What am I?

            During the past two weeks I’ve spent here in the Philippines, I’ve been praised and gawked at for being the “ideal” mestiza; I am white-skinned, dark-haired, I can speak bits and pieces of Tagalog and I look more White than I do Filipina. It is very easy for Filipinos to claim me as theirs.

            During the class discussion today, we talked about the origins of White supremacy in the Philippines—particularly the novelty of White women. This stems from White American masters and their mistresses. The mistresses were often the ones to communicate and interact the most with Filipino and Chinese servants, and they were empowered by the fact that they had power over people they objectified and considered animalistic or infantile.

            One quote that I thought to be so profound from Professor Rafael’s White Love, chapter two is, “Whiteness is at it’s most secure when it seems disembodied and distant” (Rafael 2000). When I am back home in the US, Whites aren’t typically aware of their own whiteness like I am (I’m hyper-aware of my perceived race because I feel so ambiguous). Whites are used to perceiving other races like a game; “What are you?” they ask. And when I answer seriously, “I’m mixed Filipina and White” they say, “Oh yeah, I knew that. I can see it in your eyes,” priding themselves on their ability to tell apart the races to the last drop of blood. They either exoticize or discriminate against me. While I’m in the Philippines, Filipinos show interest and almost idolize me because I look like their actors and singers. They are so quick to claim me as theirs. If I were just a White girl, they would show interest but the cultural “in” lies in the Filipino blood. It’s kind of overwhelming to switch to a country where I am considered attractive because of my whiteness, opposed to never feeling attractive because of my “otherness.”

            Coming here as a White person feels like a confrontation with your race; a sudden realization that now you are "other." When you're surrounded by brown people, you become hyper-aware of your own whiteness. “Puti,” meaning “white,” is a word I hear often here, but there is no malevolence behind it. It’s more like a statement. However, it becomes overwhelmingly stressful and uncomfortable, the tiniest taste of what it might possibly be like to be brown in America.

We also talked about the difference between race in America and race in the Philippines. Race in America came about because of slavery, while there was no slavery in the Philippines. One student said, “In times of slavery, the white woman was the white man’s sexual object, while the black woman was the white man’s animal.” In the Philippines, the White woman was a novelty, but there doesn’t seem to have been mention of Filipina women as sexual objects although I suspect that there was hyper-sexualization and fetishization by White men on Filipinas. I want to know this: what are the origins of the fetishization of Filipinas and converse diminishing of masculinity of Filipinos?