I can't neglect 3/4 of myself

To preface this entry, I've worked on this in several sittings over the course of a couple of weeks. I apologize if some of this does not flow well or make much sense.


On top of school work, running two clubs, and stress in general, I've found myself missing a number of my friends from home, in particular one group of friends that goes to Virginia Tech. I always have a great time when I'm with them, but I've never missed them like I have been recently. Usually, my life at school focuses on my life at school and if the occasion arises for me to see them during breaks or on a weekend, then great; if not, I know I will see them eventually. Recently, I've really wanted to go visit them and I know I can't right now because I have too much going on here. I've been trying to figure out what has changed to make me feel this way. I think it is because I've completely immersed myself in the multicultural community and have left no outlet for my whiteness, for lack of a better word. To qualify what I mean by my whiteness, I mean my skin, but mostly I mean my general upbringing in a white upper middle class community. As far as my immersion in the multicultural community, I live with two Chinese-Americans, a Korean-American, and have a Guatemalan-American and a Taiwanese around all the time. I am co-president of the Filipino-American Student Association and do a lot with the Asian Student Council. Outside of this, I do have two close friends who are white, but I don't hang out with them too much. I think Halloween was the last time I spend any time with a group of white people just hanging out. OK. That is a lie, but I can still count the number of times I've hung out with a group of white people since Halloween on one hand. I really have learned a lot about my Filipino heritage in the last couple of years. I have also thoroughly valued all of my experiences in the multicultural community, because I have found a part of me that I had not previously been aware of, and I have become more aware of our diversity that is so wonderful. I have also become acutely aware of the subtly racist nuances that occur below the average person's radar. Despite all of this, the fact of the matter, which Vicky put into words for me, is that I have been neglecting the rest of my identity. I've been neglecting my upbringing, in a sense my roots. My friends at VT represent people who have grown up very much in the same environment/community that I have and have had more similar experiences to myself than all of my apartmentmates. There is something comforting about going back to that. I also find the same level of comfortableness in an different group of friends from home. This comfort is something I have yet to find in friends at William and Mary, even outside of the multicultural community. However, it has only been this semester that I have found it so apparent, aside from the initial weeks at college freshman year. Whether picking potential dating partners or picking friends, what we look for are things we have in common. We flock to familiarity. That aspect of human nature can't be denied, whether it is biologically or psychologically based. (My biological and scientific mind is still a bit skeptical of Dr. Blakey's findings.) I guess I view friends from home as the familiar. It is a little strange to me that this is so. I mean I have changed SO SO much since coming to college, many of the ways I have changed I would view as diverging from those friends. This does bring to light that many of my college experiences have been based on the notion that I should expand and experience a variety of things, particularly taking advantage of opportunities to try/see/learn something new. Because of this, I am still very much trying to assemble all of these new experiences and all of the new perspectives I am acquiring into who I am and how I identify myself. As I said in my last part, this identity question is what is so integral to this class. It is also the question that is most present at this point in our lives. I think college is when identity changes and develops the most. It is still an ever going processes. Going back to my friends at VT, I kind of think part of its appeal is that small amount of time I'm with those friends, none of what I learned matters that much. I can almost revert back to who I was before, a place where I don't have to continually assemble all of these new perspectives I've been collecting, whether in our class or in another class or from all of the new people I've met at college. It is a little less complicated. I don't have to be as careful not to offend. I'm not saying who I am now goes out the window, but it is not as close to the surface of my mind for that time. I really do not know if any of this makes sense and I'm still trying to figure out if this analysis I go is really what I think of my situation.

To start another related train of thought, we have recently gotten a new apartmentmate who is white and though the way she grew up is a bit different from mine, I have found I relate to her much more easily than anyone else in the apartment. (I will take this time to say when I say apartmentmates I do exclude one in this reference. She is white as well but has such a different schedule from everyone else's that my interactions with her are few and far between and therefore I often exclude her in my references.) I will say that I was the only one who had known our new apt-mate prior to her moving into the apartment. This may have a little to do with our closer bond off the bat, but I think there is more to it. To give a little bit more information on my new apt-mate, she is very interested in Latin American Culture, particularly in Central America, even though she is not of Hispanic descent. Despite the fact that my father was born in the Philippines, I often feel as though my approach to learning about Filipino Culture is more like that of someone not of the Filipino descent than a mixed person's approach. I especially felt this way when I first joined FASA, but have more recently begun to equate my approach to that of a mixed person's. Perhaps it is simply a personality issue, but somehow I feel it is also based on background, which most blatantly includes our shared whiteness.

(I clearly have too many thoughts for one post, but I'm going to lump them all together anyway.) I was just reading Erin's latest post in response to the post put up by Todd. I too feel the white guilt sometimes. Yet, how do I reconcile my small lineage ties to the Trail of Tears and the colonial oppression of the Philippines with my descent from white Europeans who contributed to the majority of America? I had a conversation with my Religion and Ethics professor earlier this semester about forgiveness and justice. One particular aspect really applies to the collective guilt we sometimes feel. One of his distant relatives was a white supremacist. He certainly does not condone his relatives views or actions in relation to that view but he still must reconcile that he is related to someone like that. Other questions come up about forgiveness of his relative, just as should we forgive the whites who were in power that let things like the Japanese interment occur. Can we accept forgiveness on their behalf? Well I don't want to get too philosophical, but we really must decide where we stand and how we treat this. For me, I really don't know how to go about that myself. I do think apologies can be made for others, such as the US government apologizing for the internment even though the government in power was not the one that did the interning. Anyway I think I've lost relevancy to my original line of thought. Perhaps it is because it is not 6:11am and I have not gone to bed yet.