“There’s nothing worse than forgetting who you are.”
-René Garcia, Jr.

“What do you call a Filipino walking a dog? A vegetarian.”

It’s becoming more and more painfully apparent that people lack an understanding of why they are who they are, if they even understand who they are at all. It vexes me to no end when I ask people why they do something and they reply with a non-answer like “because” or “I don’t know.” I have ended many of what meager romantic relationships I’ve had after the first date because of this pet peeve. I pride myself on knowing who I am and why I do the things I do. I can untangle the blinking and flickering Christmas lights of thought in my head and trace it back to the electrical outlet, finding the one bulb that makes half the lights go out along the way. In this manner, I have reviewed and deconstructed my history countless times in order to achieve greater understanding. And the tragic conclusion is that I am not the hero in my own life story.

I was born in the Philippines in 1979, a dark skinned Filipino baby boy: the second son to two full blooded and, coincidentally, light skinned Filipino parents. In the two years I lived in the Philippines, the only things I recall are sitting in the kitchen sink watching my father swim in our Olympic sized pool and another memory of being in that same pool with my father. I don’t remember interacting with anyone outside of my family. Even in the vague memory I have of sitting in a chair having my picture taken, the people are obscured by bright lights. In ‘82, my family moved to California.

At age three, living in Garden Grove, my earliest experiences in society have always revolved around White people. Dana, the girl next door who I called my girlfriend even though she was four inches taller than me, was White. My older brother’s friends, Bob and Jason, who lived down the street, were White. The cast of Three’s Company, my father’s favorite television show: White.

In ‘85, we moved to Moreno Valley. According to my parents, when our black neighbor walked up our driveway to help us carry in some stuff, I apparently pointed in awe and exclaimed, “Look, Mom! A black person!” While I have no recollection of this event ever happening, I do have countless memories of my father putting down Filipino’s we saw as low class and uneducated and ugly. This was always confusing, since I was aware that I was a Filipino. The concept of double standards was still foreign to me; as such I was even more befuddled when family members like cousins, uncles and aunts were not exempt from my father’s slurs. On rare occasions, my father would tell me at age 6 to pinch my nose so that it would grow less broad in the hopes that I would look less ethnic. If my father grew bored of bashing Asians, it was easy enough for him to transition to other minorities.

In this crude manner, my tastes as an Asian child were roughly and vigorously molded by my father’s clearly racist ideology. At age 7 he threatened to kill my brother and me if either of us ever brought home a nigger girlfriend. That same year, my father threatened to beat me if I didn’t make advances on a couple of White girls who rode their Big Wheels past our house. I remember the fear in their eyes as I called, “Hey,” as friendly as possible while running madly after them.

Of course the melting pot of the public education system and its propaghandi preaching peace, tolerance and acceptance of minorities tried to balance out my home schooling, but it was too late. White people — especially White girls — held a very special place in my heart…if not other parts of my body. If it wasn’t my daily dose of my father’s racist dissemination during every waking hour, then it was my nightly dreams of Heather Thomas, Daisy Duke, or Princess Leia in her bikini slave outfit from Return of the Jedi.

And this is how it was for a very long time. My first girlfriend was a White girl. She dumped me after a day, but that didn’t stop me from lusting after White flesh so voraciously that I sexually abused my next White girlfriend with marathon length Friday fingerbang sessions. Don’t get me wrong. I had wanted to take care of this girl and show the world that I could be a good boyfriend. I see now that the world really just consisted of all the White girls that rejected me and I only wanted to prove to them — and myself — that they were missing out on something fantastic. When my hand disappeared beneath my girlfriend’s cotton panties and my middle finger moved rhythmically inside her, there was no love involved. I didn’t do it to please her. I was giving the finger to all of White female America.

I was 12. I was an asshole.

Somehow, the sisterhood protects its own. Since that girlfriend, I had been unable to attain what which I coveted most: the White Trophy. I turned to my minority buddies who commiserated. If friends were scarce, I simply sifted through my father’s Playboy’s, selecting only issues with light skinned centerfolds whose interests included skiing, walks on the beach, and going to church.

And then I got older, got kicked out, and decided that it was time to clean house and redefine myself. I opened my tastes to minorities. Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, it didn’t matter. I was broadening my horizons. It also helped that I had joined the workforce. At the time I worked in a directory assistance call center where the majority of employees are minorities because employers will gladly hire minorities for shitty jobs where customers won’t have to see their dark faces. Of course that didn’t stop customers from carpet-bombing you with various racial slurs once they picked up on what they perceived was a racial nuance in your speech pattern.

I thought I had finally done it. I thought my immersion into ethnic minority culture had allowed me to transcend race. Sure, I still pursued White girls as insatiably as ever and was going down in flames faster than a kamikaze pilot into a U.S. carrier, but the idea that it was race related was absurd. I had become the Zen Master of Tolerance, the Colorblind Beholder. Society had no effect on me.

Then I read this autobiography about some Japanese guy who had grown up in the states. He wrote candidly about his attraction towards White women and his inability to attract them back. He wrote about his disappointment with his features and his degradation into the world of pornography. This book hit so close to home that it was scary. As I read it, I regarded it less as an autobiography and more as a mirror. I found myself continually scrutinizing my life and found that perhaps I had been more affected by the society I live in than I thought.

I started to do a lot of thinking about my “self.” I’m of the mind that the “self” consists of something intrinsic to my being. Call it what you want: essence, spirit, soul, what have you. The rest of me is a construct that has been shaped by the world around me. The dilemma I faced was: where do I delineate the “self” that is my essence (the self I would be if I existed in a vacuum) and the “self” that is a reaction to my environment? Pondering the question was a catalyst for many others.

Why am I attracted mainly to White women? Are White people more beautiful than the rest of the world? I’d like to say no, since beauty is a relative term. Therefore, do I think that White people are more beautiful than other races? Once again, I’d like to say no in light of the fact that I’ve gone after all races in my endeavors. But upon closer inspection, I see now that the minority girls that I’ve pursued have all had decidedly “White” features, in the same vain that Tyra Banks, a black supermodel, maintains very “White” features (light skin, straight hair, narrow nose, light eyes) and is subsequently very popular. Whose standard of beauty am I following? Am I simply mass media’s mindless zombie? And if so, ds that mean if fat women were to be suddenly (though unlikely) glamorized, that I too would find them appealing? Or am I simply a construct of my father’s racism? Questions I can’t begin to know how to answer.

Flip it. When I was younger, I never thought for an instant that my race could play a part in my constant rejection. Did I even have any real concepts of my own race? But when you turn to the media, which is for the most part the rubric for what is sexy, how many male Asian sex symbols can you name? How many male Asian dramatic actors can you name, for that matter? The Japanese author I was reading also brought up an interesting point that I had never considered. In his viewing of pornography, the Japanese guy watched a three-some between a White girl, a White guy, and a Black guy. In that situation, he calls himself the “missing third.” And you know what? I’ve yet to see a male Asian porn star. Once again, the Asian male is excluded from a position of nubile virility. Instead, the Asian male is saddled with the stereotype of the scrawny, four-eyed computer science geek with his dick a shriveled stack of dimes.

On a related note, there is a type of animated Japanese pornography called “Hentai” that depicts women being raped by monsters with phallic-like tentacles. What’s odd is that these animated women are very Caucasian in their features. I never thought that this type of porn could have originated from or be an allegory for the Japanese man’s inability to attract the Caucasian woman. Therefore he finds no other way to “have” White women but by raping them.

My detractors will tell me that I’m probably being a bit hyper-sensitive about race in this regard and to blame my rejections on race is a bullshit copout. To that I reply in no way am I saying that White girls reject me out of some overt racism. I don’t know why they reject me. I’m merely open to the idea that they might reject me because they have been conditioned by society and the media to find other features more attractive. Furthermore, in no way am I saying that all White girls reject all Asian guys. I’ve seen many happy Asian guy/White girl couples. Take my brother and his girlfriend for instance. Therefore, nothing I state here is absolute. As for hyper-sensitivity, I think that minorities cannot help but be sensitive (to whatever degree) to race and ethnic issues because a minority is continually dealing with his/her race as a disadvantage (to whatever degree). Ask the black Wall Street broker trying to hail a cab in downtown Manhattan. Ask the Mexican supervisor trying to check in at a hotel, but is instead asked if she is there to apply for the dishwasher position. Ask the Korean child who brings his parent to career day and has to deflect questions about dry cleaning.

That’s not to say that White people do not suffer what they may perceive as racism. However, the White person living in the projects who suffers a racial slur can always go home and watch COPS and see the White officer hauling the minority drug dealer off to jail. Or they can listen to the White (and forever will be White) President of the United States give another speech. At the very least they can take heart in knowing that any shortcoming they have (body odor, bad habits, etc.) will never be construed as representative of their race, that MTV owns BET and that there aren’t any really good White racial slurs anyway.

***

What I find more appalling is how much I’ve been trying to become a White person without acknowledging that fact. Looking back over the years, I now see the sublime impetus behind my dressing up like James Dean, or Humphrey Bogart or some twisted gothic figure. By attempting to emulate western styles I subconsciously believed I could transcend my Filipino features. I got to the point where my consideration for myself looking different from a White person had regressed to a vague understanding that, sure, I was a little darker, but that was it. When I got older and could no longer deny my physical differences to my White counterparts, I remember looking in the mirror and wishing my facial features were a bit more chiseled, going so far as to suck in my cheeks a bit to define my cheekbones more. I wanted to narrow my aborigine nose. I wanted to chisel out detail into my flat profile. I wanted to escape my face. I think I did to some degree.

At one time a White friend had turned to me and said, that “[he] thought of me as a White person.” The Japanese author had had the same experience word for word and I shared the emotion. It was a kind of camaraderie, like I had been accepted into the secret brotherhood of White society: The Fucking Ku Klux Klan of the Mind. I was safe from the societal lynching tree so long as I stayed hidden beneath that White hood — assimilated.

Only recently have I realized that, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, I slipped into the crack separating the culture that represents my body and the culture that represents the society I live in now. So with this realization, I’m faced with more questions: How do I remedy this? Can I remedy this? Do I want to remedy this? I can’t very well go back to the Philippines and inundate myself in Filipino culture. Even if I tried I would find that the Filipino culture is so overrun by White culture I’d simply be getting a watered down version of what I’m experiencing now. Furthermore, I feel my fascination for White flesh and western styles is too ingrained to ever be sanded out. Lastly, I see nothing wrong with wanting White girls or wearing western clothes or my White minstrelsy. I accept that I live in a predominantly White society and that assimilation is a natural outcome, however, from this point on I need to understand that no matter how assimilated I become, I can never be fully accepted in White society because my body is representative of another culture.

So what ds this say about who I am? Jesus, that’s tough to answer with so many other questions still answerless. I feel like someone else has been living my life for me and I hate that person because I disagree with so many of his actions. Sadly, that person is only partially recognizable as myself to me now. I find that I don’t identify with ethnicity and I don’t have any sense of belonging to a particular culture. There’s so much of my life to consider and so many experiences to weigh I can’t keep it all in my head at once to make sense of it. Looking at the big picture only makes me blind. All I can be sure of is who I am at this very moment, which is nobody.