Opinion: In my English class, my white teacher asked me, “Do you know your language?” The question emerged from a discussion about New Zealand’s history of systematically oppressing Māori people through linguistic oppression. Flummoxed, I responded, “Yes”, as premeditated years of blue feelings over my culture emerged immediately like a swamp.
Yes, Tagalog was technically my first language before my parents sent me to kindergarten. Yes, I still understand conversational Tagalog, I just can’t form a coherent sentence without stumbling over modifiers.
In rapid fire, she shot a question that would pierce any person of colour and fellow Filipinos who grapple with the shame of divorcing from their culture: “Do you know your language as much as you know English?”
Unsurprisingly, this conversation in my Year 12 English class fossilised like a stone of shame in my stomach. This shame is a saddening reality for many immigrants: We don’t know our language as much as we know English. When I grappled to make sense of these strong emotions, I ultimately traced it to the core of Filipino identity itself, our “language”, and our historical wounds.
Filipino-Kiwis, like other racial groups, in New Zealand are the minority within a dominantly white country. Naturally, we combat this alienation by assimilating in the majority, becoming the conscious agents of our own separation for the sake of survival. The diasporic experience is the mourning of an intangible loss – of cultural experiences, upbringing, and societal values, a liminal space between the striving for belonging and permanent separation.
Language and cultural experiences usually fill these gaps, but with the Philippines’ diverse pre-colonial and colonial history, this possibility is difficult. The artificiality of the Filipino identity is one of the large perpetrators of this unique predicament. Fractured into 7641 islands, the Philippines’ cultural development organically reflects this archipelagic formation, reducing the potential for a Filipino homogenous society. Our colonisers (Spain, America and Japan) are the only common history across the three main islands – Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao – orchestrating our nation’s collective consciousness and providing a fertile foundation for a colonial mentality.
My parents’ decision to leave the Philippines to provide me with a “better life” is a common story. If we had stayed in the Philippines, my parents would be jobless because of President Rodrigo Duterte’s arbitrary attack on the nationwide franchise news outlet, ABS-CBN, on May 5, 2020, due to its criticism of his response to Covid-19. This revoking of freedom of speech is reminiscent of the Marcos dictatorship, when my lolo (grandfather) Tony became unemployed at the Manila Bulletin because of the mass shutdown of media companies opposing the government.
I cannot blame my parents for wanting to leave, and I do not resent them for this decision. But in exchange for these conditions I was trading my fluency in Tagalog with English and identifying with the experiences that come with forming my identity in New Zealand.
When I return to that conversation with my English teacher after re-evaluating my relationship with my culture through history and politics, I understand my strong emotions. The simple task of seeking connection with cultural identity means seeking connection with our intergenerational pains and criticism of our national flaws. The identity of the Filipino-Kiwi is marred by dissociation, not only in finding a sense of belonging in this foreign country, but our roots. Because of this, my racial identity is a wound that I must learn to live with as I continue to navigate the spaces between my belonging in the Philippines and New Zealand.
Antoinette Jongco is a Year 12 student at St Mary’s College, Auckland.
