Sunday, February 15, 2004

Traitor to My Own Kind

When I was young, one of my sisters made fun of me because I listened to alternative music, a genre of rock and grunge. She called it "white music" because only white people created it and listened to it. It used to piss me off when she said "white music," as if it was a bad thing, hinting that I was "whitewashed." I argued once that she listened to rap music and pointed out that she wasn't black. But in my time, the majority of Asians in my high school were listening to rap, and her rebuttal was that it was "acceptable." 

Whitewashed. It's a stereotype, and then it's not. Ever since college, I hated this word and at the same time, I can easily identify with it. It's everything I am, and then am not. The first time I ever heard that word was in an old movie about Tom Sawyer where one of the characters was punished for misbehaving in school, so he had to "whitewash" the outhouse. I assumed that meant he had to clean it, so I always associated "whitewash" with cleaning and sterilizing. The other time I heard it, in its more offensive tone, was from my own sister. Just the tone of how she said it made me realize that I was different from her and the culture we grew up. 

My family is Filipino. My sisters and I grew up in America. In the place where we lived, we were surrounded by Mexicans, Filipinos, Blacks (African-Americans, if you want me to be PC about it), and some Caucasians. My high school was mixed with the Asians being the majority, but we never had much of an impact on the school culture. If anything, Black culture was popular-- everything from rap music, style and fashion, and language. My sister and I grew up around this, but she identified with it more than I did. She liked hip-hop and rap and R&B music and I liked alternative music. Simply put: she saw it as black and white. Maybe my sister saw me as an oddball because I wasn't like the majority of Filipinos at school who followed Black culture. 

I thought I found my niche in the world when I entered college. I was with people who had the same experience as I have: growing up in a multi-cultural environment. But college itself posed a different environment which made me want to get out of my comfortable niche. Affirmative Action was banned from campus, but its lingering effect haunted me for the rest of my college years. I went to college to discover myself and my limits and push my beliefs into ideas where I can develop myself further, and Affirmative Action was like a forceful protest of anti-whatever shouting to my face to believe their propaganda. Affirmative Action was a group of students preaching to me to be proud of myself and my culture and to support my culture by supporting Affirmative Action which will help me to support my culture. It was a roundabout argument which did not answer my lifelong question: what is my culture?

I have written before in past entries about biculturalism. It was my perfect niche. I am Filipino but I adapted to American culture. I felt comfortable with this because it perfectly described who I was. But living in Japan has made me rethink this. To the Japanese, I am not American because I am not white. But there are times when I don't feel like a Filipino because of the American ideals and history that I grew up with. Being bicultural means identifying with both cultures-- Filipino and American. And now I realized that I don't really identify with both equally. In truth, I identify more with American than with Filipino culture. As far as my Asian roots are concerned, I only know food. I know how to eat it, but I don't know how to cook it. Language-- I can understand it only a little, but I can't even speak it. And for cultural traditions and history that date as far back as the Spanish occupation in the 1500s, they are lost and meaningless to me. I can easily identify with American culture, but no matter how knowledgeable I am of American life, some people still see me as a foreigner because I am not white. Everyone wants to categorize. I am not fully Filipino because of my Americanized upbringing, but I am not fully American because I am not white. 

I once wrote that I didn't care about fitting into a category, but even after a while, I want to have my place in the world... without being asked those invasive questions about who I am and what I am. I have often thought of reintroducing myself to my own culture by learning the language, learning to cook, and having my mother speak to me only in Ilocano or Tagalog. I once thought about visiting the Philippines to reacquaint myself with Filipino people who have a deeper understanding of our culture and to participate in the daily lifestyle of pure Filipino traditions, but when I see Filipinos, I am turned off by their arrogance and pride. They don't like Americanized Filipinos, yet they try to aspire to be Westernized. The Japanese are the same way: they don't always like foreigners, but try to be Westernized. And even if they are Westernized, the Japanese still have a strong sense of unity and cultural pride, that despite Chinese and American occupations at different points in history, they have retained their core, adapting around cultural influences. 

Filipinos are different. They are fascinated by foreigners, they try to be Westernized, and in the end, when they become Westernized, they have an arrogant air about them which they will look down on their own people. I try to understand this strange mix of pride and disgust, from my perspective and from theirs. My aunt explained to me that 300 years of Spanish rule and then 50 years of American occupation has led the Philippines and the Filipino people into a state of confusion of who they are. After three centuries of submission to an authority that meant to rule and overpower them, and then freed by Americans who helped to educate them, but not really to rebuild their government, the Philippines are in a state of purgatory. They are trying hard to reestablish themselves and who they are, but are forever stagnant in arrested development while corrupt leaders play a game of power. Nearly four centuries of just succumbing to invaders, the Philippines only knows submission. They don't know leadership, and so they vote for actors who plead with emotions to be their future presidents. And for those already in power, it's a euphoria of fame and egomania. They think being on top means having their way, forgetting that they have a duty to the people first. Three hundred years of oppressive rule is the only kind of leadership that they know. So the people are forgotten. They have nothing left but their pride and whatever is left of their battered culture. They come from a country that has forgotten itself, so the people have only themselves. 

These are the Filipino people I see. They are left with their language and a small part of whatever is left of their roots. And when I see these people, they look down on me with condescending stares. I am an Americanized Filipino. They see me as one who has had a life of privilege, who never knew hardship or what it was like to be poor. Language is the only real sign of cultural loyalty, and since I don't speak it, I am a traitor to my own kind. They give me a condescending stare because they think they are better than me, a tainted Filipino, a "banana"-- white on the inside, yellow on the outside. And I return one arrogant stare with another. I am tainted. I am "whitewashed." I may not know true Filipino culture, but whatever I learned about my heritage, I learned from my parents--and maybe that's all I need. I am a traitor to my own kind because I don't have any love for my native country, and because I now fully understand the renunciation of my native citizenship--and I am glad for it. They look at me with loathing, and I return the favor. I look at those Filipinos with disgust because they used someone to get them out of the Philippines, particularly the women. They married someone who promised to get them out of poverty, and once they got out, they think they're better than the Filipinos who were left behind. And when they arrive in America, they still think they are better than the Americanized Filipinos who they deem to be tainted. What a bunch of hypocrites! But who's to blame them for that? The Philippines and the Filipinos were never uprooted per se, but our roots and our foundation have been stomped on, replanted, stomped on, recycled over and over again. The future of the Philippines is being built on shaky ground. The people reflect that: what is there to be proud of when one has to leave their country and try to be anything but Filipino? What kind of roots can one look back on when all we see is the end result of foreign occupation and brainwashing? What foundation do we build for our future when we ourselves embody the confusion that torments our country? 

I am ashamed to admit when I realize I have placed a stereotype on another person, especially on my own people. Time and again, I have been made to rethink about my identity and my position in a long history of personal self-discovery and its connection to my homeland. But I, too, have pride. Why should they have more right to label me without thinking about who they are? They are not any different from me. I grew up in America, and now they come and try to be American, too. I struggle everyday about who I am and the labels placed upon me. I may be "whitewashed," but I am no longer afraid to deny it because it's true. And yet the color of my skin constantly reminds me of my roots and family history and heritage, so I cannot deny that I am a person of color either. Not white, not Asian, but not in-between either. Unlike the other hypocritical Filipinos, I don't deny anything. But who's to say who is better than whom? All I know is that I have struggled with this since high school, and I will probably struggle with it for the rest of my life.

Thursday, February 05, 2004

I recently got this email from a friend who I haven't heard from in a long time. He asked me how I was and why I was in Japan. His email seemed fairly long, giving me a quick rundown on his life and then asking me questions about mine. It seemed to me that he wanted to resume contact with a lost friend. We were good friends, and I think we still are, even though I haven't really spoken to him in three or four years.

So I emailed him back. I answered his questions, and I asked him more questions about what he was doing.

I never got a reply from him again.

Really, what is the point of sending out emails to people you have rare contact with in the past few years? Out of the blue, I get an email from a friend I haven't heard from in a long time, and when I send him a reply, we are back to where we were: no contact whatsoever. I'm not mad, but I was hoping to get a reply back, maybe even resume the friendship again.

If you really don't care, don't bother. If you just want to see that my email account is active and that I exist, just send some "TEST--HELLO!!" message. I'll send one back, and at least we made the courtesy to say hi.