Quoted: Anna on Mixed Race and Filipina Identity/Lulu on Shared Struggles

I identify as Filipina and black. I do this to give honor to the struggles both my Filipina mother and my black father have had to endure. I give respect by learning both heritages and never denying one or the other. My identity is heavily influenced by both society and my parents. Both influences intersect to make me who I am. I feel that both my parents have endured a great deal due to society’s conscious and unconscious views on race and class. The way society works has developed my parents into hard working people that took the only paths offered to them. For my father, it was entering the military and escaping the harsh life of Jacksonville, Alabama. For my mother in the Philippines, it was working at an Air Force base. Their paths would cross and they would marry and have four children of which I am the youngest.

My parents are still together and talk openly about racial issues that they have to deal with. The funny thing is that they do not connect their struggles. My father understands about black oppression, but not about Asian and Pacific Islander struggles and vice versa for my mother. While my mother is coming to a certain consciousness about not wanting to be called “Oriental,” my father has to be gently reminded that the term is rather offensive.

—by Lulu, published in “Blended Nation: Portraits and Interviews of Mixed Race America.” Read the rest at Filipinas Magazine.

(Image Credit: Lulu Carpenter, Filipinas Magazine)

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