i hate being a mixed filipino
i don’t really have a cohesive way to say this so it’s going to be a huge brain dump. perhaps i’ll forget a few details as well but i just had to rant this.
for reference, im half filipino (mom), and half an ethnicity that doesn’t have its own country (dad). i have never met another person beside my sibling that has the same mix as me. on top of that, we grew up in the uk. i have no family members from my dads side in the uk but almost half of my mom’s family is here, with a lot of cousins just above our age. therefore we were raised with filipino culture, their food, their traditions and customs, religion etc. i picked up the language from hearing my family talk to each other but we were never taught. my dad never taught us anything of his culture, nor were we raised with his religionetc.
now to the main part. many filipinos (myself included) usually are able to tell when someone is a filipino. i myself usually can tell when someone is mixed filipino as well. compared to my sister, i don’t have as many filipino features. people can’t really put the pin on where i’m from. they usually can tell that i’m “some form of asian”, some say i look middle eastern. some people can actually tell im filipino but this is usually never another filipino. if you’re filipino you know that we have a strong sense of community. especially abroad, there are many filipino communities where all the families like to hang out often and the kids are raised together. the community in the school i grew up with had many filipinos. but i was never invited to any function. their mothers always commented on how i looked saying i should go for modelling (probably because i was mixed) but again we were never invited for functions nor did any of the other filo kids in my class really include me. this continued on for as long as i know, even in highschool/ college and where we live now.
i always wondered why i was never included in these hang outs, especially because all of these other filo kids were raised in the uk. we have the same customs, food, and way of bringing up. i can only relate to their upbringing as i was not raised by my dads customs at all. yet its like i’ve been alienated from my own people. because of this since i was younger i developed hatred for the way i looked, especially my nose because i thought the way i looked stopped me from being accepted by my own people.
because i dont know any of my other half, nor do i know anyone that is the same ethnicity i cant even say i’m closer to that side or that side would accept me. actually they probably would but it wouldn’t feel right to me because i have nothing in common with them nor do i know the language or any tradition of theirs. it doesn’t feel like home to me. that makes me feel like i have no home or identity.
it makes me even more sad when i see comments online. every time a mixed filipino makes an achievement on the behalf of the philippines you always find comments saying “where’s the real filipino representation? this isn’t a real full blooded filipino”. yet when there are celebrities or thereof that make achievements but not on acknowledgement of their country the filipinos are so fast to say “did you know they’re half filipino? kuya! ate!” it’s like we’re only representative of our people when it benefits them. i don’t mean to use this lightly but it just feels sorta racist? we didn’t choose to be born mixed, so why can’t our own people see us as just filipino? why is it when we are filipino it’s always about “how filo you are” or if you’re half. and most of the time if you aren’t mixed white they don’t even see you as a filo at all. i feel like an alien. i remember when eala was achieving so much during wimbledon, and my mom was so happy about it, but as much as i was happy for her as an individual and amazed, i had a pit in my heart because i felt like i wasn’t even allowed to feel pinoy pride and feel proud that she brought my country far, because i feel like i don’t belong to the only place i know. it made me think of which country i would even represent if i was an athlete. because my other ethnicity has no country, i want to represent the only place and culture i am proud of, but my own people alienate me and don’t even see me as one of them until i earn it. it pisses me off and i don’t even know what to think.
by the way, when i say that i don’t know anything if my dads culture, i am not saying i do not claim that part of my ethnicity. i am ethnicity 1 AND ethnicity 2. not half this and that. i hate it when people say that as if we are machines made of parts from different places. we are human beings and we are lucky enough the world brought people from across the globe to bring us here. i am fully a filipino and fully the other ethnicity, but my parents are from two different places. yes genetically i know its half and half but when people talk about filipinoness are we really reducing that down to genetics? because wouldn’t that mean that almost none of us are really filipino because we have such mixed blood? it’s so stupid.
another thing that bothers me is that filipinos all look so different to the point where we have different terms for each type of beauty. i don’t understand why we can’t celebrate everyone’s appearances equally instead of praising how mestizas look and then belittling morenas because of internalised racism. but then i don’t understand how hating on mixed mestizas will help us fix that. and also we happen to take looking anything except filipino as a compliment. it’s very stupid, the whole thing makes me hate how proud yet hateful filos are of their own roots.