What Is The Filipino-American? (Part II)

The term “Filipino” is the family name of Filipinos who reside in the Philippines as native sons and daughters of a race belonging to the motherland known as the Philippines. It is the father’s family name for Filipino citizens, and it serves as the mother’s family name for Filipino-Americans who continue to call themselves “Filipino-Americans.”

The dimension of Filipinos as a race or a national family is not appreciated nearly enough. The fact that our ancestors had not reached nationhood before colonial powers took control of the motherland and dominated even the way Filipinos lived explains why the sense of nationhood is weak. The assumption of race as a national family is more biological than a lived reality; the sense of the collective, of the whole, has yet to become part of the Filipino psyche.

The sense of a personal family, however, is deep and, in fact, dominates the Filipino lifestyle. For one’s family, a Filipino can go more than the extra mile, can live a life of sacrifice. The Filipino is strongly anchored on the family, and reversely so, very weakly grounded on a sense of nation. In the United States, the income of the Filipino family is second only to another ethnic group and higher than mainstream American families. This is a reflection of how a Filipino family working together can achieve from a secure foundation. And a remittance level of $8 billion from Filipino-Americans to their families in the Philippines these last two years is an outstanding measure of that sense of family.

Locked to personal family ties, Filipinos have had serious difficulty in expanding the sense of a personal family to a sense of a national or global family. A true nation does not exist because personal family boundaries cannot be transcended, or pushed further out to accommodate neighborhoods, communities and the whole motherland. This underdevelopment of a priority to the common good keeps Filipinos divided, divisive, and vulnerable to the machinations of their own leaders or the government of other countries.

Filipinos who left the Philippines to migrate to America did not leave their weaknesses behind, only an environment where opportunities could not match the natural wealth of the motherland. Many in leadership positions among Filipino-Americans mirror the qualities of leadership in the Philippines, if not in the tendency to exploit, then in the tendency to put personal interests, including pride, ahead of the common good. Then, the ordinary mass of Filipinos, both in the Philippines and in the United States, remain servile, subservient, submissive, and in avoidance of participation in community affairs. Most are also very tired and have no motivation to exchange a weekend of rest to watching Filipino-American associations, or their leaders, compete and put down one another.

In the last four years of going back and forth the Philippines and America, I have yet to read or hear a comprehensive perspective of the Filipino-American. Almost ten years ago, I stumbled on a market research survey about the cost-of-living of Filipino-Americans, estimated at $50 billion annually. It could be more than $60 billion today. Aside from a remittance to the Philippines of $8 billion, the average per capita GDP of Americans is $47,000 – and I am assuming that it is the same, or higher, for Filipino-Americans. If so, Filipino-Americans may be earning an estimated $$114 billion annually assuming there are three million Filipino-Americans today (I suspect more).

In early 2008, I was privy to survey results done in San Diego County which estimated that only 5% maximum of Filipino-Americans participate in community affairs. In several other places I have been to in the United States, estimates may even be lower. Again, mirroring their patterned subservience which translates to passivity in the United States, Filipino-Americans are largely uninvolved, unseen, unheard and unfelt. No wonder that Wikipedia refers to Filipino-Americans as either the “invisible” or “silent” minority. Yet, the attachment and generosity to their personal families translate to an awesome $8 billion a year.

If Filipino-Americans do not know their collective strength, they are more aware of their weaknesses. So many disparaging remarks are made by Filipino-Americans themselves about, not only regarding the poverty, corruption and divisiveness of Filipinos and the Philippines, but also about negative traits and behavior of their fellow immigrants in the United States. They are the first to bash themselves and their roots. I do not think there is anyone in second place. Thank goodness that the vast majority is silent enough not to add to this public or Internet bashing against Filipinos and Filipino-Americans.

Last week, I received an unusual amount of commentaries or responses to Part One of this series. The variety of their written comments affirms the many ways that Filipino-Americans think of themselves and others like them. I was pleasantly surprised, though, that all of those who wrote me had a positive take on their being Filipino – even if some had criticisms for how others are.

I had mentioned that Filipino-Americans have choices about how they can call themselves, either as “Americans” or as “Filipino-Americans.” In the Philippines, there is no choice, of course—we are simply and only “Filipinos.” But when Filipino in America choose to call themselves “Filipino-Americans,” they invoke the family name of their race and motherland. Without that live connection to blood and land, the term “Filipino” for Filipino-Americans has no real meaning.

Those who refer to themselves as Filipino-Americans are saying, “I belong to the Filipino race, and the Philippines is the land of my ancestors.” Immediately, non-Filipinos who hear this think of the Filipino people aside from just the individual Filipino-American speaking. Together with this is the assigning to the family name all that is positive and negative about the Filipino. Filipino-Americans, therefore, cannot escape being seen or judged as a people. Their own personal status is affected by the reputation or the imagery of the family name, for good or for bad.

There are many attributes of Filipinos that are beautiful and noble. Sadly, though, it is collective poverty and endemic corruption that dominate in the definition of the Filipino and the Philippines. Is this imagery one that Filipino-Americans have to live with? Or is there a way to reverse history?

Conclusion next Friday, July 1, 2011 …