Kate Blanco,
Berkeley, CA.
Filipinos and Filipino-Americans tend to have an obsession with “whiteness”. I was once told as a young kid to use whitening soap because I was so dark skinned. I believed them. I was taught to view my brown skin as ugly and white/lighter skin as beautiful. I tried to scrub off my brown skin with whitening soap, and to no one’s surprise, I’m still as brown as ever. Attending college and law school exposed me to a wide range of race issues after experiencing some blatant and subtle forms of racism. I realized that being told to use whitening soap was a form of racism perpetuated by my fellow Filipinos and Filipino-Americans. I learned that the problem among Filipinos and Filipino-Americans is the lack of a collective memory. There are only very few older Filipinos who can tell them about their culture, their painful past, and encourage them to love their brown skin and flat noses. Without this collective memory that would bind them together, they assimilate into a society that teaches them white means beauty and success. They don’t believe racism exists because they have been so white-washed.
