hands which is what friends in the PI do], they would make sounds whenever we walked by, as well as other things). Of course, I'd also experienced racial prejudice outside of school.
This stigma followed me all the way to high school. You would think that since I live in Hawaii, growing up I wouldn't have experienced this because the islands are pretty much comprised of Asians. But I guess there is such as thing as being "too Filipino" or being "too much of an immigrant" back in 1996 and I never it shook off.
During college, though, there was a strong show of ethnic pride. The university have a prominent Filipino (and Ilocano) club. Everyone there readily admitted to their being Filipino and in some people's cases, being Ilocano. I didn't even know there was a distinction. To me everyone one from the Philippines is a Filipino but I found that you can also be Cebuano, Tagalog, Ilocano, and others depending on what part of the Philippines you are from and the language you speak. On a recent trip to the mainland, I saw Filipino pride there as well.
I guess now I'm trying to feel and show more pride. There is nothing wrong with being Filipino.
1 comments:
you know growing up here in the mainland there was very few filipinos to really bond with.. let alone any iglesias.. i went to school where there was no more than 5 filipinos in my entire school so having pride in being filipino was pretty much a lost cause because the other filipinos in my school either hid that they were filipino or adapted to the "i'm more spanish than i am asian" explanation of being filipino.. and to top it all off since we're not as popular as China, Vietnam, or Korea, people couldn't guess our ethnicity right off the bat.. when i finally took hold of being "filipino" i went all out with my pride.. flag in my car, flag on my books and a real size flag hanging in my room. bought shirts and jackets and did all that i can to show pride. i taught myself tagalog and even tackled a few dialects.. being filipino was all i had left. its all i had to embrace..
so embrace it.. we're pretty mainstream!
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