Anchorage Daily News

Who are the Filipino-Americans?

You can't miss us. There are more than 2.3 million of us in the U.S., and close to 13,000 in Alaska, making us the largest Asian population in the state.

We are not all alike, and surely we are not perfect.

Some of us are brown, some are light brown and others are dark brown. Some of us have straight hair, others curly or kinky. Some of our noses are flat, while others are aquiline. Many of us are short, a few are tall and some in between. But no matter our height, we pride ourselves of playing basketball and volleyball well.

We are mostly Catholics, but we also have Protestant and Muslim brothers and sisters. Our families come from different regions in the Philippines. We speak in different languages, but we understand English and Tagalog well. We are multi-generational. Some of us are U.S.-born;, others of us are immigrants who have lived here for several years, and some of us just immigrated here.

We are neighbors, classmates, coworkers and friends. We are in the armed forces, helping defend this country. We are nurses, med-techs, X-ray techs in clinics and hospitals. We are caregivers who care for many of our elderly. We are fast-food attendants, cafeteria workers, janitors, postal workers and airport employees. We are cashier attendants, stockers and salespersons in grocery and department stores. We are teachers in our primary and secondary schools. We are fishermen and cannery workers, and we are also engineers, doctors, and lawyers.

We are youths whom you called the "model minority," who excelled in elementary and high school and went on to study in the best universities. We are the pride of our parents and teachers and the envy of our neighbors. However, we are also high school and college dropouts, pregnant teens, substance abusers and gangbangers. We are disowned by our families and condemned by society.

We are hard workers. We work overtime, double jobs or sometimes triple jobs to earn a little extra so that we can put food on our table, a roof over our heads and send money to our families in the Philippines who struggle financially.

However, we are also big spenders, buying designer clothes and luxury cars to impress our neighbors and friends and traveling to Las Vegas to gamble, while we struggle to pay our utilities and credit card bills.

We like to argue but hate to disagree. We want unity, yet we build dozens of organizations. We like to talk and sometimes gossip, but when it comes to fighting for our rights at work, in our schools, in our city, in our state, in our country and for our people, we sometimes silence our voices. Are we going to speak up this time and vote in this coming election?

Our story is America's story. But our stories are rarely told in American history. And sometimes we ourselves do not bother to know or remember our own history.

How many of us know that we came to America before the Pilgrims? Or that we had already settled in Southern Louisiana as early as 1763 and in Alaska in 1787? How many of us know about the Philippine-American War? Or about how we were humiliated in the 1904 St. Louis World Fair? How many of us know about our manongs in the early 1920's, who worked tirelessly in the plantations of Hawaii and California and fisheries of Washington and Alaska despite of the injustice and discrimination they encountered? How many of us know about the significance of Fermin Tobera, Carlos Bulosan, Larry Itliong and Philip Veracruz? Or about the significance of the I-Hotel in San Francisco or the Filipino Veterans Equity Act?

October is Filipino American Heritage Month. Let us discover for ourselves the answers to these questions. We owe it to ourselves and our ancestors who came before us, who suffered greatly so that we may be able to proudly say, "We are Filipino Americans!"

Gabriel Garcia is an assistant professor at UAA and received a Ph.D. in public health from the University of California Los Angeles this fall.

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