Thoughts & Opinions: Asian American

Neither of my parents were born in the USA - my mother was born and raised in the Philippines, and my father in Denmark. Though they have both lived their entire adult lives in this country, my mother even having full citizenship, that still does make me a first generation American - part of the first branches of my family on both sides to be born in the states. Despite this, for the majority of my life I have excused myself from the national conversation on immigration for reasons I didn’t start exploring until recently: I don’t “look foreign'' enough, and my parents had successfully assimilated themselves into American culture long before I was born (so they don’t “act foreign” enough to draw attention to themselves). Lately, I’ve been asking myself: do these characteristics exclude me or invalidate my opinions on immigration? While a knee-jerk, open-minded reaction might be to respond, “Of course none of that invalidates what you have to say,” I have come across many people who believe there are gatekeeping standards to what validates one’s experience on immigration and being foreign.

To be clear, I do not claim to be foreign. I am American, born and raised in Florida, English is my native tongue. This truth does not negate the reality that I am also of Filipino and Danish heritage. You’d be surprised how many people have outwardly told me in some form or another, “You are not Filipino. You are not Danish. You are just American.” In my opinion, this stems from a muddling of the terms heritage, ethnicity, nationality, and race; regardless of where this thought process comes from, I can’t help but feel hurt and diminished when another person confidently negates my perceived identity. I can point to one instance in particular where, as an adult speaking with another adult, I found myself at a loss for words to tackle someone else’s solid belief that I am “only American” and that any Danish or Filipino cultural knowledge of mine was circumstantial, and not a part of who I am.

Imagine this: I am a young woman in a new job setting, and one of my supervisors is a Brazilian national - he is here in the USA with a work visa. We speak about food and culture and exploring the world, and when appropriate, I share my experiences with Danish and Filipino culture, and how grateful I am to have been raised as a part of both. Without hesitation, the supervisor tells me that “That does not make you Danish or Filipino. You’re American.”

Good naturedly, I respond with, “Well, yes, my nationality is American, but I am also of Danish and Filipino blood and upbringing, so my ethnicity is mixed.” I thought this might clear up any confusion.

“No, your ethnicity and your nationality are both American. You weren’t raised in either of those countries, you’re just American.”

At this point, I am irked. Yes, I was raised in America. But in the household where I learned to walk and talk and read and write and interact with the world, I was raised by a Filipino woman and a Danish man, each with strong ties to their individual heritage. I ate and cooked the same lumpia, adobo, pancit, sinigang, nilaga, lechon, and machado as anyone in any Filipino household has. I had as many Ati’s and Kuya’s as any Filipino native. I rooted for Pacquiao as loudly and proudly as anyone could. As far as my Scandinavian roots go, I ate my weight at Danish smorgasbords, learned the recipes for frikadeller and hakkebøf (amongst many other things that I won’t even attempt to spell), cheered “glædelig jul” every Christmas and “tillykke med fødselsdagen” every birthday, and to top it all off I wholeheartedly support universal healthcare policies. As a child, for many years I believed that the natural response to “mahal kita” was “jeg elsker dig” and vice versa [respectively, the Tagalog and Danish translations of “I love you”]. But, according to this man who had only known me in a professional setting for less than a week, my upbringing did not matter as it took place in the USA.

To this supervisor, and to many people I’ve met, there is a minimum standard one must meet to have their international heritage validated - what’s odd is, whenever I talk to people with this mindset, they never really have a clear cut definition of where that benchmark is. Does one have to be born in a place, or raised there, or spend any of their adult life there? And what amount of time dictates that one has been raised in said country? What amount of cultural wherewithal of a certain country denotes that one is truly a part of that country’s people? There are no concrete answers to these questions, and yet I still find myself defending my own cultural identity to people who have built their own identity on their own arbitrary answers. That supervisor, for example, was born and raised in Brazil, and still holds full citizenship there, and therefore is Brazilian. Very black-and-white, and simplistic, and therefore the rest of the world should be definable in the same terms, no? It isn’t.

So, what was I to say to this supervisor? Unfortunately, being in a professional setting, I swallowed any further argument and just dropped the conversation. I could feel myself being personally offended and upset, and these were not things I needed to bring into the workplace. I avoided any meaningful teaching moment and opted for peace through appeasing a colleague. While the entire interaction was not significant on a large scale, it represents a microcosm of conflict that many foreign nationals are faced with regularly: reconciling one’s international identity with one’s American identity. This internal conflict so often results in a “this or that” mentality that is not only unnecessary, but harmful. One does not have to define oneself by any individual cultural identity, and doing so is becoming increasingly impossible as all the world’s peoples continue to mix and evolve.

Why then, as the world progresses forward, do more regressive and exclusionary mindsets become, or rather remain, prominent on a global scale? Not only is there bigotry and racism between different ethnic groups, but also within those same groups, and it is counterintuitive to the cause of acceptance. Bloodlines are increasingly mixed and diverse, and that could be an awesome thing with cultures mixing and people learning from many different ways of life. Instead, we have people claiming superiority because their ethnic identity is richer, stronger, and better for being untouched by outside influences, leading to isolation and exclusion of people who are “diluted” through having a multicultural upbringing.

In pop culture, Crazy Rich Asians is a prominent example of a protagonist who faces a cultural identity crisis. Our main character, Rachel, is of Chinese descent and American nationality. She faces prejudice and bigotry upon meeting her future in-laws: a family who believe themselves to be “purer” and “better” Chinese people for not having been raised in America, as Rachel was - despite the fact that Rachel has maintained a close connection with many of the cultural customs of her people, even speaking the same language as her in-laws fluently. This example of one woman’s cultural heritage in a blockbuster film is one that showcases a more nuanced take on ethnicity and identity conflicts than is usually shown in popular media. I believe this film is a great conversation starter for exploring and questioning the practice of cultural gatekeeping that is so rampant as the world grows more diverse and mixed.

Perhaps this gatekeeping mentality stems from a feeling of being invalidated because one is foreign in the eyes of self proclaimed “patriots”; it is no secret that in many places in the US, being foreign can draw unwanted negative attention. Bigotry and xenophobia are tenants built into the framework of this country, despite being nonsensical and carrying fatal repercussions, and so perhaps finding pride and identity in one’s international roots is a positive mechanism to counter racially motivated abuse. The problem here though is that if not checked, this thought process still devolves into an “Us vs. Them” argument that, rather than promoting acceptance and open-mindedness, just fuels the conflict further.

Building an identity and worldview on “this or that” and “this but not that” is a practice that leads to close-mindedness and exclusionary practices. Humanity is complicated, complex, and absolutely not contained within black-or-white definitions of identity. I am American, and Danish, and Filipino. Forcing any one individual identity on me is simply incorrect - I am a mix of nuances and complications and complexities, as every single individual is. While simplicity is safe and comforting, attempting to boil any complex subject, like identity, to simplistic terms is invalidating and harmful.

Cultures were made to be shared. Bigotry, racism, exclusionary practices, and other divisive mentalities are founded on principles of separation. But traditions and cultural practices should not be secrets shared with only those of “correct” birth; culture groups should encourage outsiders to gaze in - to learn from their varied philosophy on life. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, we should want to learn about cultures outside of ourselves. We should be seeking out a wider worldview than what we’re born and raised with; it should be our responsibility as citizens of the world to understand that same world more clearly.

All of this is to say that I embrace my Filipino identity and that I wish to speak to my experience as an Asian-American without it being argued that I am not, in fact, Asian.