Filipino-Americans, Whiteness and White Privilege.

Continuing on my previous post, it’s been pretty hard growing up Filipino/Hawaiian/American. (For the most part, I mean no offense to the Hawaiian ethnicity nor my Hawaiian background, but I’ll focus mainly on being a Filipino-American.)


Reading Yen Le Espiritu’s Home Bound, I found it amazing to have so much to relate to, and to know that so many people experienced nearly the same things as I did or am doing. I feel that the book is essential to every Filipino-American. It focuses on their various lives across cultures, communities and countries, containing short interviews of Filipino-Americans and Filipinos, giving them a voice to be heard when they have been subjected to the concepts of whiteness and white privilege in the American culture.

In the eyes of a Filipino-American, the concepts of whiteness and white privilege are blurry as the memories they seek to forget after so much oppression, racism and subjugation. Filipino-Americans seek acceptance and will go through any means to obtain it. Living in America, Filipino-Americans were socially unaccepted, being racially different from the Caucasian-Americans.

In Espiritu’s Home Bound, Espiritu describes that to overcome these bounds, Filipino-Americans attempted to become like the average American teenagers, who spoke only English, dated and associated primarily with the whites and to snub their native Filipino culture (Espirit

Growing Up Filipino-Hawaiian-American.

When I first came to America on August 27, 1999 as a 9-year old, I felt incredibly lost. Jetlagged-wise, I felt lost in that I left the Philippines on August 28, but because of the time difference, it seemed that in a way, I traveled through time. Arriving in America as a 1.5 generation, I had very little knowledge about the American culture and society, with racism, ethnicity and the whiteness concept not in my vocabulary nor my in mind at all—I didn’t know what any of those were and anything about it. But now, having lived here for almost 11 years (and haven’t been back since then…), I’ve come to develop an understanding of it.


It wasn’t until taking the Filipino-American History class here in Shoreline Community College that I became more aware of my own ethnic background as a part Filipino, American and Hawaiian and the world around me. I don’t mean to advertise the class, but I found the latter half of that quarter to be one of the most interesting because it was about our own self-proclaimed self-identities.

I usually describe myself as Filipino, paying lesser attention to my Hawaiian and American backgrounds, because of the color of my skin and where I was born. Filipinos are akin to having tanner skin than Americans, but lighter than Hawaiians, as early Hawaiians (Polynesians) migrated along with many other ethnicities to the Philippines. These days, it’s common to see a Filipino, especially because of the rich Filipino history here in Seattle.

Even if I describe myself as a Filipino, typically others don’t. I’ve been asked plenty of times if I was Indonesian, Thai, Cambodian and even Indian or Taiwanese. I find it intriguing at how people view/mistake me for those ethnicities, since I’ve never experienced that at all prior to coming to America.

It just makes you wonder what are the certain features people look for in stereotyping or picturing the average look for a certain ethnicity.

Did I look Thai because of my darker skin, dark eyes and jet-black hair? But even if I did, don’t Cambodians exhibit the same features of a dark skin, dark eyes and jet-black hair too? And what about an Indian?—Or Taiwanese? It is questions like these that often have an impact on the self-identity of an individual, radically changing them to accepting or disputing/racist extremes. As for me, with the knowledge I learned in that class about self-identity and ethnicities, my own self-identity changed to one that I believe is to be an accepting one, integrating into the American culture and become bi-cultural.

Using these various models (Racism) , I’ve proclaimed myself to be in the integration stage in minority identity development. I feel like I’ve experienced a lot, but still not enough, to have gained a good understanding of other cultures besides my own. Moreover, I feel that I have accepted the American culture, yet still retained a good portion of my own Filipino culture, such as still referring to older Filipino women as “tita” or “ate” (Filipino for “aunt” and “older sister”) to show respect (and also to recognize the knowledge they have gained at such an age) and taking off my shoes when entering a home. I have a strong sense of my own self-identity as a male, 19-year old heterosexual Filipino/Hawaiian/American. I appreciate other cultural groups, their cultures, traditions and customs, developing an interest in them, such as attending and celebrating a Cambodian New Year while being the sole Filipino in the entire proximity and eating with chopsticks with proper etiquette and manners (as a Filipino, I ate with my hands).


But you know… Growing up Filipino hasn’t always been that easy… Especially with the concept of whiteness…