Since the United States and the Philippines are on opposite sides of the world, it may seem as though they have nothing in common. However, the United States held the Philippines as a foreign colony for 48 years between 1898 and 1946. Because of this, many aspects of Filipino culture have strong American influences. For example, English is one of the official languages of the Philippines. Most Filipinos, including most of my family members, are fluent in English. This aspect alone has made it relatively easy for my parents to fuse their Filipino culture with a new American lifestyle. In addition, Filipino food is heavily influenced by American cuisine. There are many Filipino restaurants and fast food chains, such as Jollibee, that serve Filipino takes on classic American foods, including fried chicken, burgers, and barbecue. Furthermore, a lot of Filipino music is sung in English and sounds very similar to American rock music. These similarities and many more illustrate the interconnectedness between my two backgrounds and make it easy for me to accept and integrate both of them into my daily life.
I have always wanted to learn more about my Filipino heritage. I was born in the United States, and never learned how to speak Tagalog, the native language of the Philippines. Combined with the fact that I haven’t visited the Philippines since 2008, I sometimes feel disconnected from my roots. The Filipino community here in the United States helps remedy this feeling and allows me to immerse myself in my culture that sometimes seems so distant. It consists of a wide variety of people, ranging from my parents’ former coworkers to their mutual friends from back in the Philippines. Many of these people have kids around my age, making it easy for me to find others who are in a situation similar to mine. I find this community very comforting because I can observe and participate in a lot of traditions found in the Philippines. We observe these traditions at events ranging from small parties to Christmas masses, normally attended by hundreds of Filipinos. This Christmas mass, called Simbang-Gabi, is a spectacle to behold. Filipinos from all around New Jersey come together and celebrate this event. Last year, I played the saxophone for the band as part of the mass. This was such an amazing experience for me because I completely immersed myself in the culture for the first time that I can remember. It was so amazing to become a part of the tradition that I had only observed before.
Even with all the aforementioned cultural similarities between the Philippines and the United States, I still find people who are hostile towards me because of my race. Many Filipinos, including myself, have a darker skin tone, and this doesn’t fit with some peoples’ perception of Asians as having fair skin. Because of this, people make fun of me for being dark skinned and Asian at the same time. They use phrases that range from something like “black and yellow” to more offensive ones like “Chinese n***er.” I personally don’t take a lot of offense to these phrases, but I understand that other Filipinos could be very offended by these phrases. What often strikes me about these phrases is not the amount of ignorance that these people have, but the casualness with which they say them. Some people say phrases like these without a second thought, and this disappoints me since it shows that this kind of racism is normalized in casual conversation. I find it very sad that people can be so hostile to people that they actually have a lot in common with. In the case of the Philippines, its culture has so much in common with the United States, but so many people fail to realize or acknowledge this. Despite the racism, being Filipino-American has always been an amazing part of my life that I have always appreciated. My heritage allows me to blend two different, yet similar cultures together on a daily basis, an opportunity that nobody can ever take away from me.
Nomadic Pinoy. “113th Philippine Independence Day.” The Nomadic Pinoy, 10 June 2011, www.nomadicpinoy.com/2011/06/113th-philippine-independence-day.html.