At the Philippines Women’s University, the movie Slow Jams illustrated the loss of
identity Filipino Americans feel. Jojo’s adopting of hiphop culture in the way
he dressed was the most obvious manifestation of his lack of cultural identity.
I don’t know how Filipinos would dress because we’ve all assimilated and been
colonized and forced to assimilate so that our identities have been erased. Specifically
in the States, our history has been hidden from us and rewritten so that we are
invisible, even to ourselves. Andresen (2012) We’re lost, we don’t know where
we come from, what is our culture versus American culture, and then when we try
to find ourselves it’s like there’s nowhere to look (p. 66). I found this in
myself and in the other Filipino American students who I was previously
intimidated by because I thought they were more Filipino than me, but in
reality, they were just as lost as I was.
During the discussion with the PWU
students, I noticed a language barrier that was not necessarily a result of
poor English. It was rather a result of selective
English. These students literally did not know the words for the concepts we
were speaking about, and the connotations they had for certain words (i.e.
“American”) were influenced by the flooding of certain images (White people) in
the media. These are the remaining effects of psychological warfare that the
United States enacted on native Filipinos. When I say “psychological warfare,”
I am referring to how Americans invaded the Philippines and then forced them to
learn English, but it was the kind of English that had no words of ill-intent
towards Americans. They twisted and erased history, making it seem benevolent
towards Filipinos and Americans, like how the Filipino-American War was changed
to the Filipino “insurrection.” Constantino (1982) “General Otis urged and
furthered the reopening of schools” and hand-picked the textbooks (p. 178)
specifically for the purpose of controlling Filipinos and preventing uprisings
which would have come with the knowledge of true history. They should have let
Filipinos write their own history and learn in their own language, but that
would not fit the American agenda.
It also frustrates me greatly that Filipino parents
aren’t teaching their children their language, whether that’s Tagalog or their
specific dialect. The loss of language is one thing that disconnects us the
most from our culture. You take away our language and you take away a key part
of our identity, so that when we come back to our homeland it’s like we never
really belonged in the first place because we can’t even speak the languages
fluently. Paulet (2007) They fully Americanized us except for the looks we were
born with (p. 191). However, given the history of American colonization and
re-education of Filipinos, it is an understandable action. That does not mean
it should stay that way. Each of us on this trip should be teaching a hundred
other Filipino Americans the history, applications, manifestations, and
awareness we are learning.
Bibliography
Andresen, T. (2012). Knowledge construction, transformative
academic knowledge, and Filipino American identity and experience, In E.
Bonus & D. Maramba, (Eds.) The “other“
students: Filipino Americans, education, and power. (pp. 65-87). Charlotte, NC: IAP.
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