Was chatting with my professor regarding our summer class in which we had to “intervene” with a place here with our sculptures. I attempted mine last week but a police car stopped by and asked what I was doing. Given the current police situation in America and in the Philippines, that rattled me. I told this professor that given my tenuous position in this society, I cannot even muster an intervention without intervening my situation here. He commented “LoL...yes, gotta remember you're brown...and your name sounds Latino so double whammy.”
Interesting that he said I have to “remember” that I am brown. Most of my life in the Philippines, I was never aligned with being kayumanggi or brown. In fact this became the very seed for my MA Art Studies about the symbol of nationhood.
(1) I was told before that our family has a bloodline of enkantos that is why we are pale whereas my cousins are not. Never mind that it could be our Chinese heritage that marked our pale skin.
(2) Speaking of which, I came from an elite exclusive Chinese school in Cebu which my classmates never recognized me as Chinese. I was in fact told to go back to Spain a couple of times. or "Balik sa Manila kay Tagawog man ka (Go back to Manila because you're Tagalog!)
(3) Speaking of which, when I was in Canada, a Canadian friend of mine called me “Little Spanish boy.” I do not know for sure if I really have Spanish ancestry.
(4) When I visited Ateneo de Naga, their old Spanish professor spoke to me in Spanish which I said I do not know how to speak Spanish. She scolded me for besmirching my “ancestors” which I said I don’t think I have Spanish blood. She, a short portly mestiza of a certain age, looked at me from head to toe and said, “You’re short like me! You look like one of us! You have Spanish blood.”
(5) At a restaurant in Cebu owned by a former Jai Alai player from Spain, the owner came up to me and just started speaking to me in Spanish.
(6) When I was in UP Diliman, I was called “intsik” which is funny because I was told I was not most of my stay in Cebu.
(7) In UP Diliman, many professors castigated me for speaking coño English as if I were a neo-colonized being. I was also criticized for my limited Filipino despite the fact that I am a Tagalog-speaker growing up (which adds to the fires of differences in Cebu). My Tagalog is not good enough for the Tagalogs. My English is extra for the Filipinos.
(8) When I was in Cagayan de Oro, I was in a car with my little sister’s would-be husband. Children scrambled to his side begging for money. Then one of them saw me and said “didto ta Amerikano!” (Let’s go the the American!) which my brother-in-law laughed and said “They think you’re American!”
(9) First time I met a National Artist, he immediately pegged me as a member of the oligarchy o which he proceeded how we rent capitalists mestizos destroyed “his” country.
(11) When I was complaining against Duterte, I was told that I am not poor and should not have any say. Not poor? Me? And that person who said I should not have a say has his own car while I drive my mother's old car and live with her because I cannot afford rent in QC to be near UP Diliman.
(12) Here in America, I am asked to remember that I am brown. And I was told by a professor "You're poor."
Such an interesting intersections I find myself. I often say that I am defined my displacement, and by displacement is not being transferred from one place to another but displacement as a sense of losing one’s place. My identity, when I listen to others, is almost always situated what I couldn’t be and what I should be according to them.
What can I say? I am "liminal" already even before I knew what that word is.