97-percent Filipino, 1/32 Cherokee

When I saw the Bayo advertisement “50% Australian, 50% Filipino,” I didn’t see anything racist or bigoted about it. I thought it was just a statement of fact about the racial mix of the beautiful Filipino-looking model.

I have since read the fine print, the line about the “mixing and matching of different nationalities with Filipino blood” as a “sure formula” for “mak[ing] it in the world arena.” Critics say it is self-denigrating— and indeed it does read that way—but I thought the rest of the ad actually said the opposite. To use jargon, it was “triumphalist” about “Filipino heritage [as] something to be proud of,” as it was the dose of Filipino blood that improved the genetic cocktail and not the other way around.

Bayo has since withdrawn the confusing ad. Some say we are too finicky about racial identity, but we are not alone. In Massachusetts today, there rages a debate about whether a senatorial candidate is “1/32 Cherokee.”

Massachusetts Democrats have chosen their Senate candidate—Elizabeth Warren, a professor at the Harvard Law School who recently held a top post in the Obama administration to protect consumers and regulate the banks. In the heat of the campaign, it was learned that she had earlier claimed to have a Cherokee great-great-grandparent. She had no documents to prove it but cited “family lore” handed down to her by her parents. She is white, blond and blue-eyed.

Three things are relevant to the Pinoy debate. One, apparently for the Cherokee nation, 1/32 Cherokee lineage is good enough. The proud Cherokees distill identity not just by blood but by other more reliable bonds of affinity. By comparison, Bayo’s 50-percent Filipino standard is in fact too high.

Two, Warren’s opponents suggest that, because of that supposed Indian lineage, she received preferential treatment in school and job applications. This has been denied by the two Ivy League schools where she taught law—Pennsylvania and Harvard (itself a feat for a janitor’s daughter). But what is significant here is that these schools characterize “minority” status based solely on “self-identification”—that is to say, merely on the person’s say-so without using birth certificates and family trees.

Three, due to “affirmative action” or what we locally call “social justice,” being Native American is an advantage, while being Filipino is more typically a disadvantage. I recall an actress abroad who diluted her Filipino-ness by describing herself as “mixed Spanish, Chinese, Mexican, Pacific Islander, Malay, Filipino,” as if hoping that people would be too tired to read by the time they get to the Filipino part of her hyphenated identity.

Maybe that is why we’re sensitive about our identity. We who embrace Filipino identity pay a price for it and guard it dearly against those who would cheapen or debase it. Three recent debates are telling.

The first was the flap over the Azkals, the winning soccer team powered by mixed-blood Filipinos. The name alone speaks volumes. It derives from “asong kalye”—stray mongrel dogs—a pejorative now usurped and gentrified. One athlete, accused of verbally sexually harassing a female sports official, explained that it was simply a misunderstanding. A leading TV commentator condemned him, saying that to be truly Filipino, a diluted bloodline is not enough and one must know our values by heart. There was an Internet backlash from Filipinos based abroad, including those of mixed blood.

The second was from the valedictory lecture of a University of the Philippines professor who exhorted her students to remain in the Philippines to serve the country. Overseas Filipino workers protested: We left home only because we had to. We continue to serve the homeland wherever we go. Being Filipino is not about physically being in the Philippines and more about supporting the Philippine economy wherever we may be.

The third was about FHM, a glossy men’s magazine, whose cover featured a well-lit, light-skinned model surrounded by darker-hued models in black bikinis, with the tagline “Stepping Out Of The Shadows.” Protesters considered this both racy and racist and, just like Bayo, FHM succumbed to the social media and changed its cover. This episode exposes the internal hierarchy of Filipinos among themselves that fixes the pecking order according to skin pigmentation, with a traditional preference for the light-skinned.

The one lesson I learn is that being Filipino is in the heart. A seaman may live 10, 20, 30 years abroad and spend just a few months each year in the old country, but he lives and breathes dreams for this country. It is as if physically he’s abroad but deep within he could very well be walking with his kids at SM North. Spiritually he never left home.

Migrants might acquire permanent residency or even citizenship elsewhere, but today we have adopted laws for dual citizenship and for overseas voting precisely because we pierce the fictions of law, recognize the practical realities of survival, and offer Filipinos abroad the place of honor they have earned in the homeland.

We have come full circle. “The Philippines” began as an idea, a legal construct that brought the islands together under one colonial flag, totally oblivious to the natives. Upon independence, we adopted the legal test of citizenship and relied on birth and formal indicia of allegiance. Today we recognize it once more as an idea, disengage Filipino-ness from geography, skin color or bloodline, and affirm as true Filipinos only those who dream for this country and its people and are ready to pay the price for it.

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