Fighting for Cultural Hybridity
If there's one thing being of mixed-ethnicity has taught me, it's that the world isn’t friendly to hybrid cultural identities.
It isn’t easy for people to understand what it means to have multiple cultural affinities and national loyalties; what it means to hold two, three, or four worlds in your being.
But for people like me, who have parents from differing cultures, this is our reality. Not only do we face a tension between our home’s culture and the rest of the world, but our home’s culture itself is mixed and has tension. I dream of the day that our stories become more visible and accepted into the norm.
My story is that I am a proud half-Filipino, half-Singaporean-Chinese woman whose parents are from the Philippines and Singapore. I was born in the U.S., spent my early childhood in the Philippines, grew up in Singapore, and spent the last 5 years in the U.S. I feel an affinity to the Philippines, Singapore, and the U.S., and I am the only U.S. citizen in my family.
My parents and I in Washington, DC, 1993.
Over the years, I have learned what it means to own my identity and to be proud of my story. I may not be “pure” Filipino, “pure” Singaporean, “pure” Chinese, or “pure” Asian American (whatever those mean), but I am who I am. And even if my story is not common, it still has value.
Growing up, I was familiar with people from both of my parents’ countries asking me if I was “really Filipino” or “really Singaporean”.
Many times, I wanted to say: “Yes, I am. I’m sorry that I don’t fit your (narrow!) expectations of what a Filipino or a Singaporean is. But people like me exist, and more people are growing up with mixed and transnational cultural identities every day. Get used to it!”
Other times, when I had more foresight, I wanted to say: “Yes, I am. But I probably experienced those cultures differently than you did. So I may not know as much as you do, or think the same way as you do. I admit that I can learn things about our culture from you, but you can also learn some things from me; things like open-mindedness and a genuine understanding of and appreciation for diversity and inclusion. Just because I'm not ‘pure’ does not mean that my experience of our culture in this globalizing world doesn't matter. In fact, I think that makes our knowledge more valuable. We need to appreciate different kinds of knowledge, and be curious about what we do not know, rather than be threatened by it. There's a lot that our community could learn from our people who have grown up or lived in multiple cultures.”
“Why are you marrying a foreigner from outside our culture?” seemed to be the question on everyone’s minds. “Make sure you raise your kids to be Singaporean/Filipino. Don’t let them forget who they are.”
It’s taken me awhile to stop using Response #1, and instead use Response #2. What changed was that I realized I had to understand why people reacted the way they did to my mixed-ness, and address that. If they were uncomfortable with my hybrid cultural identity, maybe they were worried I wouldn't value either of my cultures as highly, compared to if I only had one culture passed down from my parents. If they were dismissive of my claims to be both Filipino and Singaporean, maybe they were worried that people like me would ‘dilute’ our cultural community and result in a loss of knowledge or commitment to our culture. I realized then that I needed to address those worries if I wanted to be accepted by either of my cultural communities.
At the same time, I learned to not (always) crave acceptance from my cultural communities. There came a point when I realized that no matter how much I tried to “prove” my Filipino-ness or my Singaporean-ness that people would only accept me as “one of them” when they were ready to do so and when they wanted to do so. And there's nothing wrong with that. Being mixed is my normal; it makes sense that it would take others a while to accept it as normal.
When my parents got married in the 1990s, their marriage was treated with apprehension by both their families. “Why are you marrying a foreigner from outside our culture?” seemed to be the question on everyone’s minds. “Make sure you raise your kids to be Singaporean/Filipino. Don’t let them forget who they are.”
And rather than forgetting, I discovered who I was and overturned my relatives’ expectations of me. I’m not just Singaporean and not just Filipino. I’m both. All of the above. I have no exclusive loyalties. I do not buy into ethnocentrism. I believe in cultural relativism, pluralism, and multiple knowledges. A hybrid cultural identity can add to a cultural community, rather than detract from it.
"We need to appreciate different kinds of knowledge, and be curious about what we do not know, rather than be threatened by it."
This is the strength of being mixed. By inhabiting multiple worlds and moving in between them, I quickly learned the secret that seems to so elude others: You can’t divide people up into “culturally pure” and “culturally impure” categories. Everyone is mixed - whether it be through heritage, life experience, or transnational migration - and our communities can be enriched by the differences. More people just need to realize it.
