On Being Filipino-American

And confronting identity confusion

By Anna Aquino

It started small. Things like my first grade teacher pointing to the world map in the lobby of my elementary school and asking where my family was from. Then my second grade teacher holding a sense of pride that someone in her class was from one of the faraway countries we were learning about on the map. Things like sitting down at the lunch table with something as simple as egg rolls and sweet and sour sauce and getting asked if I was Chinese or if I was trying to be Chinese. Then I got a little older, and my peers and I all got a little smarter, and in school we learned of colonization. I thought that would make people more sensitive, perhaps try to understand what it’s like to have your country of origin repeatedly taken over. But instead, blatant ignorance was no longer the issue but blatant undermining of my culture with comments like, “The Philippines is just the Mexico of Asia,” or, “You’re Asian, but it feels weird to call you ‘yellow,’” or, “I’m so jealous, it’s probably easy to write your CommonApp essay.” I brushed off the comments—they’re just dumb kids, right? But when every standardized test I took had a different way to categorize Filipinos (Asian? Pacific Islander? Southeast Asian? Spanish-origin?), and when every textbook only taught me about the Philippines through the Western perspective, I knew it wasn’t just dumb kids, but a systemic issue of misunderstanding.

In the Philippines, due to a long history of colonization and culture adoption due to necessity, I often felt uncertain of my cultural identity. In a predominantly white town, and now university, where there is almost no expectation for a white person to be heavily connected to their culture, I was often put on the spot for being Filipino because it must be so different, and I must be so proud. 

But when asked, I found—and still find—myself struggling to tell people what Filipino culture is—what we’re famous for. It’s like I’m both too close and too far from the culture to know what makes it special. What is the Philippines famous for? Mangos? Beaches? What culture can we be famous for when no part of our culture is actually ours, but borrowed from or adopted from our superior colonizers? 

And now, perhaps you could say that the Philippines is “on the grid” because of their fear-mongering president Duterte, but how much better is that? How can I be proud of the Philippines when it seems we struggle to make smart political or economic choices, as the last corrupt leader was less than 50 years ago, and the exchange rate is still 52 pesos to the U.S. dollar? How can I express my discontentment with the state of the Philippines without sounding like I disown my culture? It’s not that I am not proud to be Filipino—not at all—I am frustrated that in a space where, if you are white, it is perfectly acceptable to be blasé about your culture, yet it seems sacrilegious as a minority to be anything less than 100% proud and well-informed. 

Seemingly minor comments throughout my childhood, Western lenses through which my education was taught, and constantly being the minority in a room full of white people has created a distance between me and my culture. Until this article, I had never been given—by myself or others—the space to reflect on what role my culture plays in my life. Feeling like my culture was something removed from myself, or worse, something that made me unaccessible and unrelatable, has made me complacent in educating myself and solidifying how I want to view my culture. 

But my ethnicity is just that: mine. Just as your ethnicity and your relationship with it is yours. I can’t stop people from making comments about my brownness. I can’t end racism and microaggressions with one article. However, I do have the power to reflect on this part of me and know my worth as a Filipino-American woman. As I approach adulthood, I see that what is mine is actually mine. I can dye my hair, change my clothes, cook my food, and in the midst, recognize that pride and uncertainty toward my culture are not mutually exclusive; both beat within me and remind me what is truly mine and no one else’s.