Saturday, March 22, 2008
So Now You Want Me?
After that experience, I began noticing how all of the Asian and Pacific Islander kids at my middle school only hung out with and dated each other. Sure, they talked to me because I had some of their blood in me, but I realized we weren’t really that close. After all, I was only part Asian, if I was Asian at all. Why had the people I had met in the Philippines embraced me, while the Asian Americans I knew at home refused to accept me as one of their own? I truly resented the all-Asian league from that point on. I just didn’t understand why they couldn’t look past my white father. Ironically enough, the following year my club team played the same team I had tried out for in a tournament. We beat them by 7 points, and afterwards, the coaches came up to me and offered me a spot on the team; I didn’t even have to try out. I said I’d consider it, and just as I walked away, 2 parents I had met at tryouts the year before approached me. I had remembered meeting them and I also remembered noting how cold they had been towards my parents and me. They were all smiles at this tournament and told me how much they hoped I’d join the team. They could really use a player like me to help them get over the hump. I just smiled and said I was considering it just as I had told the coach. My mind, however, was already made up, and the second I got home, I called the coach and told him I was sorry but I couldn’t play on his team.After I declined, I couldn’t help but wondering why all of a sudden they could now look past the color of my skin. Why couldn’t they do it before?
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1 comment:
First I want to say that I like your blog very much. Your country's family structure is very similar to mine culture's family structure. As you said " relational, hierarchical and communal". For example, you stated that the blood relationship is not important, we call our parent's friends also uncle or aunt "auntie". It is same in my cultures. In Turkish culture and Bulgarian culture people call their parent's friends aunt or uncle. In your blog you stated also some uncles or aunts live with their daughters. So it is also same in my culture. Our family members want to be together. There is another same issue is health. As you said, if there is an health problem occur in a family member he/she go first his/her family's house instead of an hospital.
While I was reading your blog I realized that I miss my family a lot.
In your first part of your blog you discussed about the communities include mentees and mentors. As you said Philippines Americans are a community in the USA which they gathered in the past. For Philippines skin color, the same certain traditions and the same identities are very important to being acceptable the Philippines community or "family". In the past philippine community created according to these.
People who share same identity or traditions, feel themselves more comfortable in a different country.
That is completely correct. If one do not know anybody in a new country or cannot find somebody to share same identities or traditions he/she can feel themselves very different than the majority group of people.
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