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My Turn by Toni Tabora-Roberts

From The Asian Reporter, V18, #27 (July 8, 2008), page 6 & 7.

I was planning to write about something else altogether, but my recent hometown visit gave rise to some other thoughts. I grew up in suburban Cleveland, Ohio.

What was it like? I remember when we moved to our first house on Mercedes Avenue. On our first day playing outside we were introduced to the neighborhood kids. Here’s how it went: Them: "Chinks!" Us: "Hey, we’re not Chinese, we’re Filipino!" Ignorance was abundant there, but ultimately, to quote Depeche Mode, "people are people."

Despite the bumpy beginning, we eventually became friends with our neighbors and played often. That experience gives a sense of what it was like. Surrounded mostly by white folks, we were always first looked at as different, then somehow quietly accepted into the American suburban landscape. The tension was always there, but as Midwestern Asian Americans we blended in as best as our immigrant parents could teach us. Model minorities? Perhaps, but it’s not that simple.

Alongside my white mainstream life, I grew up with a very separate, but very strong, Filipino-American community. Many doctors, like my parents, were recruited from the Philippines in the 1970s (part of the first wave of "brain drain" medical professionals in the Philippines). Naturally, the immigrant Filipino doctors bonded through language, food, and a strong connection to their homeland (i.e. homesickness). They eventually raised us children and created a sizeable backbone of a community.

Unlike our California counterparts, whose communities are among a sea of many other Filipinos and Asian ethnic groups, our community sat mostly among communities of "Americans," as my mom calls the white folks (despite relentless reminders from me that we, too, are Americans).

Our Filipino community of friends was really our family — a chosen, happenstance extended family. I called the friends of my parents my titas and titos (aunts and uncles) — exactly the same as my blood relatives in the Philippines and California. Our community functioned the same as blood family — looking after each others’ kids, taking care of each others’ elders, breaking bread together, attending each others’ weddings, funerals, and birthdays. Many of us "dated" in our youth, but in the end we’re mostly brothers and sisters and cousins. That’s the backstory — Filipino community beside the majority community.

Fast forward to this past weekend. My brothers and I went home to Cleveland to celebrate our parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. Coincidentally, many of my Filipino-American peers were also in town, along with the folks who have settled in Cleveland.

Because of the freak convergence of so many of us without any special occasion bringing us together, my family hosted a causal cookout to gather a "few" of our close kin-friends. Should’ve known — at the height of critical mass, someone counted about 30 of us, plus 15 children, eating, sitting, standing, eating, drinking, laughing, and eating. (Yes, we Filipinos love to eat.) We marvelled at the dizzying circus that was us now: parents, titas, and titos passing babies around to each other, feeding each others’ kids, changing diapers, playing games. Full circle, baby. It was strange and beautiful and amazing. We have become our parents, but different.

See, many of us are married now, and the dozen or so of us who are have married outside the Filipino circle. That’s right, most of us have not married other Filipinos. As a long-time Asian-American activist and chronicler, it’s challenging for me to resolve this issue of "outmarrying." In the righteous world of Asian-American analytical thought, there’s a tendency to critique Asians marrying outside Asian America as a form of "self-hatred." Yet, as I looked around the room at my childhood friends last month, I saw no signs of self-hate whatsoever. Just a lot of love and adoration — between husbands and wives, mothers and sons, sisters and brothers, titos and nieces, and the every-which-way you love your family.

We are family — all of us Filipino, white, black, and whoever-you-are who have joined in the mayhem that is our community. However, we look into the faces of these mixed-race babies and exclaim, "She looks so Filipino!" or "Doesn’t he look just like lolo [grandpa]?" There’s an irresistible urge to make those connections. It becomes kind of like a game, but to what end? Are we searching to see whose genes are strongest or are we looking to see the evolution to an inevitable blending of races, of cultures, of peoples? Are we diluting ethnicities, creating unsuitable mixes, or are we giving birth to a whole new race? (For the sci-fi geeks out there, think of the Cylon-human babies in "Battlestar Galactica.")

The deeper, perpetual question is: Will we ever get over ourselves, and our attachment to race and color as a label? As skeptical as I usually am, we may never get over it. When I gaze googley-eyed into the face of my sweet nephew Maceo and see his parents and his parents’ parents and his aunties and titos in his nose, his cheeks, his eyes, I hope to myself, yes, maybe we can get over it. Maceo’s generation will mature, then his children’s generation, and their children’s generation, and so on. I can’t help but be hopeful. Someday I may have my own little mixed-race munchkin. So, to paraphrase Whitney: I have to believe the children are the future. Okay, enough with the cheesy references. We’ll continue this discussion again, I’m sure.